After looking at Nico's numbers, Tag's summary and the post about fishing logs the only thing I'm sure of is that Nico and Rob hit big fish.

I'm no stats whiz but whenever I see numbers like those posted above I wonder if there is enough information to identify patterns. For example:

(1) Are the catch numbers (either calendar or depth sorted) directly influenced the amount of time spent fishing a particular calendar period or depth? If you spend more time fishing specific depths, then the catch numbers could be biased towards those depths.

(2) Tag's summary compares average fish sizes between various depth ranges. Considering the number of fish caught, could you say that
the differences in average fish size for depths 00-06', 07-14' and 16-25' aren't statistically significant? The same question could be asked about depths 30-40' since the sample size is "only" 13 fish.

I end up with the same questions whenever people start talking about lure color as if it is the end all be all. I especially like it when people conclude that detailed color specifics are as important in say a plastic worm vs. a reaction bait. My response is usually something along the lines of how did they know they took all other factors into consideration before they concluded that a specific factor (color - plus or minus flakes) was the key. To paraphrase smiling Don Rumsfeld ... what are the knowns, what are the known unknowns and what are the unknown unknowns?

Thanks for posting the information and hopefully there is somebody out there who lives for stats and can enlighten us about how we should look at our catch results and fishing logs.

Tim