How the Best Fishing Times Are Figured
Every spot page on this site lists two best times and two good times for fishing each day. This guide explains where those times come from, in plain words, and then works through one real day so you can see the whole thing happen.
It starts with the moon
The idea is older than most of us. In 1926, a fisherman named John Alden Knight published tables that predicted when fish would feed, based on the position of the moon. He called it the solunar method, from the Latin words for sun and moon. Newspapers and fishing almanacs have printed versions of his tables ever since. This site figures the same tables for your exact spot, fresh for every day, instead of printing one table for a whole region.
The heart of the method is simple. Fish tend to feed when the moon is in certain positions in the sky. You cannot always see the moon at those moments, because some of them happen in daylight or below the horizon, but the moon is up there, or down under the earth, all the same, and its pull is what also moves the tides.
The two best times: moon overhead and moon underfoot
Once a day, the moon passes directly over your spot, as high in the sky as it will get that day. About twelve and a half hours later, it passes under the far side of the earth, directly below your feet. These two passes are the strongest feeding times in the method, so we call them the best times. Each one lasts about two hours: the hour before the pass and the hour after it.
On the spot pages they are labeled "Moon overhead" and "Moon underfoot". Do not let the second label trouble you. It simply means the moon is on the opposite side of the earth at that hour, which happens every day whether anyone is watching or not.
The two good times: moonrise and moonset
The moon also rises and sets once a day, like the sun, only at shifting hours. The half hour before and the half hour after moonrise, and the same around moonset, are the second-best feeding times in the method. We call them the good times, and each lasts about one hour.
So a normal day has about six hours of predicted feeding time: two best times of two hours each, and two good times of one hour each. The rest of the day is not dead water. Fish still bite outside these windows. The windows are simply when the method says your chances are best.
One real day, worked all the way through
Here is the full set of times our engine figured for San Francisco (Golden Gate) on Saturday, November 7, 2026. Every time below came out of the same math your browser runs when you open that page.
- Good time, moonrise: 4:50 AM to 5:50 AM
- Best time, moon overhead: 9:45 AM to 11:45 AM
- Good time, moonset: 3:32 PM to 4:32 PM
- Best time, moon underfoot: 10:08 PM to 12:08 AM
Sunrise that day was 6:42 AM and sunset was 5:06 PM. Notice that none of the four windows landed right on sunrise or sunset. When a best time does land on sunrise or sunset, the day rates higher, because fish often feed at first and last light as well. November 7 did not get that bonus, and its moon was a thin waning crescent, a few days before the new moon. Put together, the day rated Fair, 47 out of 100. That is the rating system being honest: a middling moon, no sunrise or sunset bonus, but still four proper feeding windows.
Why the times move every day
If you check your spot two days in a row, you will see the best times arrive roughly 50 minutes later each day. That is because the moon's day is longer than ours. The earth turns once in 24 hours, but the moon has also moved along in its orbit during that turn, so the earth has to turn about 50 minutes more to bring the moon back overhead. At San Francisco, the moon overhead time was 10:45 AM on November 7, 2026, and 12:19 PM two days later, a slide of about 47 minutes a day. This is also why a printed monthly table can never be replaced by a rule like "fish at ten in the morning". The right hour keeps moving.
What to do with this
Pick your spot from the California spots list or your own state, look at today's best times, and plan to be on the water for at least one of them, with your line in the water before the window opens. The full scoring rules are on How we pick the best times. And keep the honest limit in mind: these times are a traditional estimate based on the moon and sun. They stack the odds in your favor. They do not promise fish.