Hook the Horizon · field method 1.0
Field findings
A change in pace can feel right when the water or the fish give you a reason. To say what that change did, I need to write down the test, including the quiet stretches when nothing followed.
These are repeatable field questions, not estimates of a fishery. Personal trips and volunteered records are selected by the people who log them. They cannot tell us population catch, abundance, or odds of a bite for everyone else.
Registered question · HTH-FQ-001 · protocol 1.0
Did a change in retrieve pace alter observed follows?
Status: protocol published. No reviewed set of comparable tests has been assembled for a finding yet. There is no result or directional claim to report.
- Unit of test
- A paired sequence in one outing: a declared baseline retrieve window and a changed pace window, each with casts and observed follows recorded, including zero follows.
- Before casting
- Record species sought, broad water type, season, method, retrieve definitions, intended cast count or time per window, and what counts as a visible follow.
- Keep comparable
- Hold presentation, lure or fly family, depth, angle, and water reach as steady as practical. Log measured water temperature, flow or drift, light, and other conditions when known; mark missing values unknown. Note every change that slipped through.
- Readout
- Show follows per casts or minutes for each pace, the paired differences, completed and incomplete windows, and the full effort. A follow is an observation, not a hooked or landed fish.
Record interruptions, visibility limits, changed water, and abandoned tests before analysis. Keep conflicting pairs in the table. Exclude a pair only under a declared rule and list its reason and effort. Report what happened within these tested conditions; do not turn it into a universal recommendation.
What every result must carry
The record beside the conclusion
- Question ID, protocol version, date of analysis, tested conditions and departure from plan.
- Number of eligible pairs, outings and contributors, plus casts or minutes in each arm; zeros count.
- All exclusions and missing measurements, with reasons and the effort they remove.
- Results that disagree with the main direction, and an explanation of how uncertain the comparison is.
- Consented, coarse source record links or a privacy-safe audit table; private trip details stay private.
- Finding version and dated corrections that preserve the earlier text and say what changed and why.
A contributed Field Card enters a private pending review queue. Contribution alone never publishes a finding or its record. We publish a result only after reviewing consent, comparable effort, the exclusions, and the contradictory cases. A withdrawn contribution is removed from a revised analysis, and the public correction records that change without exposing the angler.
NOAA Fisheries explains why voluntary app records need particular care for population level estimates. Our field findings answer narrower questions about the recorded tests, and we will say when the evidence is too thin to answer even those. Read NOAA's discussion of angler reporting apps.
Set up a one-variable test in Field Lab →