well, this all started quite a while back.
i'm a keen fisherman thanks to my good friend sue showing me the ropes many moons ago now. on our travels she came across a little yellow book called "the anglers almanac". at first i was a little hrm about it but i didn't discount it, as i'm quite open to something that someone has seemingly put a lot of time and effort into.
the book tracks the yearly moon cycles and predicts the best fishing times accordingly. some days are deemed to be much better than others with quieter times in the majority. they then give you a time within that chosen day when fish will apparently feed with more gusto because of these mysterious effects of the moon. they do not claim to know what exactly is happening, it is all based on observation and records of when more fish are caught, then it is compared to a moon cycle chart. this is how they find their "peak feeding" times.
you can take a look at the cover here..
http://www.emags.co.nz/webapps/cid/4489/6200/shopping/shopping-view-plus.html?pid=24293 in the begginging the section at the front, which does its best to explain why it might be happening, was interesting but always daunting. i just went out and tried to catch fish when it said, without really having more luck than usuall, with the few exceptions. that was about 7 years back now i guess.
about 3 to 4 years ago though, i started getting back into the book. i studied that section again a few times and it started to make more sense as time went on. using location and weather conditions as well as the predicted "peak feeding times" i really did start to improve my catch rate. at times the given predictions in the book were accurate within 2 minutes. sometimes i would experience nothing for hours, then bites RIGHT on the minute, then nothing after. other times the peak period would last for a few hours and i would start to really clean up (without being greedy of course!). the book to a degree, i thought, was often right, deadly accurate other times.
so i read and reread the begging section. it makes mention of how the crime rate (as proven by police records of which im sure there are a couple of hundred years worth of now) increases on full moons and extra police are put on patrol to combat the extra activity. i always thought that that gave it some merit atleast and it was that alone which initially sparked my interest in the book for i'd heard that theory long before i started to fish. besides, people went crazy on a full moon if old tales have anything to do with it.
the more i fished the more i completely realised that the feeding times were absolutely correct, as long as you were where the fish were when the were feeding.. something the book stresses but something that just didn't click with me for the longest time! argh!
that got me to thinking "what is it with the moon that it can make fish think they HAVE to feed right there and then?". a hard question to answer and i'm not going to pretend i know why and to it's credit neither does the book. one theory that i float around is that it could be electromagnetic pulses eminating from the moon at certain times and depending on position they have varying effects on feeding activity. it however would not TOTALLY depend on the moon, but more so a number of determining influences with the moon being a major one. this was triggered by a story i read a couple of years ago claiming that powerful magnets, when placed on certain parts of the brain, can effect ones thinking, to varying degrees. here's a link that better explains this finding.
http://5ideas.artscience.org/nsturiale/magtherapy.htm
i thought that perhaps it's possible for magnetic fields to change thought patterns as much as a magnet itself, for a magnet is only doing it due to its own field. if magnets can do it why not the magnetic field of the moon. here's some more on planetary magnetic fields.
http://www.phy6.org/earthmag/mill_8.htm
so there i am fishing.. and it's like the moon literally "switches" the fish on sometimes. i often look over to my nephew if he's fishing and we notice that our baits will get attacked at exactly the same time, to the second sometimes. we joke around blaming those "moon beams". other times we'll get bites as birds are diving for fish, all seemingly within 1 or 2 seconds of each other, even when the bird is 50 metres away from us. it's like these waves seem to switch everything on at once, then die down.
the "peak time" label really is perfect for what appears to be happening.
then it dawned on me that perhaps what's apparently happening in a fishes life is also happening to ours via a host of planetary cycles and differing electro-magnetic pulses eminating from various heavenly bodies.. sounds like what astrology has always been based on to me
it's not the be all and end all theory, but it certainly has made me want to discover astrology even further and it has to some degree has made a few things a lot more clear cut. to me, it's all to do with differing energies, having differing effects on differing energies at differing times with differing results.
it's a huge puzzle that over time i'm sure will be disected and redisected until a major discovery occurs. much like science itself.
this afternoon i found a GREAT page that i connected with immediately. it really touches on what i had thought all along. that astrology can be more or less turned into a branch of science, and that it hasn't really gotten off the ground yet and given time and effort will be better explained some time in the future.. it's nothing short of brilliance on the part of the writer in my opinion. here it is..
http://www.arthuryoung.com/valueofastrology.html
i'll tell you now, that wasn't easy for me to spit out! plus, i'm sure i've forgotten some of what i wanted to say.. anyway..
months in the making
i hope someone can find atleast something in all this.
luke