The new moon is Aug. 1, making this an excellent time to fish at night using submersible lights for crappie, largemouth bass, striped bass, catfish and even trout. But another reason to become a nocturnal angler is the summer Perseids meteor showers.

According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseids the Perseids (pronounced pûr’s?-?dz) meteor showers occur when Earth moves through a meteor stream or cloud stretching along the orbit of the Comet Swift-Tuttle. By the way, most of the dust in the cloud is approximately a thousand years old.

It should be possible to spot around five Perseids per hour at the beginning of August and perhaps 15 per hour by Aug. 10. The Perseids should rapidly increase to a peak of 50-80 meteors per hour by the night of Aug. 12-13 (might be tougher to see meteors with the moon in its last quarter) and then rapidly decline to about 10-per-hour by Aug. 15. The full moon is Aug. 16. The last night meteors are likely to be seen from this meteor shower is Aug. 22, when an observer might see one every hour or so.

Those are the night-sky details. Here is the experience. Seeing those “shooting stars” reflected on the calm surface of a mirror-like desert or mountain lake is an extraordinary experience. Catching a fish by the light of a shooting star might just become your angling highlight of the year – maybe even the decade.

Top places to night fish and star gaze?

My first choice is Big Lake in the White Mountains. The altitude and clear high mountain air makes the stars seem like you can reach out and touch them. Plus, meteor showers and catching trout is a summer’s night dream experience. You might even have to wear a jacket. At 9,000 feet in elevation, the air can get chilly at night. This can seem especially inviting while baking in Phoenix rush-hour traffic.

On such mountain nights, it almost seems a shame to have any lights. I like to keep it simple and just fish a worm either a couple of feet under a bobber, or down on the bottom using a small slip sinker. You might not catch as many fish that way, but who knows, you might just catch a fantastic falling star.

For the desert fisheries, I prefer Alamo Lake – it sits in a big bowl, has no light pollution, and is great for star gazing. Hey, the fishing be can terrific as well (try near the dam). There are submersible crappie lights that you can lower down to avoid creating your own light pollution, yet still attract the plankton-shad-sport-fish food chain. Bring bug spray.

Another good place to try is Lake Mead for stripers. The clear skies and dry desert air can provide some spectacular results in the sky and on the end of your fishing lines.

The deep canyons of Powell can limit the ability to see some of the night sky, but a streaking meteor lighting up a red sandstone canyon, butte or mesa can illuminate a whole new connotation to nighttime thrills. It’s not a bad time to be sitting on the top of a houseboat.

If you can’t get out of town (and away from the light pollution), don’t ignore the opportunities at fisheries close to home. My favorite is Tempe Town Lake. If you have to have light pollution, the distinctive Mill Avenue Bridge lights being reflected on this shallow lake is an iconic sight for the Valley of the Sun. Watching a meteor streak across the night sky while jet planes take off from Sky Harbor can be awesome.

Hopefully, as you are reading this I am experiencing similar nighttime sky shows in the spectacular lakes of Yellowstone and Glacier National parks, but I’ll be back in the office saddle the first week of August.

Good luck and good fishing – go catch some memories.