As the name implies, the "Moon Overhead" period is that time each day when the moon reaches its highest point in your sky. Then--approximately 12.5 hours later, it has moved to being right under your feet on the other side of the earth. That's the "Moon Underfoot" period.

With the exception of a few nocturnal creatures and most teenageers, Dawn sets the world in motion. After so many hours of monotonous darkness, they can finally see their surroundings. It's time to stretch, flex, and find something to eat. On a year-round basis, no other daily period has as much potential for seeing the beginning of some kind of activity. And no other is as predictable.

If the moon isn't proof God has a sense of humor, maybe it's Nature's way of guaranteeing the preservation of the species. If all life followed a solar pattern all the time, it would be as easy for coyotes to wipe out all the rabbits as it would be for man to wipe out all the coyotes. But, for one reason or another the bass, deer and field mice suddenly stop following a solar pattern and seem to virtually disappear. The availability of food, certain environmental conditions, seasonal mating patterns, and the presence of man himself can and often will be factors. But so apparently is the moon, with its mystical, misunderstood powers.

Theories range from the moon's gravitational pull tugging on the water in an animal's body to its electromagnetism realigning the microscopic iron particles in the blood. We do know that back when life was first forming in the sea, the moon was five times closer to the earth than now and the tides were over a mile high! This twice-a-day phenomenon had to have left a deep impression on all life, which perhaps has been passed down genetically to its progeny. Actually, our knowing exactly how the moon influences life is not as important as accepting the fact that, at certain times, it does. From there we can start a retro-study of the big picture and look for patterns to develop that can and will help us better predict the activity times of our favorite species

They should be pretty close, because both are based on the moon's position each day. When the moon is overhead or underfoot, there is a high tide in that area and there's also a PrimeTimes lunar period. If your tide table seems to disagree with PrimeTimes, it's because

As stated above in #2, PrimeTimes' forecasted times are based on 35 degrees N. Latitude and whichever Longitude runs down the center of any given time zone around the world. So, yes, these calendars work just fine outside the U.S. anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. They can do a good job in the Southern Hemisphere, as well, but with a few considerations.

Since anybody can publish a fish & game activity calendar (and many do), it depends on what they are basing their predictions. These can range from astrology and biorhythms to when Chief Buzzard Feather dropped that monster water buffalo in the Australian spring of 1874.

We've been approached by companies that make watches, clocks, weather forecasters, depth-finders, cell phones, GPS units, hand-helds, you name it. But when they hear how involved it is to compile our data each year, and how much memory it would eat up, and that we don't want "PrimeTimes" associated with anything less than the real thing, they end up going with that basic lunar data you can find anywhere. But we really don't mind. We get a lot of orders from people who say they got introduced to "the moon" through these devices, and now want something better.