The mystery of when to tap
I have been at this game for a little over 10 years and have watched the debate on when to tap repeat it's self every year at this time. Some stick to tradition and some fall prey to early itches and some just don't know what to do. In my professional career as a fish hatchery Manager we dealt with these same conditions and trends. Timing a fish spawn was extremely critical in our production success. We charted water and air temperatures for over 50 years and had a pretty good handle on the trends and extremes. Since fish are triggered by temperatures we watched water temps. closely. The key here is the word triggered. Temp. was not the sole controller, but a final trigger. every year I would have someone panic over a warm spell. The thing that set the stage and really made the most difference was Photo Period (length of days). The temperature was a key, but it was not the door. What we would see is that abnormally warm or cold would not set the main spawn into action with any variance beyond about 10 days. when i reviewed production records I would see that peak spawn almost without exception would happen in a 7 day period annually. Now we could always find the outliers and there were the years we had early seasons, but the trends is what we followed. I can see a lot of similarity in sap flows. If we tried we could always capture some early spawning fish, but it was a waste of time, gear and man hours to panic and jump the gun early. I did see trends moving to earlier dates, but by only a few days. I see the same thing in maple sap. Keep good records and be ready 10 days before your historic dates and then watch trends. Your prime production will almost always fall within the same 2 week period. when you start should never exceed 3 weeks prior to your historic best production dates. I use 3 weeks because of a typical 6 week season and that puts your peak production mid season even if you are in error and it turns cold after a warm spell. If it turns out to be early and warm you still hit your peak. I looked at all my tap dates and my start has only varied by more than 2 weeks once. I am talking about my main woods, not the fall or early taps that I use as a bonus. When we were going after eggs we were always ready two weeks early and would go when water temperatures were right after that. So my best policy is to be ready to tap 2 weeks early and then tap when the trends say so.
I plotted the weather from November thru January and saw trends that showed high swings then settled to periods of normal with a cold period followed by extreme highs followed by a long period of normal. We are now going into a period of average temps if my plotting is right. I think the next two weeks will be pretty close to normal. Now this trend gave us abnormally cold later than usual, so My taps are late. I would guess that for those north of me the same will hold true and your tapping date will most likely be a few days later than the norm, but I look for that extreme warm up to hit about March for a few days. So depending on your system this may wreck your season.
Hey come Late March you all can call B.S. and tell me how wrong I am.
125-150 taps
Smokey Lakes Full pint Hybrid pan
Modified half pint arch
Air over fire
All 3/16 tubing
Southern Ohio