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Raccoon River (Iowa) — a spot well known among anglers. About 51 km long. Close by — Des Moines and Norwalk. A smart bite calendar — moon phase, atmospheric pressure, and weather combined into an hourly fish-activity forecast for the coming days.
Recorded 3 catches here. Most commonly caught: Channel catfish. Peak season: June–July.
Wednesday, September 2
The bite is strong — fish are active. Pressure is rising — activity tends to be more subdued.
Best time — 06:00–08:00 (dawn bite) and 19:00–21:00 (dusk bite).
Work the cover — snags, weed edges, hole entrances; retrieve the lure with pauses.
The water's turning murky — go with bright, noisy lures: small jig or minnow bait.
It's a hot day — a hat, sunglasses, and plenty of water are a must. Rain is expected — don't forget a rain jacket or a waterproof shell.
Worth going — it's a productive day.
The computed water temperature is around 75 °F — inside the 57–75 °F comfort range for Black crappie, so baseline activity is high.
Black crappie works the twilight: the peaks are pinned to sunrise and sunset — their times are in the sun-and-moon card above.
Pressure is flat: it moves no more than 0.03 inHg over the day, so the weather isn't shifting today's bite.
One more input — the moon's feeding windows: within their hours the score sits higher than across the rest of the day. The window times are in the “Solunar feeding periods” card below.
September is an active season for Black crappie here.
These are the same values the bite curve above was computed from. How the forecast works
Cloudy · feels like +88°
The day is 3 min shorter than yesterday.
Sunshine hours count direct sun only — cloud cover cuts it, so it is shorter than daylight.
The windows are set by the moon's transit and rise, and the forecast above already accounts for them: within these hours the bite score sits higher than across the rest of the day, while the day's overall level still comes from the catch-calibrated model.
What are solunar periods?Measured river conditions are available for Raccoon River: current gauge height, streamflow, and water temperature when reported by the source.
USGS gauge Raccoon River near West Des Moines, IA, 1 mi away · measured 2026-09-01 22:45 · data source · provisional data, subject to revision