I am asked often about the best time to go fishing, with the inquirer typically wanting advice about mornings, evenings, rain or shine.

The answer, of course, is obvious. You know what I tell them. The best time to go fishing is whenever you can.

It’s not a quip. I’m not being a wise guy. I don’t make these things up. The truth is that for the majority of us anglers, the best time to go fishing is when we have the time and inclination to do so.

Legend and lore hold that rainy days often have the fish biting, and the long shadows and dim light of sunrise and sunset put the fish in the mood to eat. That they do is inarguable. But that the fishing is good is often circumstantial. The fish can be equally frisky at high noon under a blazing sun.

Experience has proven that I’m as likely to catch crappies at Mosquito morning, noon or evening on rainy days and sunny. I recall walleye fishing at Berlin when the fish were biting crawler drifted crawler harnesses in the middle of the afternoon, and filling out the limits later that day in the twilight hour.

Largemouth bass are famous for attacking surface lures as the run peeks over the eastern treeline. Anglers rig up with walking lures and buzzbaits to capitalize on their aggressiveness, but the bite continues as the sun climbs higher and we switch to pitching jigs and plastics to the holes in the weedlines and the nooks and crannies of willow and buckbrush thickets.

I’ve been on Erie when the early morning smallmouth bass bite was non-existent, only to have the fish fire up around 11 a.m. under a cloudless sky.

So when is the best time to go fishing? Any time, as long as you adapt your tactics to match the mood of your targeted game fish.

I recently found myself in Naples, Fla., with an itch to fish, but only an hour of free time, so I grabbed a casting rod rigged with a slim-minnow jerkbait and drove to a nearby park on the banks of a freshwater canal. The noon hour was fast approaching and the sun was high and hot.

Ten minutes into my fishing time, as I was settling into a rhythm with my twitch-twitch-pause retrieve, I felt the strike of a strong fish. I set the hook and a 16-inch peacock bass leaped out of the canal then splashed down with its broad tail pushing it toward the middle of the waterway.

I kept the pressure on the fish and maneuvered it toward me. As I unhooked the peacock, its orange fins, bold stripes and big black spot near its tail served as vivid confirmation that I’d made a good choice in venturing out for a few minutes of lunchtime action.

Predicting the best time of the day for good fishing isn’t easy. Even the most experienced anglers know the fish will bite when they’re in the mood. The time of the day and the weather conditions are simply variables in a complicated equation that no human truly understands. Factor in what we know with what we don’t know and it is clear to see why sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail.

But one thing is true in every circumstance. You can’t catch them if you’re not out there fishing. So the best time to go fishing is every time you can.

Trib and Vindy columnist Jack Wollitz is an advocate for fishing as often as possible. Contact him at jackbbaass@gmail.com.