Pressure Changes and Fishing

[B. Amish]

What's the deal with barometric pressure? When are the fish supposed to bite the best?

Rising vs Falling

Steady vs Moving

Hish vs Low

Also, do high winds affect the bite under the ice?

[Deitz Dittrich]

A falling baro is probably one of the best, but a steady baro is hard to beat as well.. A rising baro can give the fish lock jaw, and make it difficult to catch fish. They will still bite, but getting them to do so can be much more difficult!

Wind will still effect fish in that when its windy that means there is a pressure change that has just happpend or going to change.. or in the process of changing.. same thing as when wind direction changes!!!!

[ice_shack]

My Grandad had a fishing barometer that he swore by. If you do a google search you can see a picture of it. From what I remember we always caught fish when I fished with him.

[Dan Thiem]

Great topic Mr. Amish,

I wonder, how can fish tell what the barometric pressure is doing under two feet of ice?

[Deitz Dittrich]

Dan-Air pressure directly effects water pressure. If the ice had anything to do with it, whenever we drilled a hole during a low pressure time the water would SHOOT out the holes and into the air.. or vise versa.. but since nothing like that happens, I am pretty sure that the ice has little effect on water pressure. I could be way wrong on this!

Also< i have a digital baro that I have fishing with me at just about all times!... I do feel it helps me ajust to changes as they are happening!

[McGurk]

Quote:

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I wonder, how can fish tell what the barometric pressure is doing under two feet of ice?

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With their Fishing Barometers they bought at Cabela's, of course! We know when to fish, and they know when to bite!

[chunkytrout]

I'll ride with Deitz on this one but I believe it's just as effective on ice. We're not talking tons of pressure. But when your whole head is a sensory device, I believe they can feel it and thus respond.

[viking_fan]

Tuesday I thought was going to have a great day of fishing !!!!

The pressure was finally dropping after our five day high pressure.

There was a front coming that afternoon ( we didn't get much snow but a little )

And the temp was rising

Thought it would be so great that I took the day off work to do some fishing.

Well !!!!!

Did we have a surprise !!!!

The vex looked like a Christmas tree there were so many fish on it.

But I only caught two fish all day long

So say what you will

But the fish still have the last word.

[Guest]

Thought last night the fishing might be good with the bad weather coming in.Went fishing early this A.M. for eyes and caught a 27 and 29.5 and lost one that felt good.No small fish so either snowny weather helped pigs bite or was just that lucky. Caught fish all b-4 started snowing,once snowing,caught nothing yet vex was lit up with fish.

[gerty]

Lee Harvey - Just wondering how deep you were fishing?

[Guest]

Gerty: was fishing on a drop off from 7 fow to 30 fow. I was in 26-27 fow and the fish were suspended at 18fow.Used plain red hook and med. fathead.Tried everything I had with including chubby darters, rattle spoons and with dropper,jigging rapala and other misc. jis in many colors and sizes.They just wanted plain hook and minnow on deadstick.When I pulled bait to fish, no jigging, fish would leave,needed minnow very still, then they would hit.

[dsludge]

I went out last Tuesday when the wind was howling, the mercury shot to 40*F, and the barometer was plummeting. Good spot, no fish. Got 6 last year on a day with nearly identical conditions, only the ice was 9 inches thick, not 20 inches.

dsludge

[gerty]

Lee Harvey - Thanks for the details. I think you timed it just right with the weather/snow, etc. I have heard of a lot of people catching fish during those same conditions. Those were some really nice fish. That would make a good year for most people

[Guest]

Gerty: if I would have caught third one they would have added up to 3 eyes weighing 24 pounds. Ill never do that again,all luck. rather be lucky than good.

[ironman]

I for one am convinced that pressure affects fish under the ice, based on this experience:

Last year fishing on Ottertail Lake, I was hammering the perch. Using my Aqua-vu...it was awesome...a real life fishing video game of sorts. The wind was really blowing...then calmed....then picked up in a different direction, the temp dropped and it was obvious that the front had passed. Well, at the exact moment the wind died down and then changed direction the active perch I was watching...stopped what they were doing...suspended there about two feet off the bottom for a few moments...then slowely sank to the bottom until their bellies rested right on the bottom. I wiggled and jiggle everything in my box..they didn't even flinch. They were done as was I. I toughed it out for a few hours..then decided to call it a day.

[wallywalleye]

I was fishing the walleye opener on a small lake 2 years ago. I got there about midnight. The wind was out of the south at about 5 mph. My fishing buddy and I got our limit of walleyes and one huge crappie in about an hour and a half, maybe two hours but we kept on fishing for the fun of it. We caught fish until 3 and then we noticed that the wind had died. The wind was in our face all night. When we climbed the small hill behind us to go back to our trucks we could feel the wind blowing 10 to 20 out of the north. I had a few other friends of mine try the lake the rest of that day and they didn't catch anything. I always said that it was because the wind switched direction but I bet the barro pressure had more to do with it.

[JohnH]

Fish have a group of organs called "the lateral line" which run from their head to tail. these organs have thousands of tiny little hairs that sense pressure from everything including themselves- thats why you see a huge group of minnows move the same when in schools. The lateral line detects the vibrations physical and/or sound vibrations in the water around them- hopfuly coming from our rattlin spoons- but if they can detect that kind of pressure, I would think that the barametric pressure plays a huge part in fish activity. Heres a link that I think EVERYONE should study for their next trip!!!

http://www.quickoneplus.com/fish/barometric.htm

[CrappieJohn]

This is one area where I tend to get lost. I know that the barometer plays havoc with the fish(ing) and that the wind can be directly related directionally to the barometer.

Fish are far more complex organisms than we give them credit for. There may be many ways that fish detect a barometric change. The lateral line is but one of hte many ways they sense pressure.

The barometer is, in it's simplest form, nothing more than a tube with a horse shoe bend in it, lines measured in millibars (.01", hundredths of an inch ) marked on one side, filled with mercury on the other side and I believe the ends are sealed. How it is calibrated, I know not, but I think it is done at sea level and 30" of mercury as a standard. This would be what we call a nice summer day- medium warm temps, a few of those high puffy clouds, not choking you with humidity. When the weather changes, say we have rain approach, the barometer will begin to drop a bit, maybe approaching 29.8". If it drops a ton- say down to 29.4" or even lower , we are in for some serious weather. As we see change in the measurement in inches we also see the weight of the air change....this is what changes the height of the mercury and is either a high or a low pressure. Low pressure ares bring the prcip, highs bring the blue skies and cooler. drier air. When the rain or whatever passes, the wind direction will generally change- say from a southerly flow to a northwest one- and the barometer will climb higher than the 30.0" This is called a high pressure front, or a clod front. Cooler , drier air , accompany high pressure as well. And blue-bird skies. Then the cycle starts all over again taking as little as a few hours to occasionally a week or more. Gradually these high skies give way to some lofty clouds and then the humidity and the rain. It is a cycle and it is called weather.

I will use crappies as a model for what I have noted and documented for years in journals. While we are in the nice, stable weather during the summer, they will tend to loosen up the size of their schools and may scatter a little but are still very catchable. As the weather begins to change- the barometer begins to shift downward, the winds take on a strong southerly direction or one from the east- we are able to feel the change ourselves physically and those fish will tighten up the group size and begin feeding heavily. This can continue right into a serious storm, but once the wind shifts to a northerly flow the front has passed and the barometer will have risen sharply. It is now that those fish will be very tightly schooled and retreat into the deepest water in an immedidiate area. They are not going to make a major exodus to the deepest part of the water system unless they are already there. It is when the barometer flies upward that the fish tend to get lockjaw as well. These will be negative mooded fish for at least a while, slowly becoming neutral in mood.

The highs and lows , if coming back to back, are murder for your fishing. Fish need consistancy to really show a solid bite. This can take days after fronts get through roaming thru an area. Everyone has seen the fishing improve after a couple days of nice weather following a storm of any kind. This is merely the fish responding to what can be best described as "normalcy".

Now comes the kicker....winter weather and seasonal influences such as the pre-spawn or spawning itself can do strange things to your fishing on top of what Mother Nature throws at you with the weather.

I have been at this fishing game for forty five years and about half of those years I have journaled. I don't have answers for the weather, but in the record keeping I do have the ability to recognize trends in the weather and how those trends have affected the fish in the past.

What these highs do exactly, I cannot say. But if it affects the fish you are chasing, be assured that it has affected the food they eat and a downslide in the bite can be related to that issue. I think fish are just plain uncomfortable when the barometer is high, which makes me wonder why they would choose to go deep when the high barometer is exerting that much more air pressure on the water literally making it much heavier. In addition to the bright skies which affect their vision, the increased pressure has to be a burden weight-wise.

So what would I do? Fish deeper water, fish much smaller baits, fish tight to sunken cover, and fish larger water....much larger water. Small closed- system water are the most affected by pressure change while big water fish may even continue a bite on the other side of the road. I seldom fish right after a radical barometer change anymore, though.

[icehousebob]

If you've ever gone up or down a long hill and had your ears pop, thats pressure change. You have to remember that fish live in water that is not compressable instead of air, so they feel pressure changes more than we do.

Was talking to my brother in law a while back. He's a retired stock farmer who has lived outdoors, working hunting, and fishing his whole life. We were watching the bird and quirrel feeders that were being overrun that day. He said he didn't watch the barometer, instead he watched animals. Some days, birds and squirrels fought to get at the feeders. Deer would be out feeding in the middle of the day. The cattle would eat like there was no tomorrow. He said that's the time to go fishing. When we saw this happen, the barometer had been more or less steady for two days. We got tired of catching jumbo Perch that day.

[JohnH]

have you ever noticed more deer along the road before a rain storm or snow storm?

[only-eyes]

i have found that dropping is best, but some lakes seem to actually turn on during high pressure.