I get most of my information from Weather Underground. There are a million exceptions. The best bite will usually come with a falling or low and steady barometer. The fish seem to be the most active. These are the easy fish.
A much tougher bite usually happens when the barometer is rising or is high and steady. The fish move with this, too, but not always in predictable ways. Visualize fish on a flat in 4 to 6 feet of water. They might move back under a log or laydown against the shore. If I have a choice, I fish the ones back in the cover. Either way, I almost always downsize my baits and fish with more of a finesse presentation.
Precision placement of your lure matters. Take your time. For bass, pike, walleyes, and more, a suspending jerkbait slashed just beneath the wave trough can be deadly, as can Colorado-blade spinnerbaits, whose flash and thump rise above the din of heavy seas. Photo: Great conditions for an afternoon ride on Leech Lake. Falling Barometer If you could choose one time to be on the water, this would be it. While the pressure debate extends to whether a falling barometer affects fish behavior — or simply coincides with other conditions that do — many diehard anglers swear by it.
In fact, In-Fisherman friend Bob Samson, a science teacher, multispecies fan, and devoted student of the barometer's affect on fish behavior, swears that even slight dips in pressure throughout the day can trigger bursts of feeding activity. Major increases coinciding with the approach of a large storm can coincide with sheer suicide bites. In-Fisherman art director Jim Pfaff and guide Billy Rosner experienced such action on Minnesota's Lake Vermilion, when muskies and trophy pike went on a rampage prior to the arrival of a mega-storm that dumped up to nine inches of rain on the nearby city of Duluth, causing major flooding.
Years ago, I studied bass behavior through electronic tracking and underwater observation. My team monitored barometric pressure among more than variables we recorded.
As in previous studies, we observed no obvious relationship between pressure readings or the nature of pressure changes and the behavior of largemouth and Guadalupe bass in Lake Travis, Texas. Nevertheless, some of our findings provide insight into the possible relationship of barometric pressure, weather, and bass behavior. When the barometer reading was less than This percentage was greater than the 18 percent observed feeding when the barometer was higher than But when we merged the observations of apparent feeding reported by divers and trackers with the surface sightings, we found 36 percent of the observed bass were apparently feeding when the barometer reading was high, as compared to 30 percent when the barometer reading was low.
When we evaluated actual strikes and refusals of lures presented to bass observed by trackers and divers, we found 52 percent of the bass struck lures during lows compared to only 39 percent during highs.
But the vast majority of our strikes took place when the barometer reading was neither particularly high nor low between High or low barometric readings, by themselves, were not consistently indicative of bass activity or catchability.
We also looked at the possibility that changes in barometric pressure were more important than absolute pressure. When the barometer was falling slowly less than 0.
On a slowly rising barometer, only 30 percent struck, while 70 percent didn't. But our fishing sample was small. In our larger sample of tracked and observed bass, 29 percent fed offshore on a slowly rising barometer, while 24 percent fed offshore on both a slowly falling and a steady barometer.
The data are confounded by other factors, however. For example, 32 percent of feeding events occurred on solunar majors, only 20 percent on minors, and 27 percent between majors and minors. So solunar influence and other factors may have affected the barometric data. These results don't necessarily mean that falling barometers increase fishing success or that rising barometers increase offshore activity.
Schooling and aggregating behaviors are apparently associated with increased feeding and vulnerability to angling. When the barometer was high, 54 percent of the bass observed were aggregated groups of 3 to 15 , 12 percent were schooled moving synchronously , while 44 percent were alone or paired. When the barometer was low, 57 percent were aggregated, 5 percent were schooling, and 38 percent were single or paired. When the barometer was rising slowly, 64 percent of observed bass were aggregated, none were schooling, and 36 percent were paired or alone.
When barometric pressure was falling slowly, 53 percent were aggregated, 20 percent were schooled, and 28 percent were alone or paired.
If it weren't for other factors affecting bass activity, the data might suggest that a falling barometer, approaching storm, increasing cloudiness, or a combination of these and other factors increased feeding activity.
How about cover? With a steady barometer, 34 percent of observed bass were within 1. A slowly falling barometer found 30 percent in or close to cover, 25 percent away from cover, and 45 percent in between. During a slowly rising barometer, 30 percent held close to cover, 30 percent away from cover, and 40 percent in between. Barometric pressure changes didn't provide a positive clue to bass location relative to cover.
The data did, however, demonstrate that most bass are away from cover and suspended most of the time in a clear wood-deprived grass-free highland reservoir like Lake Travis.
We also monitored the location, movement, and apparent feeding of bass under various cloud conditions. Under overcast skies, bass were observed farther than 46 feet from shorelines in 23 percent of cases, while 19 percent were offshore under broken skies percent sky coverage , 33 percent under scattered clouds, and 32 percent under clear skies. Our bass apparently found little difference between partly cloudy and clear daytime skies, but most likely moved offshore under bright sunlight.
While overcast skies were clearly associated with increased feeding, clouds, even a broken ceiling, had little effect. The low light of heavy cloud cover apparently makes preyfish more vulnerable to predators and encourages bass activity.
Surprisingly, we documented slightly more feeding activity under totally clear skies than under partial clouds.
The maximum brightness of clear skies, which creates optimum feeding opportunities for plankton-eating prey, likely encourages maximum preyfish activity, which in turn may stimulate increased predation.
When we analyzed the relationships between weather trends and bass proximity to cover, no trends appeared. Virtually the same percent held close to cover before and after a frontal passage, though more were found in cover after the front passed.
Bass behavior seems determined by many variables, with no single factor like barometer reading, barometric change, sky condition, wind speed, wind direction, or even prey availability compelling bass to be active or inactive.
We monitored all of these variables and many others without finding any single factor that was a reliable predictor of feeding or striking activity by black bass. At any given time, some bass were inactive, some neutral, and some active. Small catches result when the percentage of inactive bass increases, while larger catches result when a few more fish decide, for whatever reason, to actively seek food. Apparently, the only sure biological fact is that adult bass that have recently fed heavily and are digesting food tend to be inactive or neutral regardless of any environmental factor, including barometric conditions.
The length of time since many of the bass in an area fed heavily and the time required to digest that meal are perhaps the most important clues to when a significant proportion of any bass population will next become active. We found it interesting that in Texas in midsummer we experienced daily barometric pressure changes, due to the sun's warming effects, that sometimes exceeded pressure changes associated with fronts.
Each day, as the sun warmed the land and water, pressure dropped. Each morning, pressure was high due to the all-night cooling. Mornings tended to be clear or with short-lived low clouds, while afternoons generally brought increasing high cloudiness. We didn't find bass more active or less active in typical morning highs or late afternoon lows.
The pressure of the atmosphere is known as the barometric pressure. When it is high, air sinks and is forced towards the ground. The same air has to rise again, and when it does, it cools down and the moisture in the air condenses; this causes the barometric pressure to go down.
While some anglers swear that it plays an essential role in determining the success of their fishing trip, the scientific information on the exact effects that this pressure has on bass is quite little. Expert individuals have come up with various theories to determine the influence of barometric pressure on bass.
A few major factors involved in the creation of clouds are the amount of moisture, air pressure, and associated temperatures. Changes in pressure are often an indication of a change in the overall weather. Unfortunately, the research available on the relation of air pressure and fish is limited. However, we do know a few things.
Firstly, a fish that has a gas bladder only has to swim about a foot in the upwards or downwards direction. However, during the occurrence of hurricanes and typhoons, the effect is much greater and noticeable.
When fish go to deeper depths while hunting prey or traveling towards a different location, they might experience larger changes in pressure. The fish that have closed gas bladders, including black bass, use those bladders to acquire the natural density and to hold themselves stable at constant depths. Through this weightlessness, energy is conserved; thus, their need to swim also reduces.
0コメント