How Storms Affect Fishing

How to Fish When the Weather Turns

The best time to be on the water is during a drop in barometric pressure.

As the long, hot days of summer give way to the increasingly cool nights of autumn, weather patterns begin to change more frequently and with greater intensity.

What many anglers know intuitively, but don’t understand, is that it’s the changes in barometric pressure associated with good and bad weather that turn the fish on and off like a giant kill switch in the sky.

Because fall is a transitional season, winds, weather, and their associated pressure changes can be more extreme–and so can the fishing.

How Weather Turns on the Bite

Indeed, summer and early fall fishing is all about weather systems and getting out on the water on those magical days just before and after a big weather system moves through an area.

Crashing barometric pressure turns on the bite before a front. Then, once the violent weather has moved through, water quality settles and baitfish return to their usual haunts, and game fish go on the prowl once again.

Learn Weather Trends

In general, air masses move from west to east across North America.

This “global weather pattern” is created by a combination of the earth’s rotation and the jet stream, which guides air masses north or south into various regions of the country as they move across the continent.

Wherever warm and cold air masses meet, storms begin to brew. In the process, there are often rapid changes in temperature, wind direction, and barometric pressure that affect fishing.

The Bad Times

As the inclement weather moves out, the cold front – a mass of heavier, denser, and high-pressure air–begins to rush in behind the low-pressure system.

The result is usually windy weather with clearing skies, dropping temperatures, and a very sharp rise in barometric pressure.

Large storms will bring in stronger, more powerful, and sustained winds, along with a much steeper, higher rise in barometric pressure than smaller storm systems will.

When predatory fish feed before a storm, just about any lure will work.

The Change in Weather is What Matters

The most interesting observation is that the actual pressure level itself is relatively unimportant.

It’s the direction in which the barometric pressure is heading, rising or falling, that has the most significant effect on fishing success.

Simply stated: Rising pressure generally shuts the fish off, while dropping pressure turns the fish on and almost always improves your catch rate.

Fishing the Drop

Anglers can stack the odds in their favor by planning to fish when storms are moving into their area.

Action will be especially good during a drop in pressure following a long period of high, stable barometric pressure.

Minor Drops: After the air has had a chance to heat up on a sunny day, it becomes physically lighter, causing a tiny pressure drop that the fish seem to react to in the form of either a late-morning or early-afternoon bite.

Major Drops: The very best time to be on the water is during the drop in barometric pressure that occurs as a low-pressure system approaches.

The intensity of the bite often increases as the pressure drops, occasionally right through to the end of the storm.

Where to Fish: When cold, high-pressure fronts move in, prey, along with the predatory fish that feed on them, tend to move into the dense cover or out into deeper water, where they can be difficult to catch.

This is when flipping jigs or running plugs around a structure near deep water and working lures very slowly in likely spots can pay off.

Fishing Stable Pressure

High pressure usually turns the fishing action off when the system first arrives.

However, during the summer, when the water is warm, the metabolic rates of fish are elevated, so they must eat frequently, despite the weather, at some time during the day or night.

During prolonged periods of stable high or low pressure, fish tend to settle into predictable feeding patterns, which equate to the typical morning and evening bites that summertime anglers count on, along with a minor midday bite during temperature-induced pressure drops.

The Need to Feed

During the fall, both water temperature and daylight hours are decreasing.

These factors compel fish to feed heavily to fatten up for migrations or just to get through the winter.

When the fish turn on during the fall, the bites can be spectacular–in both quantity and quality because all species of fish have a summer’s worth of growth on their frames and are trying to add as much fat as possible during this pre-winter feeding binge.

At this time of year, even when conditions are not favorable, count on dawn and dusk to trigger periods of active feeding nearly every day.

Fishing time is precious, so maximize your efforts with a plan. Anglers can count on favorable fishing conditions during cloudy, stormy weather and not-so-great fishing during beautiful, sunny weather.

Most of us fish when we can, and not necessarily when conditions are the most favorable.

However, if given a choice, try to get on the water before a storm moves in and avoid fishing as one moves out.