Temperature & Pressure

[Maggie]

There are definately weather conditions on the waters that I fish that give me more confidence and which seem tospur the fish into a feeding mood like a warm gentle summer breeze from the southwest or westcoupled with a steady or rising air pressure, or a warm damp overcast evening and there are other conditions that If catching loads of fish was important to me would make me want to stay in front of a warm fire, like a freezing northeasterly blustery wind, but having bad days is all part of the overall picture and I enjoy a bad day almost as much as agood day. I may spend more time walking the bank and not be concentrating quite as much as I shouldbut it is better than watching some boring program on the television by far. I recently read in a book by Chris Yates that 'only the anglers that always need to catch fish ever have blanks', or something along those lines. and you never catch fish in front of the Television do you?.

 

[Keith M]

The best night I ever had Carping was during a ridge of high pressure when a band of Towering cumulus passed over us giving a humongous thunder storm right above us.

It was in the days of fibreglass rods and the lightening seemed to be striking all around us and the rain was like a monsoon. he carp started feeding half an hour before the storm arrived and were literately climbing up the rods during the storm then as soon as the storm movedaway and the sky started to clear the Carp activity died down again. The Carp were not huge in the pool (5 to 11lb) but it was fabulous fishing for an hour or two and as soon as you lowered a piece of crust onto the surface it was taken.

 

[GrahamM]

<blockquote class=quoteheader>The bad one wrote (see)</blockquote><blockquote class=quote>

I just go fishing as and when I can regardless of the conditions. I've caught when the above says I shouldn't and blanked when they say I should have caught.

However, on stillwaters I doalways fancy my chancesin strong windy conditions winter or summer. The fact that these conditions coincide with low pressure is in my view purely coincidental to the effects of feeding patterns of fish. What is important is the wind because that saturates the water with oxygen. Oxygen saturation acts as a feeding stimuli on the fish.

Easily testable this one if you keep coarse fish in a tank. Increase the rate of air flow into the tank (unseen by the fish) and within 15 minutes the fish go from a torpid doing nothing state, to an activegrubbing about feedingstate. Strong winds act in the same way.

They also stir the water up and mix it. So any warmer water that's on the surface gets mixed with the colder water beneath, which in turn raises the temperature slightly. </blockquote>
That says it for me too. Plus, I prefer a water temperature that's been steady for several days; I'm not really too bothered (within reason) what that temperature is. But I never let any conditions stop me from fishing if I really feel like going (and I usually do!).

 

[mastercaster]

I agree any recent drastic change in temperature will effect the fishing a sharp frost after a mild spell and you just as well not bother, but a week of frosts and it is worth ago. I do feel fish on my river feed longer in mild weather especially with an upstream southwesterly, but maybe thats all personal suprestition, i fish in all conditions, but i taylor my fishing to give myself the best chance i.e grayling and pike in the cold, Roach after a flood, chub when its low and clear.

 

[Ray Daywalker Clarke]

Plenty talking about temperature, but not much about Air Pressure, just the odd comment.

Well my son Tom took my advice and went fishing today, HE BLANKED, but he agree's you have to be out there to catch.

 

[Bully]

Well I'll go back to my comments previously on this subject. Changes in air pressure are associated with significant changes in weather. So if there is a link its the cause of the weather, not the actual pressure.

In a body of water, external air pressure will have a limited impact on any pressure within that body of water. Think about it, in a relatively deep lake a fish going from surface to the bed will have a far more dramatic change in pressure on the fish than any change exterted by external changes in the air pressure on that body of water. In fact external pressure would (I think) only change the shape of the body of water, and the changein pressure fromis only transmitted to the fish by the change in depth caused by the change in shape.......if you get my drift!!

I actually think the moons gravitational effects (which lets face it causes the tides) would have a bigger impact than going from 900 millibars to 1080 millibars in air pressure.

I'm going for a beer!

 

[keora]

Variations in air pressure aren't the direct cause of any changes in the feeding behaviour of fishes.

Air pressure just gives a very rough indication of the type of weather we're experiencing. Today in West Yorks the air pressure is 1010mbars. It's foggy and there's no wind. The region is on the edge of a high pressure system over Denmark. Earlier this week the pressure was down at 980 to 990 mbars and there was heavy rain.

In Northern Europe we have variable weather because we're at one of the points on the globe where warm air from the equator(high pressure) drifts north and meets cold air from the arctic(low pressure). These two conflicting masses of air fight it out for dominance.Depending on the pressure and wind speed of thewarm and cold air, we might get a risingpressure -warmair is pushing cold air out of the way, orfalling pressure - cold air is winning the battle.

Generally:

Falling pressuremeans worsening weather, increasing wind, rain

Rising pressure means improving weather, fallingwind

A prolonged period of highpressure (above about 1010 mbars) indicates light winds and in summer meanswarmweather. In winter it meanscold weather,clear skies, morning fog, possiblyfrost, or else a thick grey cloud cover.

Some people believe that it's variations in pressure that drive the weather, but in fact pressure is a symptom of weather changes, not the cause.

Some anglers believe that fish can detect changes in atmospheric pressure, but I don't believe they can. They livein a medium which is a thousand times denser than air.

As for the moon theory,I'vecompared my catches for a year - about 60 fishing sessions -against moon phases. I found that fishing around the time of moon set or moon rise did not improve mycatches.If anything catches were worse.

 

[Ray Daywalker Clarke]

Keith2,

Thank's for that.

As I have said, I don't bother, I get out no matter what.

 

[slime monster]

Ditto

 

[john conway (CSG - ACA)]

Conditions be itweather, water temp, BP,and moonphase do or can affect what or when you catch, however, the only thing that stops you going fishing is YOU or perhaps your better half.I

f you want to know more about BP then read:-The barometric breakthrough book by Andrew Bett

An interesing one on moonphase was when I looked at my own Ribble recodrs300 plus 4lb chub, over six years, moonphase didn't make much difference. However, when I looked at 13,500 plus chub in the CSG data base over the last 39years,it did make a differance.

Come what may I'm going fishing this weekend, but I'm picking tonight simply because Sat and Sun don't look very good because of falling temps, and yes I do know someone will go out on Sat or Sun and catch more fish than me tonight/forum/smilies/sad_smiley.gifI'm having a bit of a bad run with the Chub at the moment.

 

[Mike Mortimore]

You may want to check out this specialist fishing weather site: http://www.netweather.tv quite interesting suggested on this site I believe. Hope it helps. Last Sunday was supposed to be excellent in Leatherhead area as torrential rain was forecast. Not sure if the catch rate went up or not as I didn't go in the end too tired!

 

[Mike Mortimore]

This link is better as it takes you direct to fishing forecast then just input your area: http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=fishing;page=2;type=fishing;ct=17036~Leatherhead;sess=

 

[preston96]

I have always said that the biggest obstacle to me, as an angler, is work......i was at one time self employed and could, within reason go fishing when i wanted....i had to work weekends to catch up but that was OK.

My catch rate soared because i could drop everything and respond to conditions...eg, warm rain, wind on a stillwater, etc etc.

Now i have to fish when i can, the urge is still there and i go............but give me that drop everything and go choice everytime!!

A nice lottery win please, because i can't be trusted as self employed! /forum/smilies/embarassed_smiley.gif

Yes,,,,conditions DO matter.

 

[Ray Daywalker Clarke]

I am self employed but busy so I can't just drop everything, I used to, but I was fishing more than work some week's.

I think condition's do matter at time's, there is alway's condition's when you should not be out, but some how you have a good day, for me it's being out there.

 

[preston96]

I agree 100% Ray.......i can remember a day on a pit where it hurt to get wet hands to sort out a livebait, but they were being taken as fast as we could cast in........but there are alsodays we just know it ain't gonna happen.

Perhaps if i didn't drop everything when i was self employed mate i may still be? lol

 

[Andy "the Dog" Nellist (SAA) (ACA)]

John's point re moonphase may well be true but it doesn't mean that the catches were related to moon phase. For example I'd bet theCSG membersfished more often when moonlight was at a minimum and that would skew the figures.

I can think of a lot of occassions where theconditions suggested fishing would be hard but it was the opposite. Converselythere have been plenty of other occassions where I should have been hauling but blanked.

I'm interested in thereaction of fish to temperature, pressure, moon phase, taste, colour, smell, ph, flow, wind, precipitaion, day length, alge blooms, hatches and everything else that affects their behaviour. However my objective is to develop as good an understanding of what is likely to be feeding where in a particular set of circumstances i.e. using information to improve my watercraft rathertrying to analyse it objectivelyand acting on the results.

 

[Ray Daywalker Clarke]

Andy,

Your right, I have no doubt we all take something from the list you said above, and as you also said watercraft.

All,

How many time's have we all been fishing, caught when we shouldn't have, and blanked when we should have caught, well that's what we think anyway. But it just goe's to show,we just never know.

Taking everything into account, when Temp, pressure etc etc is right (or should be) and if it was right, we would all be on the water's at the same time hauling, I don't think fishing would be that much fun then, it would be rather boring.

 

[john conway (CSG - ACA)]

The most important factor in fishing is first find your fish and taking into consideration the factors such as temperature, pressure, moon phase, taste, colour, smell, ph, flow, wind, precipitation, day length, alge blooms, hatches etc. these may be a pointer to where the fish are likely to be, assuming they are in the area you intend to fish in the first place.. There are no definite will catch or wont catch rules just better or worse odds.Re the CSG moon phase data, what we don’t know is the time and length of the sessions the members went fishing and what the weather conditions were like at the time i.e. are moon phase related to light or gravitational pull or a combination of both. We also don’t know if the CSG members caught smaller chub or blanked, we only record chub caught over 4lb. However, since the data is now in a data base, in the future, if I can find good historical weather data, I should be able to tell what the general weather was like in every area where 4lb plus chub where caught and therefore what odds to put against certain weather conditions. Will I get around to doing this I doubt it, at the moment I’d rather go chubing and learn my water craft by experience and talking to other anglers but that’s not to say I haven’t learnt anything form collecting data. Remember you also learn by knowing what doesn’t work and by failure, yours and or other anglers.

 

[john conway (CSG - ACA)]

Re analyzing data; remembering what the conditions were when you caught and acting on it is no different from looking in your diary at the conditions when you caught and acting on it, it’s just more accurate to rely on your diary than your memory.BTW I’m bored at work, don’t get me wrong I’ve got loads to do, probably too much, but I’m bored and I want to go fishing and the weathers not very good, too much snow melt going into the Ribble. How do I know snow melt’s bad, well I’m old enough to remember fishing when it use to snow regularly and every book I’ve read also said snow melts not good.