Dealing with high barometric pressure

[Moon~Shaun]

How do you all alter your fishing when the barometric pressure is high. I have tried going deeper and more attractive bait(which I think all my baits are attractive ha ha)! Only have caught 8 bass the past couple days and fishing very hard. I have slowed
Down and thrown everything. Any suggestions?

[Moveon]

That's a hard question to answer. There are other factors to consider when High Pressure sets up over an area. Cloudless skies is one of them as you mentioned fishing deeper. Perhaps you did the deeper fishing thing because the sun was brighter and the sunlight was filtering down in the water deeper. In clear water lakes the sun can penetrate deeper into the water. Fish either go deeper to avoid the light or the bury themselves deep in the submergent vegetation or weeds.

I've been trolling crank baits and have found lots of bass suspended out over the deeper water but still near some break-lines. Break line is an area where the depth changes quickly such as a sharp drop off.

During high pressure the winds are calm and the water's surface can become like glass. Air can become stagnant and the dirt in the air from the ground to about 3000ft above ground level can filter some sunlight out before it hits the water. If there were clouds in the sky they could reflect a lot of the sunlight back out into space before the sunlight reached the earth's surface.

Air temperature this time of the year can vary with the cloud cover. It can be 60 deg F one day and raining with winds out of the NE and the next day it's 80 deg F and the winds are coming out of the SW again.

I like to follow the winds and the suns direction for the time of day. I just read a new book on a subject matter that I have been studying for years. It's the FHS fishing with maps book. I read it the last few days and it reminded me of some of the factors I mentioned above. But it also gave me some new information that I had not been thinking about all the time. I do think about how the sun light and the currents affect the fishes locations. For example a point that run's North and South may have sun light penetrating into the water on the East Side in the early Morning but not in the late afternoon. The later the time in the day the lower the sun has set in the sky and the longer the shadows it casts on the East side of that North South running long point. And vise versa in for the West side of the point.

Surface Winds setup underwater currents in a lake. A lot depends on how strong the winds are and the duration of the winds. The direction also affects how the winds set up currents in any lake. The size and depth and the amount of structure in the lake can also have an affect on where the fish will be under any condition.

A windward point may have food blown onto it at times. It may be harder to control the boat on the surface with a hard wind blowing but the fish may be 15 ft down or more and the surface winds are not going to bother them much. But the wind blowing onto the shoreline can wash dirt and soil into the water and muddy the wates a bit. This can form a new breakline or mudline where the bass can hide in at the edge and still feel or sense baitfish that swim nearby. Fish use their lateral lines to sense pressure waves in the water so the bass can determine where their prey is located if they can feel or sense them nearby even if they can't always see them right away.

Bass will also hide in the edge of the weed or submergent vegetation.

Remember that if the water's not very hot and the weeds are actively growing and have access to good sunlight they will be producing lots of oxygen. Fish will bury in these weeds to avoid the sun and to rest. They can also use the weed edge as an ambush point.

Inside and outside edges in the weed can hold fish on flats and if those flats are close to deep water the bass can swim over to the flat to chase minnow and or shad.

Weather does have an impact on the fish but I personally don't think that the air pressure has a much of a DIRECT affect on the fish themselves. But the air pressure changes do have a Direct Affect on the winds and the amount of light that reaches the sun as the changing pressure can help bring in moisture laden air and make it rain. Air flows from areas of high pressure into areas of low pressure. And the high pressure rotates clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and low pressures rotate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. This is due to the Coriolis effect.

http://www.google.com/search?q=Corio...w=1504&bih=625


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect

[olgreenboat]

I stay home tell my wife what a good mother and wife she is do some honey do stuff and save my money for better day's of fishing though i have to admit I'm taking my youngest boy and his friend fishing tomarrow ;>) check off number 6 on the H/D list...

I will be back in the creeks fishing down trees and what ever cover I can find the water back there should still be a little meurcy from all the rains we had...