After a couple of days of some very low pressure and bad weather, today was a bluebird day without a cloud in the sky. It was too pretty not to give it a try on the Chattahooche. Did not get a sniff. After I thought about it I would not have been surprised if it were bass or bream. Do trout react to high pressure the same way? I haven’t been at chasing trout long enough or studied it enough to know how they react.
Trout in clear waters on clear days are more skittish due to being more visible and thus more vulnerable to predators. I’m sure that has a bit to do with it as high pressure days are usually cloudless.
Whether the air pressure makes a difference is debatable. One inch higher or lower in the water column would make a far greater difference in the pressure exerted on trout than any change in air pressure would in my opinion.
Another thing that may be a factor is whether or not the bugs hatch differently on a clear day as opposed to a cloudy day.
High pressure days tend to be less windy. Air moves from a high pressure area to a low pressure area thus more wind with a low. Ripples on the water act as camouflage from Birds thus fish feel less open to attack and move about more.
Trout pay more attention to the day of the week than they do to the barometric pressure.
Warm water above a certain temperature holds less oxygen than cold water does.
They do feed better from Tuesday to Friday. This is because on the other two days of the week they are subjected to a crowd of noisy invasive humans invading their space.
A full moon allows them to feed thru the night so during those days they are well fed and resting. Dark moon nights cause them to feed more during daylight hours thus the fishing will pick up on a dark moon Tuesday til the Human menace shows up Friday.
The above are just my opinion of what happens and may be laughed at by fish everywhere. Or they may teach these facts in their many schools. :mrgreen:
I’ve always had the better fishing just opposite …
When it has been clear, just before an approaching storm front, has produced the better fishing, trout or pan fish.
This was a fairly short float about 3/4 mile, did not see another soul during the afternoon. One factor I found pretty remarkable was I found myself in one of the largest hatches I have ever seen on the Hooche, there were hardly any rises [I saw less than a half dozen] to the naturals. That was got me wondering about the high atmospheric pressure.
I agree completely with Dale, dropping pressure I about always preferable to rising pressure.
I like partly cloudy days. The trout seem to hit every time the sun comes out. Maybe that elicits a small hatch.
In my journal I have been recording if the barometer is rising or falling when I fished this winter for steelhead. It may be coincidence, but I have much better success on a rising barometer no matter how high or low it is at the start. A falling barometer generally meant the fishing was slow even though you could sight fish to them, few takers under those conditions. On the rising barometer we would fish just subsurface and catch a lot of steelies, on the falling barometer we had to go deep or bottom bounce for success. There was a thread a month or so ago about journals and this is one of the interesting things I have found. Although, I am not saying it is conclusive or anything. Maybe the barometer affects the way I fish and not the other way around!
Generally trout respond better on overcast days. Cold fronts are the worst, a sudden drop in temp will always put them off until it either warms up or they acclimate.