Adjusting Your Fishing Based on Conditions
Understanding how different conditions can affect fish behavior is vital to becoming a better angler.
How Weather Affects Fishing
Weather plays a huge roll in how you should approach your fishing for the day.
Cold Fronts have a big impact on fishing when water temperatures are between 50-70 degrees. They will bring in cloud cover, higher humidity, stronger winds, and a falling barometric pressure.
These factors when combined, make fish more aggressive than normally. This makes it a great time to use moving baits as the fish will be more willing to chase lures further.
Post Cold Fronts tend to be clearer skies and lower humidity. This causes fish to seek out and hold in cover more and be less willing to chase baits. During these conditions you want to slow down and fish more finesse styles along the bottom.
How Wind Affects Fishing
Wind can really activate fish or turn them off depending on the water temperature or clarity. The clearer or warmer the water, the more wind helps. The colder or murkier the water, the more wind hurts fishing.
How Water Clarity Affects Fishing
Water Clarity and visibility is one of the most import factors to consider when fishing. Bass have really good eye sight, so they prefer to hunt by sight. This allows them to examine their prey and figure out if it’s real before striking.
Water visibility can vary greatly depending on where your fishing or the weather conditions. Some water will only have a few inches of visibility, while others could be crystal clear with 20+ feet of visibility. Here are some basic rules of thumb when considering water clarity:
- Clear Water – Use more lifelike and subtle baits. Smaller swimbaits, jerkbaits, finesse jigs, and worms work best in clear water because the fish will be feeding by sight, so you have to fool them by sight.
- 3-5ft Visibility – When visibility starts to drop down to a few feet, you have a lot more flexibility in your lure choices. This is when crankbaits, topwater, and larger soft plastics that aren’t super realist start to become good options.
- Dirty Water – Once visibility drops below a foot, sight becomes one of the least important factors. This is where chatterbaits, spinnerbaits, lipless crankbaits, and large jigs do very well because they displace a lot of water and produce a strong vibration. Fishing in muddy water can be very effective with the right baits.