-People asked me, that I give this its own title.

This is "my" view on barometric air pressure and what I have noticed happens to fish in shallow waters as the weather changes.

I have taken my boat out 3 times since November, as I have been guiding from the banks in the local creeks and river systems Full Time from November-May. In a week or so, I finally start hopping the boat to fill the live wells up with fish. So, anyways, the fish are always right in front of me everyday, 7-8 months out of the year. I can see invidual fish and how they are acting during the changes in weather.

October-February - Crappie run up creeks and rivers following the shad schools. The shad's bodies start to shut down at 42 degrees, and they will go super deep or head up creeks that stay abover 45 degrees during the winter months. Shallow dark mud, rocks, gravel and concret warm up the water faster than the lake can. So, the shad school up in huge numbers as you can see below. With the crappie not far behind.



This is what I see at my office on a daily basis from October- May.



This is how I find my sandies, hybrids, and crappie in the shallow creeks.

If you can figure out where the shad are or where they will go, you will land gamefish!




Now, here is what I am talking about.

Here is my opinion and what I have noticed over the years on the air pressure: Air pressure affects a fish's swimbladder as it rises and falls.

http://www.usairnet.com/weather/conditions/?station=KADS

From what I have come up over the years, the fish are more comfortable in a range from 29.85 to 30.10.

If the Air Pressure is 30.40, or higher, I will cancel your trip.

If the Air Pressure is 29.60, or lower, I will cancel your trip.

If the air pressure is 30.50 or higher, you are going to have a hard time even snagging a carp turd. I stay home and I won't even go fishing.

The reason I will cancel your trip sometimes are due to the air pressure, and I will give you an option to pick a new day, or go out anyways and only catch a couple. So if I call you before the trip and say: " you have an option" : that means I don't like the something about the weather, and I'd prefer we pick another day. I like to limit every trip and then possibly go limit on Sandies after crappie, or vice versa. If the pressure is out of wack, we are not going to do that. I would rather do something other than sit in the middle of the lake not getting any action. Id rather save some money and go play with the dog and kids.



Now, this is not by the book. This is all what I have noticed while fishing. Sometimes they will bite very good when the air pressure is all wacky (on rare occations), but 90% of the time, the air pressure, will prove itself.

I find that fish 15 ft or shallower are most affected by the rising and falling of barometric air pressure. The fish in deeper water, are already pressurized, due to the water pressure as you go deeper, so they don't seem to be as affected as the shallower fish. Again, this will only tell you why the fish have slowed down and are not biting anymore. There is nothing you can do about it, but wait it out till it stabilizes or just go home.

As an example:



This is a perfect day with the air pressure. You read it from the bottom up. The top number is current and the bottom number is hours ago. As you can see, the pressure is going up, but its rising slow and steady. That's a perfect day to fish in that scenario. Same thing if it was doing this, but dropping the same ratios.



Now, the pic above is a very bad bad day to fish. We start at 29.83 and the pressure plummets all day and won't stop dropping. This really will shut the fishing down to a trickle or non at all.

My rule:

Example: If the pressure is at 29.87 and drops two points to 29.85, the fishing will slow down a bit. If it drops or rises .02 or more, your fishing trip might be a site seeing trip.

If it rises or falls .01 at time, you should be fine.

If it rises more than .02 fishing is slow.

If it falls .02 or more fishing is slow.

If its steady, or rising .01 or falling .01 every hour, fishing is good.

If the pressure rises or falls more than .05 an hour, I'll just go home.

The day after a cold front is usually going to be a bright blue pretty sky and a nice day to go out or its to windy to go. Well, the Blue Bird day usually has a super high pressure system right along with it. So it might creep up to 30.35-30.40 or somthing. If this holds steady but high, for a couple hours, the fish start to settle in and move around more and start hunting.

I am pretty sure, a couple of you guys were out yesterday Crappie fishing Sandbass fishing or hybrid fishing, and that 830 in the morning the fish completely stopped biting. The air pressure had risen .02 points at a time within the hour and then it started to drop rapidly as the storm front started to roll through.

Example: We were fishing yesterday morning at Rowllet creek, as soon as we got there we started to pick up hybrids left and right every single cast. Then at about 830 the fishing completely stopped dead in its tracks. The air pressure had risen .02 points and and the fish completely stopped biting. We could see 20 to 30 hybrids sitting right in front of us but would not even budge. And again, there's nothing you can do about it, either wait it out or go home and come back when the air pressure stabilizes. I see this happen to me almost on a daily basis. I save the link in my smart phone, and refreshes every hour as I'm guiding to tell me what's going on under the waters surface.


Here is how to start from scratch.

http://www.usairnet.com/cgi-bin/launch/code.cgi

After u land on the map graph, click on " Latest Weather Conditions " slightly above the map graph on the right, and that will give you the Barometric Air Pressure graph.

Great stuff...

Thank you

This may be helpful to what you are describing in your example:

Notation: Can't decide if the benefit of the trend data outweighs the value of a scientific (meteorological) explanation of why I wasn't catching them. It can also be very useful as an excuse to go or not go fishing.

What website do you get that reading from?

Great info, and thanks for the link...

Im doing the starting from scratch thing and I'm having trouble finding the map graph from your link, which makes me not be able to find the Latest Weather Conditions. What am I doing wrong? This info is fascinating to me. Thanks

When you open the link, select you region and press go, then select the nearest city then press go and that will take you to the page...

After u click start from scratch link, you enter your state then click go. Then pick the city closest to the lake or river u are fishing that day.

This will pull up the weather for the next 3 days. Wind speed humidity temp- blah blah. Just above that weather graph, to the right a bit, is a link that says "Latest Weather Conditions for McKinney, Texas" or what ever city you choose. That takes you to the pressure map.

Under "Weather maps and forecasts" select "latest weather conditions for....." Great info.

This updates every 20 minutes so I'm assuming that the .02 rule is over the 20 minutes and not over the hour?

I better start paying attention to the barometric pressure,I had come to believe that I was just a poor fisherman.

I found it. Thanks

Carey always impresses me the most with his know-how and teaching ability.Thank you Carey.