-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 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.



Now, this is not by the book. This is all what I have noticed while fishing. Sometimes they will bite when the air pressure is all wacky, 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.



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.

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.

Now we know. Excellent report.

Wow! Just an awesome post! Thanks for sharing.

Thank you. This has been a very interesting read.

Awesome post Carey---Thanks!

I wonder your thoughts on this question though, If the pressure is not what would seem to be in the "good" range, I am thinking I just wont try the shallow bite, so if you are in a boat and can reach deeper water, do you think they will be still somewhat affected?

Interesting stuff. Thanks for taking the time to post and explain it.

If the air pressure is that high or low, some of us are probably at home with migraines for the same reason that the fish wont bite. Excellent post!

The percentage of change at, say... 33 feet is different than the percentage of change in shallow water. 33 feet is equal to about 2 atmospheres. Water weighs about .45 psi per foot of depth where as a column of air from sea level to the end of the atmosphere weighs about 14.7 psi. So at 5 feet of water, the fish is feeling about 2.5psi + barometric pressure. At 30 feet, the fish is feeling already 15psi from just water pressure, so the slight change of barometric pressure will not be as great a swing percentage wise as it would be if the fish was only feeling 2.5psi.

That's my understanding based on fish I've interviewed.

I can't agree with the not going when the pressure is dropping at a rate of .02 or greater per hour. According to my scout look weather app that's exactly what was happening yesterday afternoon. I ended the day with around 35 bass. All were caught in 1-2ft of water. So the fish didnt seem to mind it at all. They were biting pretty aggressively as well.

I guess this was the 10% of the time when they still were biting even with a lil bit of whacky pressure. I did have cloudy skies and a lil wind to help me out though.

*EDIT* also wanted to note that I have absolutely slayed the bass in a shallow creek next to a river right before a storm rolled(pressure dropping rapidly) it was a really severe hail storm too I might add. Barely made it out before it hit but the fishing was so good it was hard to leave. It was literally a bass every cast. I think it's just like other tools in your toolkit for fishing. You can use it to approach your fishing for the day but it doesnt neccesarily always relate to having a good day or a bad day. Other factors come into play as well. This is all just my .02 though. And im no expert.

I should also note that Carey doesn't normally fish for LMB so maybe they handle the pressure a lil differently. Who knows?

Thanks for sharing this info - now I'll have even more good excuses for not catching more and bigger bass!

I always say go when you can.