And Now for the Weather....
By Colin Walford
The weather plays a huge part in the way we go about our carp angling. There are many ways to interpret how the weather will affect the waters that we fish, how the fish respond to certain weather patterns and what other influences are out there that determine whether we will get a bite or not!
I know it’s ‘only’ fishing, and you may think that we think about too much, but there’s definitely no getting away from the weather and its way of making or breaking an angling session. Weather conditions and parameters can be broken down into wind (strength and direction), sun, air pressure, and temperature and in some cases, moon phases.
MOON PHASES
The jury is still out on this one, as there’s no hard and fast rules when it comes to moon phases. A full moon is often said to be a ‘big common moon’, and I certainly have seen some big commons caught on or around this moon phase on my lake. I am trying to currently piece together my diary notes and captures and work out if there’s any patterns involving the moon state, and I use a website (www.fishcaptures.com) for this that collates all your capture information and plots it in charts for you to check all the elements of that capture out. I have to say that in my captures, the most seem to fall around full moon and dark moon times in the lunar calendar, but there’s still plenty in the other periods, so I can’t confirm either way whether the moon does determine on your captures, although I do believe there is defiantly something in it, but you will have to see that in your own results on your waters to come to a conclusion.
WIND DIRECTION
Not all these factors will be the same all the time and will differ on all waters. It takes a long time to determine what factors will get the fish going on the water you fish, so in saying that, I can only give you advice from my experiences and general rules of thumb. The one point I must make is that just because the wind might be nice and warm, blowing in the right direction, with perfect air pressure and cloud cover, it won’t always mean that you will get a take. Other factors have to be considered here, lake size and stock, angler pressure and bait application.
As a rule of thumb, when the wind is coming from the south or west, it is said to be perfect winds. This is because the winds coming up from this direction, more so a south westerly, contain warm air from the Gulf Stream, but northerly winds can be great too, especially new ones that sometimes contain warmer air. A cold wind really seems to kill off any fish activity, especially in the winter and you will often find fish on the back of it. That said, I have known fish to be caught on cold easterly, so it pays to keep your eyes and ears open, even in the coldest of weather. Strength of wind is also a factor, a really strong hard blowing southerly, or south-westerly, especially a new one, will be a far better wind than one of the same strength blowing from the east. On a large water, something over 20 acres, then I would say that this should be taken notice of. On a small water, then you might find the fish will move on a new wind, but pretty quickly be found off the back of it, usually within a couple of days. Small water carp don’t need to follow the wind as much as large water carp.
The sun plays big parts in our angling. You know that you will usually find fish in the warmer parts of the lake, they love the it on their backs in the summer and in wintertime, and you may find them in the shallow parts of your lake doing the same thing. Getting them to eat in this weather is another thing, but if you find them, you may be able to set some traps in the edge for later in the day when the strength of the sun starts to wane.
AIR PRESSURE
In warmer weather, you will find that hot conditions coincide with high air pressure, and again, this is seen as a kiss of death on most lakes, but there are exceptions. Some lakes do respond better to high pressure but that’s something you have to work out on your water. In winter, it’s the same. You will get clear skies at night and clear sunny days. The air pressure will be high and the temperatures will be usually cold, especially at night.
These are not great conditions for angling in, and definitely time to have a look at zig rigs, as sometimes, the fish will be sitting mid water as they find it more comfortable on their swim bladders. Just going back to the sun and air pressure in combination, I have caught numerous fish in bright conditions with high pressure in the summer by baiting lightly in the margins and making sure I’m not fishing in any more than two feet of water.
It can be a confusing subject and a lot of the time, you will need to fish your venue to work out what weather patterns are best for your angling and your lake.
In general though, I think it’s safe to say that we all look for periods that are low air pressure, plenty of cloud cover, wind from the south west with a possible chance of rain with stable temperatures as the definitive ‘best fishing time’, and in many cases it is.
But that’s not to say that all the other conditions are to be ignored and many of us can’t revolve our angling time around what the weathers doing. But we can help ourselves a little bit more by gemming up on information before we get on the bank. Weather sites on the internet are getting better and better with many of them actually listing a specific fishing area for weather and two of the best I’ve found are Metcheck.com and Netweather.tv, the latter being a very accurate site. There are also ‘on the bank’ utilities that help us, the most obvious being radio, but for those more accurate weather updates, and for those that have phones that are capable of providing this are ‘apps’. The best one I’ve found is Weatherpro and keeps me very well updated on the bank when I’m angling.
As I said earlier, it can be a confusing subject because the way the weather affects our fishing will differ from lake to lake, so take time to maybe make some notes and look to read your lake in certain conditions, you may find it can make a difference to your catch rate.
Cheers & Tight Lines
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