Thread: Fishing Conditions

How does one read the weather , when it comes to cold fronts and which bait and what size to use!!!!

When the water level has dropped or risen , which tactics should be used!!!!

Water clarity , what colours and speed and size baits , how can you use the barometric pressure to help you land fish!!!

There are many question out there and answers , I wanna know from you how does one read the conditions before one hits the dam and how does one prepare for these obstacles!!!!!

Good question!
I'm all ears on this one!

I think BigB needs to increase the size of the server to accomodate for the answers. You need to extrapolate all the information in all of the forums, stich it together and you will have a fairly good answer. Make it as complicated as you like, the basics are to get onto the water with rod and reel and enjoy the day.

Tommy my advise would be to take bite size chunks, it takes time boet you cant learn it all in one forum question.

Ok then here is a bite size chunk question on the same lines. Last week I went to midmar in my old spot were I have caught many a bass. this spot has submurged grass, tufts of grass that stick out of the water, and a lone tree standing in the water with some other water plant that has thick stems and large leaves growing around it.

The water was clear a light wind was blowing and there was plenty of clouds. But it took 4 hours before I had my first enquery and landed it and anouther hour before the second enquery and landed that one to. There was a front on the way the next day.

My question then is what would you have tried to better your chance of getting a few more bites??? IE. what baits /lures would you have tried??

The bites I got was on a bullfrog coulour horney toad(the last bait I tried in my box)

Well it seem to me that weather conditions is one if not the most important tools to be a sucessfull angler , so come lads need more input from you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What retrieve were you using with the horny toad? Under the conditions you described, I think I would have tried top water baits, but probably downsized or natural colours. A reaction bait like a hard jerkbait is another possibility.

I would definitely go for a hard jerkbait or deadstick a weightless senko.
A superfluke jnr on a very light weight is always a good option too.

on a fast retrieve, but I gave everything in my box a swim. I tried fast, slow, weightless, weighted, topwater, crankbaits and spinner and Nada. Just the horney got two bites. The second bite was a killer, the bass jumped right out the water and then only took the horney toad!!!

Hi Guys, good questions and over the Easter weekend back home for the holidays, I spent three days with a very good friend of mine, (and a very good fisherman) Kevin "Swazi" Lincoln at Midmar. I posed the same question to Kevin about why barometric pressure is so important when fishing for bass? The answer has basically got to do with differences in pressure created in the atmosphere in the movement of the approaching cold front.

When it is all sunny and warm, the conditions are created by what meteorologistics term a "High pressure system" where the pressure remains pretty constant at or around 1050 millibars at sea level, and this is very comfortable for Ol' Bucket-mouth, resulting in the fish being relatively shallow.

The problem comes when there is an approaching Cold Front which brings with it rain as the cooler air pushes aside the warm air from the High pressure system. The cold front is what is termed a "Low pressure system" and results in the pressure being at less than 1050 millibars, usually in the 930 - 950 range. Bass can feel this change before a fisherman can notice it, and in order to get back to their happy medium 1050 millibars, they move into deeper water to equalise the pressure drop caused by the approaching low pressure system. "They don't like headaches!!!"

I must say, his answer made a lot of sense and we tested this out on one day as a cold front was approaching, and we landed 18 fish between the two of us in a single morning. We did not change the bait we had been successful with in sunnier conditions, we just fished deeper - and we had great success.

I really hope this will help you all catch more fish in the future.

Cheers
kev

Hey thanks F/Ropes,

Will keep this in mind, and more importantly will keep an eye on the barometric pressures and try and distinguish what's high and low in Gauteng.

Anyone know what the standard is in GP by any chance?

Hope this works on KBBC comp day (that is, if there is a place on that lake that's deeper than 3.5m!).

By the way, how did the nickname FROZEN ROPES come about??
Mine, on the other hand, is self explanatory