Productive Patterns in Weather for Bass Fishing.
A Pattern i am seeing a lot of recently and it is producing some nice Bass.
BLOG.
9/14/20255 min read
What am I talking about? Some of you might be asking. For experienced bass lure anglers, they already know what I'm talking about. But what if you're not? You're someone who is starting out in lure fishing. You have just bought your rod and reel, along with a few lures. You go down to a local spot and start to fish. You fish a few times and either blank or catch the odd bass. I have been there, and it gets frustrating. I am still a novice in the bass lure fishing world, and I have quickly learned things while I'm fishing and from others whom I think are experienced bass lure anglers.
Productive Patterns in Weather for Bass Fishing...
It's not just about going out and throwing a few lures into the sea and catching some bass; fish need to be in the place where you go fishing. They need to be feeding, and you need to be using lures that represent the bait they are feeding on. If they are looking for crabs, use a creature bait; if they are after the bait fish, use a paddle tail or other soft plastic. If there are sand eels, then use a sand eel lure; if they are hitting bait fish on the surface, use a surface lure. The old saying of "match the hatch" is very true.
But this is the practical side of bass fishing. There is also another side of bass fishing; I will call it the scientific side. That is when you start bringing in other factors. What are these? Well, we are talking about tides, moon phases, and the weather, specifically approaching stormy weather with wind or rain. Being in Cornwall, with just over 400 miles of coastline and sticking out into the Atlantic, we are used to this. So what do approaching storms have to do with bass fishing, you might ask? Well, it’s one of the productive patterns I have noticed that keeps producing again and again.
Back in August, I had the chance to go fishing with Matt from bassluresuk.com. It was a beautiful early morning start, the tide was on the ebb, there was little wind, and fish were moving on the surface. On went the Espetit 95mm White N Flash surface lure; on the third cast, I landed my new personal best bass of 62cm, images below, the first of a few lovely bass that morning.
So what kind of lures were we using to target these bass? Well, on this morning, their preference seemed to be the Espetit 95mm White and Flash, image below, with its built-in flash plate and rattle. With the bass on high alert to feed, something noisy that caused a disturbance on the surface was all the trigger these bass needed to strike. Also, with the cloudy and overcast skies, the white lure and the flash added to intensify the strikes.
That morning, those bass were dialed in on anything that was in their vicinity, with an intense urgency to feed. The reason being that later that evening, there was an approaching storm coming in with strong winds and heavy rain. I have learned a lot from Matt and always listen when he gives me some advice, and the tips he shares are snippets of gold in my eyes that have helped me on my journey to improve my bass fishing.
He explained to me that when you get an approaching storm 12 - 24 hrs away, the barometric pressure drops. This, in turn, triggers the bass into a feeding frenzy; they are looking to fill up on what's available. Being August/September, this is mostly bait fish and sand smelt in the estuaries. These bigger bass are smart fish; some are many years old, and they have perfected their tactics on catching their prey. They will have ambush points in these estuaries where, as the tide ebbs out, these can be rocks, weed beds, gullies in the mud, or even an old boat wreck—anything that can give them cover to pounce.
You can also read the bassluresuk.com blog on this morning from Matt here.
When you start to add all these things together, a pattern appears and produces some nice catches. Some people keep a diary noting down the fishing conditions they were experiencing, and over time they can look back over this and see a pattern emerge at certain times. But now there is an app that can do this as you log your catches; over time, it will build up a database of conditions, and you can see what times you have a very good chance to catch fish. The app is called the Tightlines app, and you can see it here. I am also using the XCWeather app here; it shows the weather in advance and indicates the direction of the wind with gusts, plus other information. The last app I use is the Nautide app here; it also has a huge amount of information for you to utilise. When combining all three, you can really plan for what hopefully will be a productive fishing session.
If you follow the bassluresuk Facebook page here, these same conditions are producing some lovely catches, especially at night, when fishing with the lures made by Matt, the Black Sparkles, in different designs producing superb fish. See images below. I will put some links to these lures below.
Thank you for reading my blog post. Tight lines from Steve @ Kernowbass.
So as you can see, when you combine all these together, we can give ourselves a higher percentage chance of catching fish if the bass are there. This is one productive pattern we can use; there are others as well for us to utilize and learn.
When a storm is on the horizon, it alters the barometric pressure, which in turn pushes down on the water, causing commotion as the living animal habitat is disturbed for a while, and food sources may be scarce. So it's a frantic panic to eat a meal before they potentially go into a fast. The more severe the storm, the greater the pressure, and the more important it is to grab a meal. It's like a mental panic to eat.
Get in touch.
Contact Me.
Fill in your details opposite or use email below, thank you. Steve @kernowbass.
admin@kernowbass.com
