Weather and fishing go hand in hand. As a youngster, I remember hearing the old sayings when comes about fishing and weather patterns
Wind out the east the fish bite the least
Wind out the west, fish bite best
Wind out of the north, don't venture forth
Wind of the south, blows the bait into the fishes mouth
But for some of us it becomes an obsession especially during the steelhead season. I fall into the compulsive weather junkie category. During the season especially days before the weekend or my vacation, I constantly check the weather much to the amusement of my girlfriend. But she doesn't understand and I'm not the only one afflicted with it, far from it.
I break into a sweat when I see there's rain coming for the upcoming weekend. I pull the phone out and check the report
Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch
I'll play the radar and click on the future tracking. There's a path of yellow and dark green that will pass right over us. Every few hours, I'll update the report in the hope that the chance of rain diminishes. This will play out over the next day as I try to predict to where I should fish. The smaller streams tend to blow out quickly, while the Grand might a day to blow out. I fret about whether should I pull some eggs out because every junkie knows that the weather reporting is as accurate as me filling out my NCAA men's basketball bracket.
Periods of rain throughout the day. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter inch
A little better, but I continue to analyze the path of the rain. I check the hourly totals to see how much will fall. Of course it doesn't help that I have a couple weather apps on my phone and most of the time, the two of them have conflicting reports adding to the stress. Christ, I'm so fucking pathetic.
But there's a reason behind why I do it, because I consider myself the savvy steelheader
( even though my girlfriend thinks I'm neurotic ) because I diligently monitor both real time and projected weather patterns. It all boils down that I want the best chance of hooking into fish. Because the weather along the Alley can be chaotic whether it's October, January, or April. I've witness wild swings in temperatures going from the 60s and a few days later dropping into the 30s. I've seen 2' of snow only to be completely gone in a matter of a week. Streams freezing over, thawing, and refreezing in a month.
The junkie knows that frigid overnight temperatures usually spells slush in the morning. Why bother getting up at the crack of dawn only see a river clogged with it. I'll sleep in and wait for the afternoon. The same can be said in late fall when there's a front coming through gusting winds will litter the stream with leaves. Or if the temperatures for the upcoming weekend are be sunny and in the upper 60s, I'll head upstream and fish the remote sections because I don't want to deal with the army of fair weather fishermen. Back when I had my Jeep I often made the drive out east when lake effect snow were in forecast because I knew a lot of anglers wouldn't even dare make the drive out. Sadly my Jeep succumbed to father rust and today I have a crossover that isn't quite up to the task of tearing through a foot of snow.
Every stream along the Alley has their "sweet spot" some clear within a matter of days and others take a week. When everything blows out after a rainfall, I have a good idea where to go. There's been times albeit rare that I had to resort to ditch fishing. But I tell anglers new to steelheading that there's always somewhere to fish along the Alley.
But we all know that predicting the weather isn't an exact science. I don't know how many times I got burned because I thought everything would be blown out for the weekend only to see the storms shifted south or north or not enough rain fell. So I'll have to wake up at four in the morning and hastily tie eggs. Other times I take a day off in advance and I'm driving a 100 miles into Pennsylvania because everything in Ohio is blown out and I also have to shell out money for a fishing license, because the storm that was supposed to miss us decided to park itself over Northeastern Ohio and dump a ton of rain.
The things we'll do just catch some fish.
