Fishing Articles
Hit the Water when Fish Tell You To!
Streamline time in the outdoors by figuring out
where to go before you do
to find holding, stress-free, fish.
Timothy Kusherets
It's a bright and sunny day. It was my very first
time fishing this system yet was able find, hook, and land these two
great looking steelies. The fantastic thing was I was able to catch
both fish within two casts. By reading the water, understanding weather
patterns and temperatures, and considering water volume and clarity
I was able to figure out the best hold of water along the reach of river.
It sounds complicated but it's not. Think like a fish and you'll be
hooking into them.
It doesn’t matter where I’m fishing anglers all ask me
where I like to fish. My stock answer is I fish in the water. It might
sound like a slight but it’s not. Right off the top of my head
I can name at least 83 locations I fish. All of them cover every imaginable
kind of water and fishing technique. Eventually anglers quiz me about
times of the day to fish and there’s another funny response that
comes with the question. “I fish when fish tell me to”.
That’s how simple it is. To some it’s too simple and difficult
a concept at the same time. Once you know how to interpret the best
times to hit the water you’ll be leaving your watch at home, as
I do, and find yourself fishing at some of the weirdest times of the
day hooking into more fish than ever. Let’s first consider tides
for fishing marine environments.
Tides & Saltwater Fishing
There are about four tides every single day only changing by fifty-minutes
every 24 hours; so if the high tide in the morning was 9:00am then the
next day it would be 9:50am. Sounds pretty simple but there are seasoned
anglers who cannot figure out that simple thing making it worth mentioning
for the rest of us who might find it even harder to understand. Salmon,
cutthroat trout, and steelhead all use currents of tides to migrate;
this is especially important to consider “before” fishing
seasons open. The best tide to fish is at the beginning of the season
on the incoming High-high tide with an equally low-low tide as it recedes.
Put them together and there’s usually about thirteen feet of water,
that’s an amazing amount of water. Migrating fish are helpless
to resist it so they simply ride rather than fight it. To make forward
progress on their inland migration the ride the flood, incoming, tide
and hold on the outgoing, ebb, tide. Each subsequent tide brings them
closer to their natal estuaries and subsequent rivers and streams. This
pattern continues until they make it to estuaries where they begin their
process of acquiescing from salt to freshwater environments. How these
tides move, and when, dictate some of the best times to fish. Wouldn’t
you know it? Some of the best times to fish are during the dead of night.
Remember, fish and tides don’t know anything about clocks and
working schedules. This is one method of hitting the water when fish
tell me to. I want to be there the same time they are and sometimes
it means rolling out of bed a two and three o’clock in the morning;
that might be the hardest part about fishing the best tides. If you
want to catch fish all the time you have to be willing to fish their
timetable.
A fast and easy rule of thumb about fishing the best high-high tides
is: water volumes between 10 and 13 feet of water transport the most
amount of fish at the same time. The best tides to fish as species transition
from inland migrations to those just moving into the area are tides
ranging from 6 to 9 feet of water. The slower currents allow holding
fish to acquiesce to freshwater while incoming fish stay farther out.
Weather patterns that bring any kind of significant precipitation always
stimulates holding fish to move inland to natal streams while deeper
holding species move closer inland towards estuaries, bays, coves, and
inlets.
To find up-to-date tide information on the web at www.TopFishingSecrets.com
to find tidal monitoring stations of the Pacific Northwest; with over
6,500 locations worldwide.
Hydrographs: Rivers/Streams/Lakes
Stable and Falling rivers are the some of the best times to be on the
water and to do that it’s imperative to monitor hydrographs.
The advent of the Internet has made it easy to find all kinds of information
at the push of a button and the click of a mouse; and freshwater levels
are critical to streamlining best times to hit rivers and lakes. How
the flow and volume water travels greatly affects how far a fish will
travel in a day or how long it will hold before moving upstream. It
is the pressures that come with ever fluctuating water levels that put
fish on and off the bite. Technology has inadvertently created a way
for intrepid anglers to figure out exactly what kind of pressures fish
feel long before getting out to fish.
Rising Water
A historically known fact about fish pressure is they tend to go off
the bite during falling barometric pressure. Fish do go off the bite
during this time but the little known fact of why is increasing levels
of precipitation during low pressure and that means more water introduced
to water of streams, lakes, coves, and tributaries. Increasing volumes
of water within the confines of any bank also puts excessive debris
in the water, churns sediment, and decreases oxygen levels all at the
same time; this is the core of why fish go off the bite during low pressure
fronts. U.S. and Canada hydrographs make it easy to watch up-to-the-minute
water levels anytime day or night. Viewing an active hydrograph should
be one of the very last things before leaving on a trip. It’s
possible for a river and lake to blow out within the span of a few hours.
“I know from experience.”
Look at the trees in the background of this photo;
they’re bare and spindly. The wind was howling, temperatures were
in the high teens, the water was turbid yet there were fish to be had.
How did I know that fish would be here when there isn’t another
angler on the entire system? If you want to catch fish you have to embrace
their environment. Nature will speak to you and you’ll know when
fish call to hit the water.
Colored/Coloured Water
One myth associated with fishing is that rain makes fishing impossible
due to coloring up water; veteran anglers call this “stained water”.
Anglers will hang up their rods and wait for water to clear up when
in fact they should be braving the weather to hook into hordes of fish
that crowd shoreline and banks looking to avoid torrential currents.
This is exactly why anglers need to be on the water even as this happens.
While it is true that colored water has zero visibility, it’s
a fish’s other senses that make fishing so productive during times
like this. Scent and sound put fish on the bite even if they cannot
see offering put in the water. They’ll key in on leaders that
have a profile literally put right in front of their noses. There’s
a reason for that. While fish are literally blind during colored water,
it is that sensory block that keeps them from stressing out leaving
them to focus on their other senses. This is one of the prime reasons
to fish colored water. It is yet another way fish are telling anglers
to hit the water.
Stable Water
Water that crests during the height of blown out systems that produce
stained water become stable. Silt accumulations begin to settle, debris
ceases to flow down stream, oxygen levels increase, and holding fish
are able to move to larger holding areas and rest before moving up or
down stream. Stable water always put fish on the bite since there are
few natural reasons to stress them out during this time. It’s
possible to anticipate cresting water by monitoring hydrographs and
weather reports. Anglers who time fishing trips this way are likely
to find holding fish without competing fishermen. The fewer anglers
there are the less fishing pressure there is and that means more bites.
This is a prime reason to hit the water, and in most cases, waters that
stabilize herald clear weather. Clear weather means falling water.
This color chart is the exact same, though the lighting
is different. The chart on the right was photographed at the surface
off the Maui coastline. In the same location but at a different depth
the chart on the left was photographed at 125 feet. Look at the drastic
color change. Baits and lures that look good to anglers above the waterline
look very different to fish in the water. When you know what light filtration
does to the aquatic environment is the same time you begin to think
like a fish, and that’s when you know when to hit the water. When
you can think and feel like a fish you’ll know the best times
to hook into them. This is how they speak to anglers who want to be
in the know.
Falling Water
Falling water levels clears up visibility but not so much that holding
fish can see very far beyond the surface. Usually there’s just
enough clarity to push fish down to deeper water without putting them
off the bite. Anticipate that the water will be green, blue, or brown
with one to two feet of visibility. The great thing about fishing during
falling water levels is that though fish go back on the bite they still
cannot see bank or boat fishermen. Think about this. Suppose that a
river is four feet deep, the water clarity has improved by two feet,
and that holding fish gravitate at the other two feet. That puts fish
near the bottom where anglers can anticipate using leaders no longer
than two to three feet increasing the hook-setting time dramatically.
Anglers will say that this is an obvious time to fish, but it’s
“when” a fisherman gets to the water that determines the
amount of strikes. It’s important to anticipate falling water
so fishermen can be there as it’s happening, not after the fact.
When it comes to anticipating the best time to fish it’s essential
to monitoring Tides, Hydrographs, and Weather. This is especially true
if you intend to fish many times out of the year. Streamlining fishing
efforts in this way dramatically increases the amount of fish hookups
without the need for excessive looking. Remember, when you’re
out on the water looking for fish you’re not fishing. That’s
how easy that is.
Weather
Weather puts fish on and off the bite at any given time of the day.
This is yet another form of “pressure” that determines how
successful anglers will be on any given day. No one can anticipate everything
when it comes to weather but with enough basic information fish bite
under almost all circumstances.
Cold Fronts & Fish Physiology
It doesn’t matter where you go or what species of fish you’re
after, a falling barometric pressure put fish off the bite. Fish are
cold-blooded animals that respond to ambient temperatures and a variance
of two degrees is enough to stop them from biting anything. Colder temperatures
put fish off the bite not by choice, rather, it is a physical response
out of their control and some old-timers know it. Successful fishermen
look for waning weather and unstable temperature patterns. Consistent
cold weather pushes fish to deeper water, undercuts, or any structure
that offers a respite from dropping temperatures. Only when barometric
pressure stabilizes and begins to rise do fish respond. Rising fluctuations
stir them into activity. Their lethargic state, metabolic rate, increase
with warming trends even if ambient temperatures rise and fall; this
is what I mean when I talk about unstable weather. One really cool trick
about fishing during unstable times, with a warming trend, there are
occasions where the sun will poke through the clouds making pockets
of warm water. During times of inland migration this is enough to put
fish on the bite for as long as the sun is visible. I’ve seen
it work many times; so if the fishing ever gets rough and the sun begins
to shine pound the water and you’ll likely get fast hookups even
as other anglers scratch their heads as fish bite the end of your line.
In the end it all comes down to a small investment of time to figure
the best times to fish. No species of fish carries a watch, looks at
a clock, or tries to migrate during banker hours. Successful anglers
know that sometimes the best time to hit the water is during the end
of daylight hours, the middle of the night, or the crack of dawn. Fishing
is relative to what an angler is willing to put into it. To catch fish
routinely it’s important to think like a fish and to do that you
must forget about conventional thoughts of time; this is the core existence
of being a fish. Nature tells them when to move, hold, eat, and propagate.
Learn these premises and you will think as fish do and in so know when
the best time to fish and that’s exactly what it means to go angling
when fish tell you to.
Attention Outdoorsmen: Fishing Rules and Regulations
change often. Saltwater fishing at night is permitted in countless locations;
however, freshwater fishing at night is limited. Check your local rules
to find out where, when, how, and how often it can be fished. In the
absence of the written word anglers are left two options as it pertains
to fishing: check with the local magistrate or don't fish. It's that
simple.
Below are some links to fishing across North America and the entire
United Kingdom. Remember, "When in doubt check it out".
Rules and Regulations for
Fishing---Angling---Hunting
© Timothy Kusherets 2009 Copyrighted
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