I've read often enough about the effect of barometric pressure on fishing prospects and most notably that a falling glass often results in fish going off the feed.
My question is, what do I class as falling pressure which is going to affect my fishing? IE are we talking negative effects from a decrease of just a couple of mb or do you think such minor day to day fluctuations unlikely to have much effect?

Cheers,
Matt

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I am sure we have all witnessed the way fishing can be dead before a summer electical storm (despite being warm and overcast)...only to go into a feeding frenzy right afterwards.

Don't know if that is to do with the heavy downpours stirring them up or a rise in the air pressure?

Too right. I've seen this many times, and had fish like tench and bream rolling all over the place, very much out of character......at least on the waters that I fish.................birdsnest

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3 of the salmon I had off the Deveron a few weeks ago came in breif spells of no wind and rising air temperatures ,these spells were very noticable .
Probably the other fish came in similar conditions ,was not very aware at the time as was somewhat hungover

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Andy Wren
Winter grayling taking a year off !
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Hi, All,
As I understand the affect of weather upon trout, they do not like sudden changes, which presumably are results of atmospheric pressure. When the weather turns wet and windy, fish may well be put off at first, but they seem to acclimatise and carry on doing their everyday chores etc. When things turn more settled and calm, under high pressure systems, they may again take a short while to re-adapt, then it's back to business for both the fish and the angler. Over the years, I have noticed that trout do not react kindly, generally, to oncoming storms, thunder and lightning, but two of my most memorable days on the river, with dry fly, were in almost incessant rain. But those outings were in the middle of a spell of typical, English, summer weather.
Most obvious reason for the fish going daft was that the duns' wings took longer than usual to dry and stiffen, and the succession of deluges washed sheletring flies out of the bankside alders, or knocked them out of the sky.
This was on Eden in the 'heady' fly fishing days of the 1960s and 70s. I wish I had cine film evidence, because most anglers would not believe how prolific the emergences of our flies used to be. Even this old duffer -- a younger duffer then -- just had to be able to score on the good days. TC

I tend to find that any significant change in pressure can have an effect. Settled weather of any description is better, imo than the first day of change. for example, i'd rather fish the last day of a high pressure bright system, than the day the weather breaks..?

Rather than pressure, IMO the wind is important. rare is the day i'll fish an east wind..!

Yes, BB, I agree, trout fishing can change from good to 'I ain't interested' in a relatively short time. And when I hear anglers asking why the fishing today does not compare with that of the previous day, almost invariably you can hold the vagaries of pressure, wind and weather to blame. As for the east wind, we thank Heaven the massive High Street ridge lies south-easterly and easterly of Ullswater. One of the main reasons for the lake's well-earned reputation is that,
apart form its very long shoreline (it's pretty narrow and it has some excellent shallows) it lies just right for southerly and south-westerly winds, which are so prodctive compared with northerly or easterly winds. TC

Chris Ogborne in his book "Advanced Stillwater Flyfishing" says that nothing plays greater havoc with fish feeding-patterns than abrupt weather changes, even slight changes in wind direction can send fish to the bottom and the effects can last for some time.

I quoted the old saying "when the barometer rises, so do the fish" to a mate only this season. I then kept an eye on the barometer before setting off to go fishing. Unfortunately, it didn't always work out that way

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Will captivate a greedy mind - Isaac Walton.

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I raised this subject last year after buying a recent book on this subject from Sportfish.
I also bought a Suunto watch which tracks among other things, barometric pressure levels with a mini display of what happened over the past 6 hours.
I don't fish every day, but the times I have done, I've looked at the trends and compared what has been happening during that day, not just for me, but for others fishing at the same time. I can honestly say, that on these occasions, there has been no significant rise in fish taking activity on a rising baraometer.

Bright sun, cool winds, water temperature and, of course, lack of insect activity on or near the surface, will stop fish rising regardless of what the barometer is doing.

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How poor a thing, sometimes I find,
Will captivate a greedy mind - Isaac Walton.

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