Fish Bite Best During a Tornado
I've mentioned that my brother-in-law, Jim and I have spent a good portion of our waking hours fishing. Most of those hours were at night and the majority were during beautiful weather, but we have had a few trips where Mother Nature was less than cooperative. Interestingly enough, fish seem to get hungry just before a front moves through. Sometimes the bite will last until the front is sitting right smack dab on top of you.
One November (Jim will argue it was February) we fished for a couple of days in beautiful, cool blue bird weather...and didn't catch a thing except a bunch of stinky ole Skip Jack. The next day the weather turned off bad and we had an inch of sleet in the bottom of the boat. We would have frozen to death, but the fish turned on and we caught a boatload of striped bass and small mouth bass. Nothing warms you up like catching fish.
Rain is nothing. You just get wet. All you need is a rain suit and a bilge pump and rain is a non-factor except that it usually turns the fish on. Sometimes a sprinkle...just enough to make you uncomfortable, sometimes an all day drizzle, and then sometimes a full-fledged gully washer. I remember one time I caught a very nice smallmouth when it was raining so hard that, honestly, you couldn't see from one end of the boat to the other.
We generally make it a rule to stay off the lake when there is lightening in the area. That's the easy part. You can see lightening coming. Wind, on the other hand, will sneak up on you. Wind causes three significant problems. First, it'll sink you. That's major, but if you keep your nose into the wind you're okay. Second, you're gonna get wet. Third, you're gonna get tired because the pucker factor shoots up to an 8 or a 10 every few seconds.
We've been out on the lake at night numerous times when things went to hell in a hand basket. Once we hadn't intended to stay out all night, but we ended up spending the night on the back side of the lake because the wind was too bad to cross. It was so windy you couldn't see the lights on the other side, so we just went back to an old road bed, drifted up into some weeds and went to sleep. Of course nobody missed us or came looking for us.
On the night before a big Memorial day bass tournament we were out fishing when the weather began to turn sour. It was about 3:30 a.m. and tournament participants were pouring into the lake on the ramp we needed to pull out from. The weather was getting bad and lightening was all around. I pulled up to the ramp, Jim jumped out and told the guy directing traffic we wanted to load up. The guy thought for a minute and said, "Yeah, I reckon you can do that." We did and then went to the top of the levee to wait for the blast-off. It was raining like crazy and there were boats getting lower and lower in the water because the bilge pumps couldn't keep up. We watched one guy hanging on to a buoy as the top of his boat sat just below water level. I had always thought we were stupid but these guys took the cake.
But the one trip that was most memorable was midsummer several years ago. It was around midnight and we were fishing about 200 yards from the boat ramp where we had launched. Most of the evening there had been a lot of lightening far off in the northern sky and a light breeze coming out of the south-southwest. We were fishing up and down a rock pile and there was a row of small, limbless dead trees along the waterline. Anyway, as we were fishing northward the sky was aglow with nonstop lightening. And in the lightening I saw a distinct outline of a funnel. Not being an alarmist, I calmly said, "Is that a tornado?" We waited a second for another good burst of lightening and then Jim laughed and replied, "Naw, that's a tree! Ha-ha-ha!" (By the way, since that time all the trees in the area have fallen and Jim has, more than once, made the comment, "Your tornado's gone.") Now I could have just screamed "TORNADO!!!!", but I didn't. I then told him, "You know, they say fish bite best during a tornado." Actually I had never heard that and just made it up as a joke. Jim thought for a bit and then replied, "Now who has ever fished during a tornado?" I thought to myself, "Idiots like us."
A couple of seconds later I noticed that the wind had shifted and was coming out of the north. In less than two minutes it had gained significant speed. We immediately started putting our equipment up and getting ready to go, but the wind was picking up fast. In the next two minutes it was blowing at least thirty miles an hour. There was no rain with the wind, just straight line winds from the storm that was obviously gaining strength across the lake. Throwing our life jackets on (yeah, they should have been on all along), we pretty much dropped everything that wasn't put in the lockers and I sat down to start the engine. The path to the ramp was perpendicular to the wind which was still getting stronger. The waves were only a couple of feet high at this time, but the wind was picking up so much water it was impossible to see. I started out and headed into the wind and tried to make a loop toward the ramp. I couldn't see anything because water was hitting me in the face as if sprayed from a fire hose. I had the bilge pump on but I could feel the water sloshing around my ankles. I would guess the wind was gusting forty to fifty miles an hour by now and I had to turn and put the transom to the wind so Jim could get out at the ramp to back the trailer down.
It took some maneuvering, but we made it to the ramp and Jim hopped out. I was doing everything I could to back away from the ramp into the wind without hitting any rip-rap. Water was coming over the transom like waves in a hurricane. I looked back at the ramp and in my blurred vision was Jim standing on the ramp waving his arms for me to come back. Yep, good ole Jim had forgotten the keys to the truck! So I had to do it all over again. I felt like a drowned rat and the boat was full of water while I loitered around in the boiling surf waiting for the trailer. Once it was down the ramp, it was obviously going to be a test of my boat trailering skills. I had the wind to my back, couldn't see diddly squat and the trailer was either completely under water or completely out of the water dependent upon wave position. On my first shot I got sideways, the wave rolled out and left the boat sitting crossways the trailer out of the water. On the second attempt I went straight up the middle...perfect.
We pulled out of the water, drained the boat and stood there for a few minutes. The wind died just about as fast as it had come up. Jim looked at the sky for a while and then said, "Looks like it's gonna calm down...wanna go back out?", to which I replied, "just get in the truck."
One November (Jim will argue it was February) we fished for a couple of days in beautiful, cool blue bird weather...and didn't catch a thing except a bunch of stinky ole Skip Jack. The next day the weather turned off bad and we had an inch of sleet in the bottom of the boat. We would have frozen to death, but the fish turned on and we caught a boatload of striped bass and small mouth bass. Nothing warms you up like catching fish.
Rain is nothing. You just get wet. All you need is a rain suit and a bilge pump and rain is a non-factor except that it usually turns the fish on. Sometimes a sprinkle...just enough to make you uncomfortable, sometimes an all day drizzle, and then sometimes a full-fledged gully washer. I remember one time I caught a very nice smallmouth when it was raining so hard that, honestly, you couldn't see from one end of the boat to the other.
We generally make it a rule to stay off the lake when there is lightening in the area. That's the easy part. You can see lightening coming. Wind, on the other hand, will sneak up on you. Wind causes three significant problems. First, it'll sink you. That's major, but if you keep your nose into the wind you're okay. Second, you're gonna get wet. Third, you're gonna get tired because the pucker factor shoots up to an 8 or a 10 every few seconds.
We've been out on the lake at night numerous times when things went to hell in a hand basket. Once we hadn't intended to stay out all night, but we ended up spending the night on the back side of the lake because the wind was too bad to cross. It was so windy you couldn't see the lights on the other side, so we just went back to an old road bed, drifted up into some weeds and went to sleep. Of course nobody missed us or came looking for us.
On the night before a big Memorial day bass tournament we were out fishing when the weather began to turn sour. It was about 3:30 a.m. and tournament participants were pouring into the lake on the ramp we needed to pull out from. The weather was getting bad and lightening was all around. I pulled up to the ramp, Jim jumped out and told the guy directing traffic we wanted to load up. The guy thought for a minute and said, "Yeah, I reckon you can do that." We did and then went to the top of the levee to wait for the blast-off. It was raining like crazy and there were boats getting lower and lower in the water because the bilge pumps couldn't keep up. We watched one guy hanging on to a buoy as the top of his boat sat just below water level. I had always thought we were stupid but these guys took the cake.
But the one trip that was most memorable was midsummer several years ago. It was around midnight and we were fishing about 200 yards from the boat ramp where we had launched. Most of the evening there had been a lot of lightening far off in the northern sky and a light breeze coming out of the south-southwest. We were fishing up and down a rock pile and there was a row of small, limbless dead trees along the waterline. Anyway, as we were fishing northward the sky was aglow with nonstop lightening. And in the lightening I saw a distinct outline of a funnel. Not being an alarmist, I calmly said, "Is that a tornado?" We waited a second for another good burst of lightening and then Jim laughed and replied, "Naw, that's a tree! Ha-ha-ha!" (By the way, since that time all the trees in the area have fallen and Jim has, more than once, made the comment, "Your tornado's gone.") Now I could have just screamed "TORNADO!!!!", but I didn't. I then told him, "You know, they say fish bite best during a tornado." Actually I had never heard that and just made it up as a joke. Jim thought for a bit and then replied, "Now who has ever fished during a tornado?" I thought to myself, "Idiots like us."
A couple of seconds later I noticed that the wind had shifted and was coming out of the north. In less than two minutes it had gained significant speed. We immediately started putting our equipment up and getting ready to go, but the wind was picking up fast. In the next two minutes it was blowing at least thirty miles an hour. There was no rain with the wind, just straight line winds from the storm that was obviously gaining strength across the lake. Throwing our life jackets on (yeah, they should have been on all along), we pretty much dropped everything that wasn't put in the lockers and I sat down to start the engine. The path to the ramp was perpendicular to the wind which was still getting stronger. The waves were only a couple of feet high at this time, but the wind was picking up so much water it was impossible to see. I started out and headed into the wind and tried to make a loop toward the ramp. I couldn't see anything because water was hitting me in the face as if sprayed from a fire hose. I had the bilge pump on but I could feel the water sloshing around my ankles. I would guess the wind was gusting forty to fifty miles an hour by now and I had to turn and put the transom to the wind so Jim could get out at the ramp to back the trailer down.
It took some maneuvering, but we made it to the ramp and Jim hopped out. I was doing everything I could to back away from the ramp into the wind without hitting any rip-rap. Water was coming over the transom like waves in a hurricane. I looked back at the ramp and in my blurred vision was Jim standing on the ramp waving his arms for me to come back. Yep, good ole Jim had forgotten the keys to the truck! So I had to do it all over again. I felt like a drowned rat and the boat was full of water while I loitered around in the boiling surf waiting for the trailer. Once it was down the ramp, it was obviously going to be a test of my boat trailering skills. I had the wind to my back, couldn't see diddly squat and the trailer was either completely under water or completely out of the water dependent upon wave position. On my first shot I got sideways, the wave rolled out and left the boat sitting crossways the trailer out of the water. On the second attempt I went straight up the middle...perfect.
We pulled out of the water, drained the boat and stood there for a few minutes. The wind died just about as fast as it had come up. Jim looked at the sky for a while and then said, "Looks like it's gonna calm down...wanna go back out?", to which I replied, "just get in the truck."
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