Truth

[DitchPanda]

I'm a big believer in fishing wind blown shorelines especially if the wind has been consistent direction wise for days. Wind seems to blow little stuff...little bit bigger stuff follows the little stuff...even bigger stuff follows that stuff. That's my very scientific break down.

[Catt]

7 hours ago, LrgmouthShad said:

How do ya’ll know this stuff ?

 

Few thousand hours on the water

 

Everyone talking wind blown banks but are they really telling you where the fish are located?

 

Toledo Bend has 1,200 miles of shoreline, if I say wind blown banks where ya gonna start?

 

If I say wind blown banks behind the hay grass around cypress trees now I've narrowed your search down.

 

A lot of what you read on the world wide web or see on boobtube ain't telling you nuthin!

 

If a video is less than 10 minutes I ain't watching, can't teach nobody nuthin in 10 minutes. 

7 hours ago, LrgmouthShad said:

How do ya’ll know this stuff ?

 

Few thousand hours on the water

 

Everyone talking wind blown banks but are they really telling you where the fish are located?

 

Toledo Bend has 1,200 miles of shoreline, if I say wind blown banks where ya gonna start?

 

If I say wind blown banks behind the hay grass around cypress trees now I've narrowed your search down.

 

A lot of what you read on the world wide web pr see on boobtube ain't telling you nuthin!

 

If a video is less than 10 minutes I ain't watching, can't teach nobody nuthin in 10 minutes. 

[Bluebasser86]

Sometimes wind is good, sometimes it's not. In my experience, bass in colder water and during the spawn will avoid the windier areas. Wind stirs sediment that will settle on eggs and kill them, so they don't want to be in windy areas on their nest. Wind creates current that they have to fight, which they don't want to do when they're cold and trying to expend the least amount of energy. My biggest 5 fish limit in Kansas (and one of my best days of bass fishing ever), was on a slick calm, cold day in February many years ago. Bass in clear water environments seem to avoid windblown areas that are prone to becoming muddied quickly because they're more adapted to being visual feeders than their muddy water cousins. 

 

Now during the heat of the summer, or in the fall when the bass are chasing around all the new baitfish and the water is stale and hot from baking in the sun all day, yeah I want some wind to be blowing where I'm fishing. I wish it made them stupid, but usually it just makes them a little more catchable. 

 

 

 

[Catt]

47 minutes ago, Bluebasser86 said:

In my experience, bass in colder water and during the spawn will avoid the windier areas.

 

There's more to it than saying, fish the wind blown bank.

 

That's why I mentioned "pre-spawn", in that situation we had 15-20 yards of hay grass then 15-20 yards of scattered cypress trees to the actual bank. The hay grass filtered the sediment & slowed the wind current. The area inside the grassline was 2-4 degrees warmer than the outside grassline.

 

Lagniappe

When faced with a shoreline that has dirtied up...back off!

 

[WVU-SCPA]

Think the saying goes something like....wind on my homebodies of water anglers delight, wind on unknown water anglers take flight.  Or maybe that's something with the sunrise or sunset and fish can only be so predictable due to all the variables. 

 

That being said the lakes I know like the back of my hand, wind is usually the 3rd factor in what I decided to do first.

[Junk Fisherman]

I used to HATE the wind now I just dislike it.  A light chop is ideal.  When the wind is up you just have to adjust your tactics.  

[Tennessee Boy]

11 hours ago, Finessegenics said:

 

Could not agree more. I hope I don't make myself sound like an idiot so here it goes.

 

Doesn't that killer bite when the dam turns on have to do more with rising water levels + the increased current, rather than just increased current alone because of a good wind? That's what I'm thinking is going on in my river. Bite gets good when the current is increased because of rising water but I have not found that the bite gets any better when there's an increased current because of wind.  

 

Or are you talking about when water is being drained, also creating current but lowering water levels? Just trying to wrap my head around everything because I deal with a lot of fluctuation in water levels. This year was crazy in that regards for me. 

 

 

On the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers I look at the release schedule for the dam below me unless I'm fishing the tail waters of the dam above me.  I prefer stable water levels and it's my experience that current is what matters not rising or dropping water level.  It could be different on other bodies of water I guess.   

[Bankc]

17 hours ago, Black Hawk Basser said:

Well you are about the only person I've heard of saying that wind has made bass fishing worse for you.  Here in the relatively clear lakes and ponds, it helps tremendously, if nothing else to shield your presence from the fish.  I'm not saying I'm dying to go when it's 20 MPH+, but somewhere between 10 and 15 seems to help a bunch here, especially in  late spring and summer.

Ah.  I get it now.  10-15mph is windy to you.  So it's a semantics issue.  To me, that's not windy.  That's a calm day.  And yeah, that is good fishing weather.  Windy, to me, is 25+.  16mph is the average wind speed around here, so 10-15mph is below average for us.  I've seen straight line gusts go over 90mph.  And I don't think I've ever seen a day that was literally still.  I've seen videos of "glass smooth" lakes before.  But I've never seen one in person.  Even our calmest days will put a little ripple in the water.  

[Black Hawk Basser]

No, I don't consider 15 MPH "windy".  I wouldn't say to someone that today was windy if it was blowing 15 miles per hour.  I said that 10-15 seems to be good for fishing as opposed to being calm.  It's rarely ever calm here, too, especially March-April and October-November.

[TnRiver46]

19 hours ago, Black Hawk Basser said:

Well you are about the only person I've heard of saying that wind has made bass fishing worse for you.  Here in the relatively clear lakes and ponds, it helps tremendously, if nothing else to shield your presence from the fish.  I'm not saying I'm dying to go when it's 20 MPH+, but somewhere between 10 and 15 seems to help a bunch here, especially in  late spring and summer.

10-15 I’m not even going fishing. And it’s hard to keep me off the water. A wind like that makes boating pretty much impossible for me 
 

also it rarely blows 10-15 here unless it’s storming 

[TnRiver46]

2 hours ago, Bankc said:

Ah.  I get it now.  10-15mph is windy to you.  So it's a semantics issue.  To me, that's not windy.  That's a calm day.  And yeah, that is good fishing weather.  Windy, to me, is 25+.  16mph is the average wind speed around here, so 10-15mph is below average for us.  I've seen straight line gusts go over 90mph.  And I don't think I've ever seen a day that was literally still.  I've seen videos of "glass smooth" lakes before.  But I've never seen one in person.  Even our calmest days will put a little ripple in the water.  

This is how our waters look about 90% of the time, maybe more. If you are waiting on the wind to start blowing to trigger a bite, it might be a few months. But if you go down towards Chickamauga and Guntersville, a 10 mile an hour wind can create an unnavigable situation for me

 

we are in a unique weather setting in between the smoky mountains and the Cumberland plateau that is rarely windy

 

[OldManLure]

8 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

This is how our waters look about 90% of the time, maybe more. If you are waiting on the wind to start blowing to trigger a bite, it might be a few months. But if you go down towards Chickamauga and Guntersville, a 10 mile an hour wind can create an unnavigable situation for me

 

we are in a unique weather setting in between the smoky mountains and the Cumberland plateau that is rarely windy

 

Growing up near the Tennessee River in the late 60s and 70s I can remember launching at some of the backwater areas and feeder creeks when the water looked like this.  But then when we got to the main channel, it sometimes looked like the ocean.  Are these pics on the main river?  

[TnRiver46]

9 minutes ago, OldManLure said:

Growing up near the Tennessee River in the late 60s and 70s I can remember launching at some of the backwater areas and feeder creeks when the water looked like this.  But then when we got to the main channel, it sometimes looked like the ocean.  Are these pics on the main river?  

Yes , but all 3 different rivers/reservoirs. (Norris, tellico, fort loudoun) Anything downstream of watts bar is a whole different ballgame, I live in Knoxville where the river is skinny in the protected valley

 

douglas and Cherokee can also be windy and rough but I don’t fish those lakes much 

[OldManLure]

5 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

Yes , but all 3 different rivers/reservoirs. (Norris, tellico, fort loudoun) Anything downstream of watts bar is a whole different ballgame, I live in Knoxville where the river is skinny in the protected valley

 

douglas and Cherokee can also be windy and rough but I don’t fish those lakes much 

Right on.  For some reason I thought you were near Pickwick.  I grew up fishing Pickwick to Guntersville.

[TnRiver46]

13 minutes ago, OldManLure said:

Right on.  For some reason I thought you were near Pickwick.  I grew up fishing Pickwick to Guntersville.

Yeah that stretch doesn’t just look like an ocean, it is an ocean! I fished pickwick once and I thought my trolling motor was going to fly off when I tried getting on plane in the main channel 

[Columbia Craw]

Real wind on parts of the Columbia River can get you killed.

[Munkin]

On 10/29/2021 at 5:30 AM, Catt said:

 

Few thousand hours on the water

 

Everyone talking wind blown banks but are they really telling you where the fish are located?

 

Toledo Bend has 1,200 miles of shoreline, if I say wind blown banks where ya gonna start?

 

If I say wind blown banks behind the hay grass around cypress trees now I've narrowed your search down.

 

A lot of what you read on the world wide web or see on boobtube ain't telling you nuthin!

 

If a video is less than 10 minutes I ain't watching, can't teach nobody nuthin in 10 minutes. 

 

Few thousand hours on the water

 

Everyone talking wind blown banks but are they really telling you where the fish are located?

 

Toledo Bend has 1,200 miles of shoreline, if I say wind blown banks where ya gonna start?

 

If I say wind blown banks behind the hay grass around cypress trees now I've narrowed your search down.

 

A lot of what you read on the world wide web pr see on boobtube ain't telling you nuthin!

 

If a video is less than 10 minutes I ain't watching, can't teach nobody nuthin in 10 minutes. 

Are you saying everything on the internet is not true?

 

Allen 

[Skunkmaster-k]

Wind really does help position the fish and gets them biting. But when the tips of the whitecaps are blowing sideways , the trolling motor on 10 won’t keep up, the anchor won’t hold , baits are flying off into oblivion and getting tangled in trees …. In my opinion that’s a little too much wind. 

[TnRiver46]

On 10/29/2021 at 11:28 AM, Bankc said:

Ah.  I get it now.  10-15mph is windy to you.  So it's a semantics issue.  To me, that's not windy.  That's a calm day.  And yeah, that is good fishing weather.  Windy, to me, is 25+.  16mph is the average wind speed around here, so 10-15mph is below average for us.  I've seen straight line gusts go over 90mph.  And I don't think I've ever seen a day that was literally still.  I've seen videos of "glass smooth" lakes before.  But I've never seen one in person.  Even our calmest days will put a little ripple in the water.  

I got you a couple more glass smooth lake photos today along my trapping route. It was even calmer where I crossed a bridge. Melton hill lake on the clinch river. That’s the main channel, you can see the channel marker in the bottom pic. A boat had even just ripped by before I took the pictures 

 

[T-Billy]

On 10/28/2021 at 10:29 PM, HaydenS said:

Years of hard work.

 

Every time I  go fishing, I hope I might learn some of this.  Reading it on the forums is half the learning, but it isn’t complete until you have success on the water.  

Another part of it is learning to apply what you've read or watched to YOUR waters. Take for example @Catt's comment about fishing the downwind side of mats during pre-spawn. We have no mats here until well after the spawn. The weeds are just getting started about spawning time. What we do have is lots of chunk rock, and bass like it better than wood in the spring. So... When those spring winds get blowing up on those shallow rocks, guess where the bass like to position? Right there in the eddy on the downwind side of the rocks. Exact same principle, applied to the available cover in the waters I fish. 

 

[cyclops2]

My river is best for ME. When  The wind & current are going in the same direction.  Drifting with a fresh cut bait 3' off the bottom is constant fish of all types. Up to12" waves 40' of line out dragging bottom. Hit,  Hit,  Set the hook. 2 rods constant hits  of Big fish only. Perch SMB & a struggling hooked perch in a pike mouth.      Life is good then.