Thursday Morning Skunk and Some Thoughts About Air Pressure

I was watching the pressure meter last night the way most beer guzzling red-blooded Americans watch football. There were subtle ebbs and flows in the lines, the kind only visibly detected with a magnifying glass. But if you squinted hard enough, the pressure was on a downward curve. That’s all the evidence I needed to text coworkers at 9pm and let them know I would be in late. For most of the year, pressure is just a metric that exists out there in the meteorological ether, along with humidity and visibility. Stuff that I really don’t pay much attention to, being way more focused on things like tide, windspeed and direction, and precipitation. But once the hard water sets up I watch the pressure like a hawk.

My dad and his fishing pal Dave indoctrinated me into the ice fishing Low Pressure Posse early on in life, and I’ve seen enough to know that it holds weight. I routinely skip high pressure days, especially when we target trout. This morning wasn’t perfect, but it was calm enough and overcast with the pressure meter showing under 30. (30 what? Pressures per square pressure? Who knows.) As soon as I see that number hit 29 I know its time to fish. So we hiked it north of Portland ME to a tried and true trout lake and set our traps under the ice out deep for rainbows. Then it was right to the shoreline to jig for brookies.

I think that low or dropping pressure is important to gauge whether trout want to feed, but its certainly isn’t the rule. I’ve had plenty of bluebird days where the fish bit like hell, and days like today where I’m back in the office by 9 with no trout for the smoker. There were about 10,000 old auger holes around the spot we fished, so I think its the other type of fishing pressure that hurt us today.

-Grady