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Cold Front (Guest Article)
Yet of all that, the worst weather for fishing is the best weather for the rest of the world. When I hear the weather guy say that it's going to be a beautiful day, I shudder. He means temps in the 70's, lows in the upper 50's, wind west to northeast at 15 knots or more, and tough times for anglers. He means Cold Front. He means Tough Fishing.
Cold fronts are tough fishing, but much of the problem is mental. Through all my weather I've learned, too, that the river isn't hopeless on a windy high-pressure day, though it isn't easy. What follows are a few tactical suggestions for river fishing on those cold-front days.
First, a caveat. Different regions of the country react differently to weather. Our eastern Piedmont rivers--James, Susquehanna, Potomac, etc.--typically slow down on the cold front. Also, our usual Fall weather--which we have right now--looks and acts a lot like a cold front. Furthermore, other factors in the highly volatile river systems can override the effect of the cold front, and there are some situations where the cold front symptoms remedy worse situations--very high water temps, for example, or algae blooms. So take these with a grain of knock on wood.
Hunkered Down
In a normal feeding mode, the optimum spot for a river smallie to feed is in the cover break behind an obstruction. Whether that's in position A, B, C, or D, it all qualifies as “behind the rock” when you describe the position relative to the river flow. The fish are there, of course, because they are seeking feeding efficiency; they want to expend less energy than they take in by hiding from the current in a place where they can see the maximum amount of current go by.
Secondarily, they want to be positioned over or around the kind of bottom where their preferred prey hangs out; most of the time that's crayfish, so most of the time they're happiest with chunk rock. Chunk rock occurs most often in the intermediate area behind an obstruction, but not too close to it. Main current overpowers the forage (and takes it past another fish's hold); broken current keeps the cobble bottom clear and gives the forage animals their own current to work (position D, C, or A). Dead or circulating current allows silt and sand to settle out and is generally less valuable as a feeding (though not resting) location.
Much active feeding activity calls for open water around the fish; they are using current variation less than actual cover to position themselves. In the cold front, the fish crave connection to actual objects, so they abandon the productive for the protective. In our river, that's often the front of a ledge.
Ledges are bedrock, usually composed of the most erosion-resistant stone. One example are the ledges of Harpers Ferry Greenstone that cross the river at Weverton above Knoxville Falls. This stone is very old surface rock--over 1 billion years old. The age, density, and toughness of the rock is what allowed it to outlast the surrounding stone. The front of such ledges tend to have a trough where water circulation has weathered out a space in the softer surrounding stone.
Some troughs extend a considerable distance back under or into the rock, and they are prime spots for inactive, hunkered down fish. The current is stalled or “pillowed” against the stone and fish can settle back into such spots to wait out the high blue sky. Other typical hunkering spots for smallies include wood cover, cliff faces, and the caves or rock-edges that cast a shadow on an otherwise shallow or featureless flat.
Hunkered fish need a long time to make up their mind to take a lure. That calls for a patient approach that uses the current rather than fighting it. We smallie anglers rely on the violence and certainty of the usual hair-trigger reaction hits from smallies; cold-front fish are far more picky. By the same token they may need more realistic lures, though there is a school of thought exactly contrary to this (see Provokers).
Therefore, one good tactic for cold front smallies is to do what I call “settle fish”. This technique requires careful boat control (or wade fishing patience.) Most any lure will work though lures with good “hold” characteristics--that taste right, that is--will work best. Topwater isn't out, though it's my last choice in this situation. Neutral or slow-sink lures are also a good call here. From a drag-chained, anchored, or rock-hung canoe, make a series of casts that fall well upcurrent of the front of the ledge--even in slow current. Leave a substantial space, perhaps ten feet, from the cover point. Remember that the fish are tight to cover here, but they aren't comfortable; they're probably a bit spooky. They won't nail a lure on impact as they will in other situations.
When the lure falls, deadstick it completely. Senkos are effective here, as are any lures rigged weedless. Maintain the minimum contact to detect a pickup. The pickup probably won't occur right away--the reason why you left such a cushion between the rock face and the aim point for the lure. Allow a belly of line to build between you and the lure, then stop dropping line so the current picks the lure up and moves it toward the rock.
With the belly of line, a light motion of the rod tip will make the lure move downstream, but will still give you some--not perfect, but some--contact with the lure. If you have a light touch on the rod here, you'll get a soft, helpless jigging action as the lure moves downstream. Consider using circle hooks to reduce gut-hooking and improve hookup ratio here; they take some getting used to, but will allow a kind of confidence in a slow presentation. Senkos and other salt-impregnated “bite and hold” lures are a good place to start with circle hooks. This technique will allow easy access to the flat ledge-fronts that are a common cold-front haunt of smallies in our stretch of the river.
Settled down
I evolved this tactic when I noticed that the guy in the front of my raft was outfishing the guy in the back to an unusual degree one cold-front day. We'd had a hard time locating fish and when we began to catch some I was quite alert to every little aspect. Our rafts have a frame with large v-shaped oarlocks. We use a dragchain deployed from an aft anchormate, and we found our fish while dragging slowly down a deep run in the 340 Bridge area of the Potomac. (Note: dragchain drifting isn't recommended in freestone streams where it disrupts spawning bottom.) The cross-current cast we usually favor with a jig wasn't working, perhaps because it wasn't giving the fish time enough to make up their mind to hit. The forward angler's jig was settling to the bottom slowly then lifting slowly--he was working with the current. But the aft angler couldn't work with the current; an upstream cast constantly hung up and also was fishing water the boat had just passed over. A cross-current cast, even into the tastiest cover, moved too fast as it quartered the current.
I shifted the dragchain to the middle of the boat, which changed the orientation. Now each angler, turned sideways, could fish downstream and the boat would still hold in a reasonably stable drift. As the angler raised his lure from the bottom, the current would “settle” it a foot or two further downstream. Without reeling at all the angler covers new water and very thoroughly at that. The vertical motion of the lure is maintained and any snag is not a problem because the boat is coming down to it--no rowing upstream. Besides giving both anglers an equal shot, this technique taught me the value of a slow and patient downstream approach. I believe that downstream approach is a very valuable component of any effective cold-front tactic. Most fishing situations won't permit a broadside drift; I'm not recommending that as much as I am pointing out the value of such a careful, controlled drift. The broadside drift also illustrates the value of fishing a controlled distance from the boat and with a hypersensitive touch. I'll explain.
Current, rock, wind, and highly variable bottom contours make bottom-contact fishing in a swift smallie river tough enough. Add to that the problem of unwilling fish in clear water, then include the effect of light biting or quick-spitting fish, and you've got a skunk on your tail. Besides the obvious choice of choosing lures that will hold the terrain without hanging up and which fish will hold once they've struck is the less obvious question of cast length as it affects effective bottom contact.
In a swiftly flowing smallie stream, bottom contact has its hazards. A lure which washes uncontrolled across a snaggy stone bottom will hang up even if it's weedless; it'll just disappear in a crevasse or wash under a rock and wedge. A lure which doesn't contact bottom at all won't snag, and probably won't draw many hits, either, especially in a cold front. The happy medium trades some hangups for hits, but will occasionally confuse the two. A good way to know the difference is to keep the lure in the water and keep the cast length consistent. A steady downstream presentation will accomplish that, and more.
First, keep the lure in the water. Working with the current allows you to explore new water with your lure while keeping contact with it and not recovering any line. A pronounced lift/drop sequence works best here, with the size and violence of the lift increasing as the current flow decreases. In slow-moving water it's actually a lift - hold - drop. Every “bump” on the bottom improves your chance of bumping a fish.
If you don't have to reel line as much you will “keep the lure on the rod”--stay attentive and connected to the lure. The best example of this is the extreme situation of vertical jigging--not often effective in our skinny, clear rivers, but essential in other situations, such as headboat fishing on the salt. I remember well a night fishing trip for large grey trout in Delaware Bay. The fish were there but picky; as frustration levels mounted the anglers' casting frequency increased, precisely the opposite of what was called for. At first I did it too, reeling up the heavy bucktail time and again only to drop it down. Later I focused on the soft bump the lure gave as it hit bottom and kept it down there as the boat drifted: lift...pause...drop. When my first strike came my jig had been down almost half an hour. I caught two huge trout that night and most everybody else came home empty-handed.
This also takes confidence, which is often in short supply when the cool winds blow. I tell my anglers to visualize the fish and to concentrate on holding that lure seductively in front of them until they hit.
Provoked
The key to plugs in this situation seems to be a long wait-time between movements. A Tiny Torpedo or Chug Bug cast fifteen feet upriver of a ledge, chugged (or “zizzed” as we say of the TT) a couple of times, then allowed to drift all the way to the rock face will draw strikes. This takes extraordinary patience. One reason to use a buzzbait in this case is the ability of the lure to track around rocks. I like to throw it across the ledge face then let it wamble right to the rock then clatter its way around it, actually brushing the rock. I retrieve the buzzbait steadily here as always, just fast enough to operate the blade. The hit often comes as the lure breaks away from the rock into open water.
Fish in this situation often do an odd thing--they bump or bang a lure with a closed mouth. Whenever you get a high percentage of non-hookups consider this problem. If you notice a number of fish that are hooked outside of the mouth, it may also be an indicator of that particular fish behavior. I have no theory that isn't inane to explain this. Obvious ways to increase your hookup ratio in that situation is to go to a treble-hooked lure, especially one of those with wicked sharp hooks, such as a Rapala or a chug bug, or to downsize sharply. A third way is to amend your hookset: take a lesson from the fly-guys and don't set the hook at; just keep stripping or reeling. Let the sharp hooks do their job.
The general approach of cold front fishing is at the heart of fishing in general. Nothing is really fun if it's dead easy; fishing is not exception (though an occasional day when they're willing and stupid is nice). Though your numbers may be down on a cold front, your learning and pleasure at success may be much higher than usual.
by Dave Motes
I've seen a lot of weather. Once I rode a wall cloud down Basswood Lake flat-out in a forty knot tailwind, hammering along through a rising chop and spray with cigar smoke hanging along with me in a cloud over my head. When I finally had to turn down the wind toward Prairie Portage, I was hammered by snow squalls and sleet. That was August. The following February we banged a bunch of big smallies on the Potomac and got sunburned on a day that pushed 80 degrees. In May of that year I got caught in three consecutive thunderstorms and at one point I had three inches of hailstones on my hat; the lightning that day gave me a permanent tic. One June I caught a following wind so steady and strong that I could steer my raft by exposing an oar blade on one side and turning it edge-on to the wind on the other. That year I ran a trip on a day when the riverside shade temperature reached 100 degrees; submerging yourself earned about forty seconds of comfort. On July 29 this year I ran in blowing rain in hypothermic conditions and by the end of the day we were wearing every stitch of clothing on the raft.
In my experience, smallies react to high barometric pressure by becoming very cover-oriented. Whether this means that they also are unwilling to feed is a different point. Regardless of their willingness to bite, they tend to be stapled to cover. I believe that this means that they have exchanged one key judgement of placement in the river--current efficiency--for another--rock proximity. Practically, that means that fish are more likely to be in front of rock than behind it.
Another common feature of cold-front fish is a simple unwillingness to feed. Since smallies are highly opportunistic, even the least willing can be made to strike if an appealing lure is dangled close. One way to make that approach sufficiently subtly is to drift your boat in an unusual way.
"Hunkered fish need a long time to make up their mind to take a lure. That calls for a patient approach that uses the current rather than fighting it. We smallie anglers rely on the violence and certainty of the usual hair-trigger reaction hits from smallies; cold-front fish are far more picky."
A last resort in the cold front, especially if water quality isn't perfect, is the provoking lure. Generally I reach for the lures fish can examine and will hold--Senkos, tubes, jig-and-pig, and grubs come to mind, with Flukes in the next level. But one surprisingly effective technique is to go with the most obnoxious provokers. I've had several days where fish wouldn't take realistic lures, but would nail a Chug-bug or buzzbait. I think this is because they're edgy and irritable. My wife confirms the fact that I'm an expert in pushing the edgy or irritable over the line into explosive action.
Published on River Smallies.com with permission
Dave Motes is a frequent contributor to River Smallies.com and can be contacted at dcmdcm8@aol.com.