Being sat in a tackle shop i get to see an awful lot of people who are going fishing but it never fails to amaze me how many folks don't take the swell, wind and tidal conditions into account when deciding where and when to go.
With this in mind i figured i should share the tools i use to help me.
In my opinion, the biggest step an occasional angler can make is to go from "were going on a Friday night because that's when we always go" to optimizing there fishing time and going when the tides and conditions are the best. Don't get me wrong, i personally don't have all the time in the world to go fishing. Six days a week i'm out of the house for around ten and a half hours and like everyone else, i have to make time for my family. On average i try to get at least two session's a week, maybe more if we are catching fish but there are plenty weeks that I'll not bother at all. I've given up flogging dead horses. If it's not worth going, it's not worth going. My point though is that you need to think about the best times to going as opposed to just going for the sake of it. Maybe try going for 2 short session's as opposed to one marathon.
At the start of every week I'll get together with woody and have a good look through the time and size of the tide's, the speed and direction of the wind and the general weather conditions. We'll then throw in a few idea's of where is likely to fish in the given condition's for that day but the critical thing is that we never commit to fishing any mark on any day but more make a general plan and then see how thing's pan out with the weather and wind and then make a decision on the day. You all know how thing's can quickly change from what was forecast earlier on in the week.
I try not pay a great deal of attention to one website for weather condtions but more look around several sites and try to build up my own picture of what i think will happen.
Below are a list of sites i use to try and predict what i think will happen and thus plan my week's fishing from there.
Magic Seaweed is the site i spend the most time looking at. It gives you the swell, the wind speed and direction, the tide sizes and times and a general overview of the weather. There are also eyeball reports of many beaches where users of the site upload the real time conditions that they see right in front of them. They also have a good selection of webcams (but generally only on the North coast beaches) which helps even more. One tip i would give you is that the swell and wave height are rarely correct. The general size is always accurate but they are measured on offshore wave buoy's and it tends to lose a bit of it's sting by the time it reaches the shore. My personal method is to knock a third off of the wave height and that is normally about right. They also have an excellent app that is easy to use and seems to be more reliable then some other weather app's.
Fishing wx is another site that gives you an awful lot of information. You have a quick overview of the week and then a much more detailed look at everyday. Weather wise it seems to be the most accurate site i look at but if anything it tends to be on the optimistic side. Again, it is easy to navigate but the site itself can be frustrating as sometimes it takes an age to load pages and sometimes doesn't bother at all. It's worth persevering with though.
Wind Guru is worth cross checking with the above sites for the wind speed and direction. Just try not to pay a great deal of attention to the gust speed's under the main wind speed as not matter what is happening, it seems to love giving silly gust speeds which rarely come to fruition. They also have a great app that is well worth a download.
Tiger24 has some very useful webcams if you fish the North coast. But for a reason unbeknown to me, if i leave a tab open for a while it seems to crash my browser every time, without fail. I don't know if anyone else suffers with this but the website is definitely safe-I've just put it down to a flash conflict.
Now I can't tell you when the best time to be going to your selected venue are but it always pay's to make mental notes when the fish come on and when they go off. The more you persevere with a mark the knowledge you will build of it and the less time you will waste waiting for the fish.
With the bloody forecast we have had to cancel our trip to Chesil again this weekend. But it's not the end of the world. The sea is getting up and the wind is picking up. As I've said in a previous blog, there is nothing better then fishing in a 10ft sea and 30mph southwesterly and if I'm being honest, i was a little bit gutted to be missing out on my favorite conditions. Hopefully in my next blog you'll be seeing some pictures of the lunker Bass we have hauled out.
If any of you guy's have any other websites you use for session planning feel free to let me know in the comments and I'll update the blog.
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