Rain, Sleet Or Snow Can’t Stop Anglers

Forecasting what the weather will be like tomorrow is a little like trying to predict whether the fish will bite the next day.

You win a few and you lose a lot.

In a way, weather forecasters have a little something in common with outdoor writers and fisheries biologists.

The weather forecasters, despite their high-tech equipment, still can’t predict with much of a degree of accuracy what the weather will be like in this part of the country during the winter and spring months.

Outdoor writers and biologists don’t have such high-tech stuff as a Doppler radar and satellites to help them predict whether the fish will bite. They can only report what the fish did yesterday.

The TV weather forecasters, dazzled by their Doppler, can pinpoint rain or snow showers that are pelting a tiny town, but that’s about all they can do. They can predict what their equipment tells them may happen tomorrow, but they’re wrong much of the time, particularly when I plan to go fishing.

That’s why fishermen and hunters usually take their predictions with a few grains of salt.

Most fishermen believe in that old adage: Go fishing when you can.

They listen to the weather forecasters, but, when those cheerful young men and women say rain or snow will fall tomorrow, they’ll go fishing anyway.

But not always. Some of us change our plans when we’re contemplating going fishing. When the weather is balmy the next day, we wish we hadn’t believed the forecasters. And vice versa.

Several days ago a friend and I, after hearing forecasters predict snow for the day we had planned to fish a Columbia Basin lake, foolishly decided to delay our trip for a day. On that latter day, the TV audiences had been told, the sun would shine and the temperature would rise into the high 40s.

The weather was as good as it gets for early March on the day we originally had planned to fish the lake. When we arrived on the day that was supposed to be sunny and balmy, the dark, brooding sky opened up and dumped a mixture of rain and snow on us. And the wind howled.

On the way home we assured one another that in the future we wouldn’t change plans. We’d go fishing regardless of the weather forecast.

One of my friends told me a few days ago that he and a neighbor had filled a 5-gallon bucket with perch at Sprague Lake. Many of the perch were 10 to 12 inches long. I reported their good luck and the lake swarmed with anglers the next few days. So what happens? The perch had lockjaw.

Last week my friend and neighbor returned to the lake and filled a bucket with perch. The neighbor caught one that measured 14 inches. So much for forecasting what fish will do.

Like other fishermen and hunters, however, most of us probably will be influenced by the weather forecasters. We’ve reached one conclusion: The new Doppler radar is not much better than the older technology in predicting weather.

Today’s weather forecasters are more positive in their weather predictions than the outdoor writers and biologists are when they suggest what the fish might do the next day.

The weather forecasters almost never use such qualifying words as “may” or “should.” They nearly always use the word “will.”

Outdoor writers and biologists quickly learn to say the fish “may” or “should” take anglers’ flies or lures the next day. They know that fish can and often are fickle. In nearly all cases, they report or talk about what the fish did yesterday.

Cautious outdoor writers rarely write that fishing “will” be good tomorrow. If one of their sources predicts good fishing, they quote that source.

Their problems are that many anglers are poor readers who have faulty memories. Those anglers don’t see the qualifying words or they don’t remember which outdoor writer made a prediction that turned out to be wrong.

While I was ice fishing for perch at a North Idaho lake, two anglers who were fishing near me were having trouble hooking enough fish to decorate the bottom of a small frying pan.

Said one: “Roskelley wrote that this lake was full of big perch and that the fishing was good. He sure got it wrong.” I kept quiet. There was no point, I figured, telling those men that a writer for a weekly paper, not me, had written that fishing “will” be good at that lake for big perch.

When weather forecasters are wrong, they rarely admit it. Maybe they think the people who believe in them will assume another weather forecaster will get the blame. , DataTimes MEMO: You can contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.