When the wind changes direction and brings in cooler air, it usually starts with rain and fish know when the pressure and water temps change. This means fish get lockjaw and won’t eat. So, ask any Bass angler, where would you find Bass after a cold front and most if, not all will tell you in deeper water, holding tight to cover and it’s hard to get them to take their offerings. Well, that can be said for most fish. What do you do if you’re fishing with friends on the Cisco Chain for 10 days and you’re not catching fish? Well, that’s what happen to us 6 years ago and let me tell ya, fishing was the worst I have ever encountered. Did a cold front come though on our first day? Yes. Did another front come though on our fourth day? YES. Did these fronts affect the fishing? According to other people I talked with and friends at two bait shop, the answer was “nobody was catching fish” or very few fish were being caught. Oh, we would get one here and one there but nothing like we should have.

This week’s title is COLD FRONT SURPRISES because of the location of the fish we did catch. After hitting a few of our normal spots for perch the first day, NOTHING. Let’s try deeper rocks for Walleye. THAT DIDN’T WORK EITHER. How about we try working mid lake humps? NOPE. Deeper end of downed trees? NADA. How bout deeper weeds for any kind of fish? NOT A BITE.  Even my go to perch holes only gave up 4 nice perch, but we fished that spot for 45 minutes and I NEVER stay in a spot that long if we aren’t getting bites. Then, we got a call from friends three lakes over to join them, because they found a weed bed and were catching Crappie at 6 feet. We did add NINE Crappie over 14 inches to the live well, but this wasn’t the surprise I’m writing about. After the second front came though, same thing (COULDN’T CATCH MANY FISH) and after working the whole area where we caught those Crappie for close to an hour, not one of us got a hit.

Now for the COLD FRONT SURPRISE. On the way back to the cottage I wanted to give one smaller bay a shot. It’s 22 feet at the opening of this bay and it tapers off to 7 feet as you get into the weeds. Well, in the next hour, four of us caught, 14 nice Perch, 3 Walleyes and (2) 17 inch and a 21-inch Smallmouth Bass. I will say, those 19 fish in less than an hour was a lot better than other people were doing. So, we learned that fishing patterns aren’t always true and when you’re not catching fish, keep trying different depth, baits, locations and you might be surprised at the spots you can find fish.

When cold fronts come through, fishing location and methods have to change if you want to catch fish. The fish that were shallow will move to heavy cover, deeper water or nearest drop-offs. They could be in the middle of thick weed near the bottom or holding tight to deep structure like rock/gravel. Can these fish be caught? If you switch to live bait, (smaller minnows, leeches or crawlers) and put that bait in front of them by jigging could be your best bet.

Also, that same week I had friends fishing in Canada and other friends fishing 150 miles west of us and they all told fishing sucked that same week. Didn’t have the heart to tell them we did ok, lol