5 Reasons Why Wind is Your Friend in Bass Fishing

One spring afternoon with a fishing trip on tap, I almost pulled the plug and didn't go.

Why is that? Because a springtime weather front was getting ready to push through my area of Texas, complete with the threat of severe thunderstorms, lightning, hail and even a few tornadoes.

But the risk of severe weather wasn't until later on that evening and in truth, it wasn't the real reason that I almost scrubbed my afternoon trip.

What was the real culprit behind my hesitance to get out on the water? The southerly wind which was howling along at 20 miles per hour straight out of the south.

As I contemplated going or not going, a conversation I once had with my friend Bruce Hysmith, a recently-retired inland fisheries biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, brought a smile to my face.

And enough resolve to load up the tackle and head out the front door.

The gist of our conversation?

Simply this: When it comes to bass fishing for largemouths or smallmouths, more times than not, the wind is your friend.

A couple of hours later, I was really glad I had gone, landing the biggest fish of the year, a hefty largemouth bass pushing towards the 8-pound mark.

Now that I think about it, another fishing trip on a similar day of weather conditions produced the year's best overall fishing – for this writer at least – with several big bass being landed by yours truly.

And, my good North Texas bass fishing friend, Andrew Means, went out on a spring day – with thunderstorms rolling by to the south and a weather front on the way – to find about as epic a day of bass fishing as one could ever hope to have.

By the trip's end, Means and his angling pal, Jason Blankenship, had used a canoe to fight their way over to a good area on a regional lake where they proceeded to land a good number of quality bass.

In fact, with most fish weighing in at 3 pounds or better, the pair of anglers used Senko-type plastics and Chatterbaits to land some real hawgs including a couple of 7-pound behemoths.

And that doesn't include an even larger bass that broke Mean's line and his angler's heart.

"It was the best fishing day of our lives," said Means, a veteran bass fishing enthusiast. And with a pile of big North and East Texas bass to his credit, such a statement is saying something indeed.

While they aren't always the most fun days to fish, windy days put a chop on the water that can bring the guard down of wary big bass and cause it to whack a spinnerbait that happens to be rolling by.

Obviously, as long as the wind doesn't make water bodies unsafe to fish and navigate, the wind can indeed be a bass angler's friend whatever part of the country they are fishing, especially during the spring months.

Why is that so? My biologist friend Hysmith, identifies at least five reasons why a windy day can be highly productive during the spring and on into early summer.

First, it can help drive the buffet line for a water body’s entire food chain all the way from phytoplankton on up to baitfish, like threadfin shad, and on to the predatory game fish species, like largemouth bass.

In other words, when a south wind is piling water onto a north facing bank, that’s a good place to concentrate your day's fishing efforts, says my biologist pal.

"Usually, everything is wind driven," said Hysmith. "On the side of a lake where the wind is piling the water into, you’ll find plenty of plankton, and in turn, plenty of shad.

"And that of course, brings in the game fish like bass and stripers."

From Hysmith’s own personal fishing experience as a fisheries scientist and an angler, it's almost always better to cast into the wind rather than with it.

"From my experience, you can catch four times the fish casting into the wind than casting with the wind,” said Hysmith.

Before you roll your eyes and think about the potential for plenty of backlash bird nests on your baitcasting reel, consider the reasoning of the biologist who began his fisheries career with a master’s degree and a research position at Oklahoma State University.

"I think the reason is that when you cast into the wind, that's the way that the fish is oriented," said Hysmith, a former president of the American Fisheries Society. "He's sitting there waiting for the bait to come from that direction."

Hysmith notes a second reason wind can help an angler during the spring, the chop on the water can conceal an angler’s presence. This is especially important when largemouth and/or smallmouth are up shallow to spawn.

In other words, if bass can't see an angler either on the bank or in a boat, fish are more likely to take a swat at a lure as it saunters by.

The retired biologist then notes a third reason wind is an angler's friend, the fact a bass is more apt to be aggressive when there's a chop on the water.

Why? Because the fish can't see the bait as well as it can on a calm day and has less time to get a good look and react. This fact alone helps explain why a spinnerbait – which isn't the most realistic looking bait out there – can be such a deadly angling tool on a windy day.

Add in the fact bass feel more secure from overhead avian predators and it's easy to believe bass are more apt to bite when the wind is blowing, a concept that can be especially true on clear waters harboring ultra-spooky bass.

Just ask 2016 Bassmaster Classic champ Edwin Evers about how the wind helped turn on the big bass on the clear water flats of the Elk River section found on Oklahoma's Grand Lake o' the Cherokees.

After two days of relatively calm early spring conditions on Grand Lake, E-Squared used last-day windy conditions to land a giant Classic bag of five bass weighing in at a stunning 29 pounds, 3 ounces.

The super bag of bucketmouth bass was good enough for Evers to claim the Classic trophy, his first win in the Super Bowl of Bass Fishing thanks to the biggest final-day comeback ever staged by a Classic pro.

"I didn't know there (were) that many fish there (in the Elk River section of the lake)," said Evers. "But (the first day), it's dead flat calm and you just don't catch them (there when it's like that).

"That Elk (River section), it's so finicky," he added. "I told I don't know how many people that it won't be won in the Elk and then here I am and I won it in the Elk."

All because of the final-day winds that blew in Evers' favor.

"It's a finicky area and yet it's one of those areas that gives up monster bags and that's what I needed (on the final day)," said Evers. "I knew I had the right conditions for the Elk (on the final day with the wind blowing)."

If the wind blowing can help one of the best bass anglers of modern times win the Bassmaster Classic, then I'm pretty sure it's important for weekend warriors like the rest of us to use to our advantage too.

A fourth reason wind-driven water can actually help a bass angler is because it helps to energize fish in a given water body, thanks in part to the increase of oxygen being introduced into the water.

In other words, the wind is the natural version of a water spray device used on some small lakes and ponds to keep the oxygen content up during warmer water conditions.

"Wind adds oxygen to the water," agreed Hysmith. "You can get a little oxygen by diffusion as a result of a lot of wind induced agitation on the surface of the water.

"The wind agitates, and thereby, it adds oxygen to the water."

Loosely translated into laymen's terms, the fish are a lot more frisky and willing to feed when the water is juiced up with more dissolved oxygen.

Do keep in mind bass anglers must use ample prudence with respect to the presence of a strong wind.

Hysmith agrees safety must be first and foremost and no angler should ever venture forth onto a lake when conditions are unsafe on the water.

But he also contends when an angler can safely come and go on a blustery day, there is a fifth and final benefit to fishing a warm, windy day in the spring.

“It keeps the mosquitoes off of you,” he chuckled.

No wonder when it comes to bass fishing, the wind is indeed an angler's friend.