Have you ever stepped out of the car, been hit by a powerful gust of wind, and thought, I might as well have stayed home? Wind is often considered a negative when fly fishing, impeding the angler’s ability to cast and generally making for an unpleasant outing. I grew up on a frigid and shelterless island called Iceland, where it’s never a question of whether the wind is going to be blowing, only how hard. In such a place, if you want to go fishing, you have to be able to deal with the wind, and in learning to do so, I have come to love fishing in windy conditions.
Initially, as a kid, I would be dismayed by days with heavy wind. It became harder to cast, no fish would be rising, and sometimes the wind-driven waves would discolor the lakes and rivers by rooting up bottom substrate. Now, though, I have begun seeking out days with wind, using it to my advantage, because it helps me locate fish, makes them less spooky, and often gives me the water all to myself.
California is generally a windy place, to the surprise of people like me who migrated here with ideas of endless beaches and consistently perfect weather. With its massive valleys, ocean shorelines, and topographical changes, the Golden State is often like a wind tunnel. Unlike Iceland, however, there’s usually plenty of cover at smaller rivers and ponds, while bigger lakes and the ocean require the angler to face the wind head-on. My love affair with wind has led to some awesome fishing memories, whether it’s for massive brown trout in Iceland or largemouth bass in California lakes. Wind can be your friend, if you’re open to learning how to work with it.
Casting into Wind
What I learned early on while fishing in Iceland, and especially when I started guiding some world-famous casters, is that pretty casts have no place in adverse conditions. Having seen a world-champion distance caster struggle to get the line out during an average day on a salmon river in Iceland, I realized that the classic techniques taught by casting instructors around the world will often work to the detriment of the angler. Remember, you’re fishing, not just casting. Instead of trying to perfect your Brad Pitt in A River Runs Through It impersonation, keep your cast low to the water by dropping the casting hand more in the forward cast and driving the loop low and tight, as opposed to an open loop that will be affected more by the wind. Double hauling is extremely useful on such days, and getting your line speed up will make your time on the water much more pleasant. The faster the line arrives at the target, the less time you give the wind to mess up your accuracy. Most people would be surprised by how much of casting is just in your head. For a beginner, gaining confidence with a specific technique is much more important than trying initially to master the details of every technique.
Gear Up for Wind
The right rod and line choices can also make your life much easier, and adverse conditions are where you notice the limitations of your gear. Fast-action rods are much better suited for windy conditions — they keep your loop size smaller, and smaller loops make for better control during days when the wind is blowing hard enough to take your car door off. Again, the faster your line is moving, the less time in the air it has to be affected by the wind, allowing your fly to reach its target more effectively and accurately than if it was moving slower. Line selection, though, is more important than rod selection when casting into wind. You need a weight-forward design to punch the line out, but while a line with a short, heavy head will load your rod more easily and seem like the best choice, I find that a shorter, heavier head is also thicker, and thickness is your enemy in windy conditions. Its surface area leads to more drag in the air, slowing down the line and making it easier for the wind to alter its course. And because the head is short, the very thin running line behind it will reduce your ability to control the cast at longer distances, leading to less accuracy. Easier to cast into wind, as well as mend, are lines with longer integrated heads, closer to 40 feet in length, which lead to an overall thinner head — and less air resistance — for a given line weight.
The downside to long-head weight-forward lines is that they require better timing during the cast than shorter-head lines, so I wouldn’t recommend beginners start with them. Begin instead with an integrated shorter head (say, 30 feet or less) to gain confidence in the wind. Then, as your casting improves, move to lines with longer heads that will improve your control and presentation.
On windy days, I also like to fish intermediate and other sinking lines, rather than a floater, because their density will drop the line beneath wind-caused surface chop. This density also makes them easier to cast into the wind than a floating line.
Another aspect of windy days that helps fly fishers is that wind provides noise, disturbance, and often murkier conditions that make the fish less spooky. This allows the fly angler to be less stealthy, use heavier tippets, and get closer to the fish than in calmer conditions. Because windy conditions are often when the biggest fish are caught, it is helpful to know that you can use heavier tippet connections to your fly. For example, when I’m streamer fishing for bass on calmer days, I use a 12-pound tippet to connect to my fly, which is plenty to fight most fish, but is vulnerable to being broken off on sunken trees, rocks, weeds, and so on. But on windier days, it’s no problem going up to 25-pound tippet, giving me more confidence to fish around heavier structures, and because the wind roots up sediment on the bottom, making the water murkier, I’m not compromising my presentation. Apply this same logic to fishing nymphs, smaller streamers, and even dry flies. In the wind, you’ll get away with more.
Using the Wind
I’ve fished during windstorms of 60 to 80 miles per hour on the south coast of Iceland when we were receiving the leftovers of hurricanes that hit the East Coast of the United States. I’ll be the first to admit that hail hitting your face at that speed is quite unpleasant — miserable, in fact. But these storms can concentrate fish on one side of the shoreline, especially on lakes, and often in quite predictable locations, and facing headfirst into the wind then is the way to go.
Also, the movement of surface water in lakes can concentrate plankton and other microorganisms that feed the prey sources of many fish, including insects and baitfish. This can lead to a feeding bonanza, which the fly angler will miss by hiding on the upwind side of the lake, where it’s easier to cast and more pleasant to stand. When the wind pushes waves off of points and small structures on the shoreline, it makes the previously featureless-looking shore resemble a river, creating pockets behind points and strong rips along beaches. Now all you have to do is read this water as you would a river and figure out where the food is coming from, and whether the target fish are eating plankton and insects pushed by the wind or forage fish feeding on those food sources. Using this information, you can identify the fish’s holding or ambush points and focus your efforts there.
Mud lines created by wind also help you see what is going on under the surface — reefs, flats, deeper pockets, and drop-offs can all be spotted by the color differences between the silt being rooted up from the bottom and the deeper water, which is clearer. This gives you a good idea of the bottom topography, which otherwise would be invisible on calmer days.
If you’re chasing fish feeding on insects, such as trout, carp, or bluegills, you may focus on different areas than if you’re targeting predatory fish feeding on baitfish, crayfish, and the like. Knowing what’s on the menu for your target species will help considerably when narrowing down your choice of fishing locations. Insects will be rooted up at shallower flats and beaches and pushed by wind-driven waves from the bottom substrate that usually keeps them safe into open areas where the fish can eat them. On windy days, foam lines often will form on lakes and rivers where the current pushes stuff on the surface into smaller areas, concentrating insects and other food items. These can be in the middle of a lake or along the shoreline. I’ve had great days targeting trout feeding on a caddis hatch in lakes when the wind picked up during the hatch, and the caddis and their pupae were collected in foam lines out in the middle. I floated my boat between the foam lines and cast a caddis emerger into them, catching trout after trout. As they say, foam is home.
An exception to this is when the fish are feeding on terrestrial insects such as grasshoppers, ants, and spiders. Then you want to place yourself with the wind at your back and watch as insects are blown from land into the water. Often, the fish will be found close to shore, picking these bite-sized protein bars off the surface. I’ve had great days chasing carp in reservoirs on the Central Coast when there were grasshoppers around and the wind was coming from the shoreline out into the lake. I splatted foamy hopper imitations at “clooping,” or rising carp and caught a lot, since the wind made them less spooky. Events like these are one of the few times when I’ve had great luck at lakes with the wind at my back.
Predatory fish, however, use the wind quite differently. A lot of the fish they prey on are ill equipped to deal with heavy currents, and wind-created currents can force these fish into quite predictable locations. Bluegills, for example, are not built for current, and when the wind picks up, they are often forced to congregate in spots sheltered from the wind — pockets behind rocks, points, cattails, and other structures where they get a reprieve from the wind-driven currents. This, in turn, means that the bass, which love to eat smaller bluegills, will be hunting in these areas, and targeting these pockets with bluegill imitations can lead to catching some big bass. In lakes with small baitfish, such as sticklebacks, minnows, or shad, the wind can concentrate these fish into areas, such as at shallow f lats and beaches, where they feed on food items uprooted by wave action, and where they similarly become vulnerable to predation by larger fish. Knowing where these areas are will help you locate the predatory fish eating these baitfish, whether they be brown trout, rainbow trout, or bass.
Making Wind your Friend
I have experienced days on highland lakes in Iceland chasing brown trout where massive waves would roll onto the shoreline, throwing small sticklebacks out of their hiding places and into easy reach of big, predatory browns. In such conditions, I’ve seen trout that normally stay deep in the lake come up and cruise the waves to feed on the abundant, vulnerable food being tossed up by the conditions. Here in California, I’ve experienced great largemouth bass fishing on the leeward side of lakes, where the wind churned up big mud lines along the banks, creating a great place for bass to hide while they ambush bluegills, shad, and smaller bass being tossed around by the wave action. Often I have had lakes to myself during such times, including banner days where I see boat after boat leaving the reservoir due to the wind.
These are general approaches to making use of windy conditions, but each body of water has individual characteristics that are worth tuning into, as well, and you can make your day more productive by keeping a journal about each day’s fishing, which will allow you to spot patterns in the fishing that might not be obvious if left unrecorded. I keep a journal for each day I go out for each individual body of water, noting air pressure, air temperature, water temperature, moon phase, how many fish were contacted, and anything else that’s noteworthy. I’ve found that wind direction and speed are big factors in discerning patterns that affect success or failure. Windy conditions are often looked upon as unfavorable, and many anglers have had bad experiences on days when they couldn’t get the line out and the weather was miserable. However, landing the fish of a lifetime while getting slammed in the face with constant wind can change one’s attitude. After that, you might start looking specifically for days with a certain wind direction or even wait for the worst weather to come through to go out and hit certain spots. Taking advantage of conditions that seem abysmal can bring fantastic rewards, and many of my biggest fish, whether in Iceland or in California, have been taken during days when I could barely stand outside.
