Last week, it seemed as if the bass in my home lake here in Southern California were beginning to fall into their autumn patterns.  Surface temp was 73 degrees and the weather had been fairly stable, so I wasn't surprised to catch a 1/2 dozen bass on a whopper plopper during the first 90 minutes of the day (even a 13 lb catfish got in on the topwater action!!).  As the day progressed, the fish stayed active, hitting jerkbaits & Ned rigs as they moved either deeper or to the shade of weedlines or docks.  

 

With that in mind, I took a look at the upcoming weather report and chose to flip my schedule around in order to fish today (Friday).  A small front was forecast to move through in the morning & early afternoon and I wanted to take advantage of the daylong low light conditions.  Southern California doesn't get many cloudy days in the summer & fall, but when we do, the bass typically put the feedbag on.  True to form, we had a mostly cloudy day with a few sprinkles, and with the surface temp still at 73 degrees, I expected an onslaught of activity.

 

Boy was I wrong.  Despite the perfect conditions, I couldn't find any fish willing to chase.  After 2 hours of rotating through baits, I had only caught 2 fish and had one other bite & miss.  As I cruised by a dock, I wondered if there was any chance the fish were hanging out under the docks, even though all signs pointed that they wouldn't be.  I skipped a TRD Ned rig under the dock & immediately hooked up.  As the day progressed, 18 of the next 20 fish I caught were under docks, even though the sun was nowhere to be found (the other two fish were caught buried down in deep weedbed).  A couple of docks gave up multiple fish, but only on casts skipped deep back under them.  Casts around the perimeter of the dock were fruitless.  I might have caught more for the day, but every time I went 15 minutes or so without a dock bite, I assumed the fish might be moving out, so I would experiment with other tactics.  That would result in nothing, so I would go back to skipping docks & begin hooking up again.

 

I am glad I figured out where the fish were at and how to catch them, but I have no idea why they were acting as if it were a bright sunny summer day.

 

 

Sounds like maybe the atmospheric pressure had already begun changing and possibly pushed the fish deep into cover despite it not being cloudy, just my .02. 

Could be, we get so few overcast days, I don't think to check the barometer to see if it is matching the low light conditions. 

And the weather call for heatwave coming again next week, close to triple degit in my area ?.