why is it that every time I'm having a crusher day like today on the O.P and it starts blowing and raining hard the fish just turn off? what do you really think?

They didn't turn off for us ... in fact, we'd hooked 3 fish in about 15 minutes before the guys got just too cold and we headed in with 1/3 of the drift left :p

It will happen though at times ... why, if you can have ESP with a steelhead, you'll know. If not, it will be one of those mysteries of the fish that we'll never figure out.

I grew up steelhead fishing the southern Oregon coast and my dad was a firm believer in barometric pressure as it related to fishing.

His theory was that while sometimes steelhead would turn on right before a big drop in barometric pressure (which would explain Bob nailing them right as the storm approached yesterday) generally once the you got passed the leading edge of the storm the fish would generally not bite as well as they would on a level or idealy a rising barometer.

A lot of times we'd get up in the morning to head out and he'd check the barometer, if it was falling fast we'd just head back to bed.

Great question, I've always noticed that fishing is better when the weather is stable, worse when a big change is coming. Never found any scientific information to back it up though.

Beware! Math ahead!
Here’s my take on the whole thing:

A column of air 1 inch square and as tall as the atmosphere exerts 14.7 lbs of pressure (14.7 psi).
In contrast, a column of water 1 inch square need only be 33 feet high to exert the same pressure. Water is MUCH heavier (duh!).

Weather pressure is usually expressed in millibars. PSI (lbs/square inch) is a more user friendly unit. 1 mbar = 0.014504 psi.

Air pressure during weather changes usually fluctuates from as little as 10 to as many as 60 mbar. If you do the math, this equates (if I did it correctly) to a change of as little as 0.14504 psi to as much as .87 psi.

Think of the water column. To experience a change of 0.14504 to .87 psi (equivalent to weather changes), a fish needs to move vertically up or down 0.7 inches to 5 inches. (calculations excluded, but: change of 1 ft in depth = change of 2.25psi; 1 ft = 12in.)

A change of 0.7 to 5 inches is equivalent to simple wave action in the water.

I don’t know, but to me it seems unlikely that the pressure changes in the weather could have significant influence on fish behavior, when significantly larger changes in pressure occur for the fish simply by moving around in the water column.

Maybe rain on the surface, clouds affecting lighting, etc. could better explain the phenomenon? What do you think?

Don't know about steelhead, but I've heard that blackmouth will feed heavily 18-24hrs before a storm. Heard this from a guy that fishes blackmouth a lot and used to work in a hatchery that had on-demand feeders for the fish... he said he used to be able to tell what the weather was going to be like by looking at how full the fedder bins were... ie., how fast the fish were eating.

It makes sense that if the fish, especially river fish, can sense when it's going to rain and the river is going to go out, then why wouldn't they feed heavily before this happens, while they could still see their prey?

-N.

Bob,
I just talked to one of those guys and they said that on Sunday it started out fairly nice then just went to snot in a hurry. He said if you hadn`t splashed him with that oar and got him soaked,,(just kidding) but he did say if he hadn`nt got wet it wouldn`t have been so bad..
Staying dry is most of the battle when trying to keep semi-warm..