Those Weather Forecasters NEVER Get It Right!

I dare say anglers everywhere have expressed that sentiment at one time or the other, or may have heard buddies sound off with something similar. Right?

Consider this example of a fella who was planning a fishing trip after he got off work. Just 90 minutes before heading out the door, he had checked the forecast, and it called for only 9-mph winds.

By the time he got to the river, though, the winds were sustained in the high teens, with gusts north of 20 mph.

"The weatherman flat out missed the forecast!" he said. "No two ways about it!"

Or take this example of a guy who headed out fishin' after the forecaster called for no chance of rain, let alone any bad storms. He subsequently got caught at the wrong end of a heavily timbered, 200-acre lake in his johnboat that only had a 30-pound transom trolling motor and a 45-pound bow-mount trolling motor.

"Literally, I was about as far as I could get from the ramp when it first rumbled out of nowhere. I put my motors on high and headed back, but navigating around all the trees was time-consuming. And it got to me while I still had a few hundred yards to go, not including the fact I then had to cross the main lake. It was not a fun experience!" Take a look for yourself, by clicking on this link, which will take you to a video of the experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udItbQwj74o&t=1096s.

There's also this example of a kayaker who was fishing a narrow cove with a heavy tree canopy that blocked out most of the sky when he suddenly felt a wind shift and temperature drop.

"I popped out of the cove and found dark skies, with lightning and thunder approaching," he explained. "Luckily, my launch point was in the other direction...almost 2 miles away, however.

"So now I had to make a choice: Take the shorter path over open water, with lightning all about, or take the longer path, skirting the shore. My normal pedaling cruise speed is about 3 mph, but I decided to kick it into overdrive and risk open water.

"When I hit 5.8 mph, my Yak Attack transducer arm came shooting out of the water. I folded it up quickly and kept going, with the storm closing in. By the time I made it to the docks, I was sucking wind. But now I had to get the kayak out of the water, load it on my CTug, then pull it up a big hill to store in my hotel. I didn't even bother draining it or breaking it down. That was a good thing, because about a minute after I put it in storage, the skies opened up, and it got really nautical out there.

"Lesson Learned: Keep the weather alerts energized on my cellphone."

As one angler explained, "It's not really how often the forecasters are wrong that's the issue...it's how far off they are when they're wrong. A few weeks back, the locals said it was gonna be 80 and cloudy. When the day arrived, it was 96, and not a cloud in the sky. That's not even close. My hatred stems from pure jealousy. Who doesn't want a job where you can blatantly lie to people over and over, and it's completely acceptable?"

Yet another angler saw it like this, "I mean...really...who cares what the weather report is, or how accurate it is, as long as it's coming out of her mouth?" relating, of course, to the young lady doing the weather reporting in this photo.

Of course, there's always the hard-core anglers who come prepared for whatever the weather gods wish to hand out. They just don some rain gear and get with it, as the young lady in this video is doing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP1WqQaSCUM&t=401s.