Ambient Pressure vs. Barometric Pressure

My Garmin has an ambient pressure gage on it and from what I can tell from article is that can change along with elevation. What I was hoping was that I could use that to predict fishing patterns like Joel was talking about with barometric pressure for help predicting a fish bite. Any thoughts or experience that would help on this discussion? I do realize that elevation has to do with ambient pressure, but to what extent I’m not sure. Thanks for help, Ray.

I think I found the answer to my question. I did a little experimenting on the unit and found the barometric pressure mode.

I’m gonna be an idiot and make an armchair analysis. It would seem that the impact of ambient/elevation pressure has on fish is a non-factor to some degree as everything is relative. Let me see if I can unpack that.

Fly a person from Minnesota in January to Florida and see what they wear. We have acclimated to the bitter cold here so 60 degrees in Florida may see us wearing shorts and t-shirts while the locals are wearing long sleeves and sweaters.

Conversely, since most fish I know about do not fly to different bodies of water with various changes in elevation, I would have to think they are acclimated to their elevation in a way that they only really know the differences applied upon them through barometric pressure.

To sum, it is not so much the overall pressure on a fish that changes their behaviors, rather it is the changes to their localized norm that would impact their behaviors.

I dunno though, just a guess. And playing devil’s advocate against my theory, there are fish that move up and down in elevation via streams and rivers…so there is that too.

Sounds like we have the making for a government grant application request here to do some research on the topic.

JD, it seems to me that you have alot of time in life to come up with such a creative theory. I did’t think about the fish going upstream. Well done.

JD, you get my nomination for your own ‘musings’ column in Field & Stream.

Ray Gylsen wrote:

My Garmin has an ambient pressure gage on it and from what I can tell from article is that can change along with elevation. What I was hoping was that I could use that to predict fishing patterns like Joel was talking about with barometric pressure for help predicting a fish bite. Any thoughts or experience that would help on this discussion? I do realize that elevation has to do with ambient pressure, but to what extent I’m not sure. Thanks for help, Ray.

I’d be interested to see how accurate the digital barometer is in those units, and if you’re able to correlate bite windows to them. Lots of times the barometric pressure reading you’re getting is from many miles away from where you’re actually fishing. Again, trends in the pressure rather than moment-to-moment readings are what you’re keying in on, but it’s still way cool!

Joel

troutbum wrote:

JD, you get my nomination for your own ‘musings’ column in Field & Stream.

Tell your friends, tell your relatives…I’ll be here all week.

Ray Gylsen wrote:

JD, it seems to me that you have alot of time in life to come up with such a creative theory.

Yeah, I probably do have too much time on my hands. lol! Just trying to make it to the weekend!