Weather forecasts can leave sportsmen out in cold

After a half-century of giving weather prognosticators the benefit of a doubt, I have decided they can't be trusted. Maybe not all of them but definitely most. In fact, I'm beginning to think they get together somewhere and enter into a secret pact in which they agree to provide forecasts that purposely mislead unwitting sportsmen.

I think they get some kind of devious pleasure from thinking about you or me being blown about by an "unexpected" wind storm while trying to catch a mess of fish or bag a few quail when we could be at home watching a football game had the forecast been more accurate.

Weathermen set up sportsmen by using what I call flexible terms -- words like clear, mild and breezy. Would and should are on that list as well.

"If you're heading outdoors tomorrow, you should have a great day," the weatherman says while standing next to his computer-generated weather map and fancy graphics. "Skies should be clear and temperatures mild with breezy conditions."

Sounds like a great day to be fishing. But you never know until you get outdoors and find out for yourself because terms such as clear, mild and breezy are relative. For instance, if the forecast calls for mild temperatures and the mercury reaches 30 degrees, a Minnesota angler would consider the forecast to be accurate. When the daytime temperature hits 30 degrees in Minnesota, people break out sunscreen and lay out next to their ice-fishing shacks.

Southern Nevadans, on the other hand, consider an 80-degree day to be mild. That gives a weatherman 50 degrees of flexibility to make someone happy.

Breezy is similar to mild. Until recently, I thought breezy meant light movements of air, just enough to make stiff leaves wiggle as they cling fast to their trees. So when the weather forecast last week called for clear skies, mild temperatures and breezy conditions, I decided to go fly-fishing for rainbow trout at one of the local ponds.

That's when I learned that breezy is as flexible as mild and can be applied by conniving weather forecasters to winds ranging from 1 to 30 mph, maybe more. In fact, the breeze was strong enough to blow my submerged nymph right past waiting trout -- so fast they couldn't catch up with the fly even if they wanted to.

After fighting the breeze for two or three hours, I decided it was time to untie the well-earned wind knot in my leader and head for the barn. Then just as I stuck my fly back in its box, the weatherman's breeze dropped to nothing, and some kid at the other end of the pond shouted, "Hey, I got one!"

And somewhere in the growing darkness I'm sure a weatherman snickered.

By the way, with the Nevada Department of Wildlife seasonal trout-stocking program under way, you could experience fishing action that is fair to good -- though sometimes becoming excellent -- in the next few months.

Freelance writer Doug Nielsen is a conservation educator for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. His "In the Outdoors" column, published Thursday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NDOW. Any opinions he states in his column are his own. He can be reached at intheoutdoorslv@gmail.com.