21 Proven Tips to Catch Fish on Cloudy & Overcast Days
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We can’t pick our weather when we go fishing but cloudy or overcast skies can actually make for some great fishing if you are prepared.
Reduced sunlight makes fish harder to find and less predictable but it can really spike their feeding activity. Let’s take an in-depth look at how to catch these fish and what tricks you can use to really master cloudy fishing.
How to catch fish during cloudy or overcast conditions. The key to catching fish on cloudy or overcast days is locating them. These fish will be out away from cover looking for food so throwing moving baits or trolling is a great way to cover a ton of water and catch these spread out fish.
If you can’t find the fish in shallow water, head for the nearest deeper hole near shallow water, as fish will congregate here in big numbers chasing bait.
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Do Fish Bite During Cloudy & Overcast Conditions?
Fish will feed all day long under any weather condition as long as food is available is able to be ambushed. You can find fish very willing to feed during cloudy or overcast conditions.
As opposed to sunny afternoons where fish will be holding very tight to shady cover, fish can roam freely when the sun is reduced overhead.
This will make bass and other species of fish search out food and become more active. While cloudy conditions make fish more eager to feed and hunt, it makes them harder to pattern and locate.
You can’t simply fish tight to cover and shady locations. Instead, you need to fish moving baits to locate solitary roaming fish. The trick is to cover a ton of water and draw strikes from fish setting up ad hoc ambushes.
Before we get to the tips, if you want to learn all the secrets for catching bass on cloudy days, check out this awesome article I wrote. This is one of my most popular articles because cloudy day bass fishing can be so tricky to figure out.
Learn everything you need to catch more and larger bass on overcast days. To learn the best time of day to catch trout and catfish, check out these two informative articles.
21 Tips for Catching Fish during the Day
1. Fish Moving Baits
The best time to throw a moving bait lure is on cloudy or overcast days. Fish will be out away from cover because they don’t need the shade anymore. They will be out looking for food and because they are spread out, they will be tougher to locate.
By throwing moving baits like a lipless crankbait, spinnerbait, or chatterbait, you will cover a ton of water quick and fish will find you. That is my first and maybe most important tip.
2. Fish Near Cover, Not Into It
Unlike on sunny days where fish will be holding right in cover for shade during the middle of the day, cloud cover affords the opportunity to leave the shade. Sunlight is harsh on fish and makes it hard for them to see.
But darker skies makes the water much easier for fish to see in and hunt for prey. Fish may still loosely associate with cover but they won’t be under it anymore.
They will be nearby but out hunting. Throw your lures away from nearby shade and cover as much water as you can.
3. Throw Realistic Lures in Clear Water
In clear water, fish will be paying attention to detail. Select lures that look like a baitfish. Think shad, shiner, or bluegill patterns. You will need to fool the fish because they will be studying that lure as it swims by.
If it doesn’t look real, they won’t go after it. The clearer your water is, the more natural the lure you will need to throw. This is especially true under overcast skies because fish can see well.
4. Throw Bold Lures in Cloudier Water
Now when the water is stained or muddier, you will actually be better off using bolder colors. Instead of natural tones to mimic baitfish, go with fire tigers, chartreuses, bright reds, yellows, whites, and oranges.
You want a color that fish can pick up in that stained water and grab onto before it swims out of reach. You could also implement some gold spinner blades too if the water is really stained. Going with bold colors works great under sunny or cloudy skies.
5. Use Fishing Electronics
When fish are spread out and roaming on cloudy days, they can be tough to locate. They will very loosely associate with cover but aren’t reliant upon it. Finding these can be a lot harder so having good fishing electronics on your boat can make a huge difference.
A good fish finder can help you determine water temperature and depth, find underwater features that draw in fish, and locate fish and schools of baitfish.
All these are vital information to have when trying to locate roaming fish. You don’t need a fish finder to catch these fish but you will find them and catch them a lot easier with one.
6. Get a Castable Fish Finder if You Bank Fish
If you fish from the bank as much as I do, you cannot use typical fishing electronics as boat anglers can. But in recent years, there have been a large amount of castable fish finders have entered the market. These devices have small floating transducers that you cast out.
As you slowly reel it in, it will canvas the water below and paint a picture for you on your smartphone. I recently got a Deeper Chirp castable fish finder that I really like. It accurately shows be water temperature, water depth, bottom contours, drop-offs, humps, and vegetation.
Most importantly, it also shows me baitfish locations and the presence of bigger fish. If you are having a hard time catching fish on a cloudy day, this may be something you find extremely valuable. If you want to learn more about the Deeper Chirp Castable Fish Finder, check out the customer reviews on Amazon.
7. Factor in Seasonality
Seasonality can play a big factor on fish behavior and their response to overcast conditions. Fish will be most active feeding when they are the most comfortable. Just like people, fish don’t like extremes in weather temperature.
They don’t feed aggressively when they are too hot or too cold. These conditions will make them sluggish and more interested in seeking comfort than food. During the summer, fish will be interested in keeping cool and cloudy conditions will give bass more favorable feeding situations.
They will be very willing to feed when the cloud cover cools down the water. During the winter, cloud cover will have the opposite effect and make fish slow down their feeding. Sunny winter weather will be better for cold fish.
8. Try Live Bait
Live bait is the ticket to catching fishing under any condition, especially when locating fish becomes harder. Nothing outfishes live bait under normal circumstances.
While there are absolutely lures that will outfish live bait under special circumstances such as a reaction jerk bait for bass that aren’t hungry, live bait will usually be your best bet.
Just be careful when fishing with live bait. While it will catch you more fish, fish have a tendency to swallow your hook or get gut hooked on live bait way more than with lures.
Either use a bobber and set the hook earlier or use a circle hook if you plan on releasing what you catch. Corn will also work great for carp, catfish, and trout.
9. Avoid Glittery Lures on Cloudy Days
I love fishing lures or artificial baits with a little sparkle on days where it makes sense. When you fish a baitfish underwater on a sunny day, you will see shine and shimmer coming off their scales as they move through the water. But on cloudy days, you won’t. Fish your lures the same way.
One of my favorite lures to use is a Zoom Salty Super Fluke in natural colors. On cloudy days, I will pick a ‘smoking shad” color because it looks very natural and has minimal sparkle.
If you fish with a lure with a ton of shimmer on a cloudy day, it just won’t look right to sharp-eyed fish. You may still earn bites but you’d be better off with a more natural look.
10. Try Underspins
Underspin lures are one of the best fish-producing lures out there that few anglers are using. An underspin is usually a soft plastic swimbait with a small willow blade that protrudes beneath the bait. They provide just a little extra shimmer and flash to draw in fish.
On warmer days, swim that bait in at a steady quick pace. The added flash will make it look like a single baitfish fleeing and vulnerable. On colder days, I like to slowly drag that bait along the bottom.
I don’t even care if it is dragging bottom the whole time. That blade dragging along the bottom will produce sound and kick up a little mud. Bass will come after it.
11. Pay Attention to Hook Fish are Getting Hooked
Once you get a fish on the line, check to see how that fish is hooked. Is it lip hooked with only a single barb of the back treble hook catching? That tells me the fish wasn’t fully committed to eating that lure. What about when the fish is hooked on the outside of the mouth?
That sounds more like the fish wanted to kill the bait rather than eat it. If you notice these types of hookups, your bait isn’t what they really want. Now if you get a fish that is hooked deep in the roof of the mouth, you are using the correct lure.
12. Solid Colors for Overcast Fishing
On overcast days, it is a good idea to pick baits that have a solid profile and solid colors. These baits will be easier for fish to locate in water that isn’t rich in sunlight. Go for natural colors or dark colors. Black, purple, and dark blue really stand out on cloudy days.
Those solid dark colors will provide a good enough profile for fish to lock onto and grab as it moves by. I especially like dark colors for finesse fishing with a worm or jig on overcast days.
13. Experiment with Retrieve Speeds & Cadence
When these fish are roaming, they may be responding to different stimuli around them. Vary up your cadence and your retrieval speed.
Try a steady retrieve or one with sharp pumps breaking up the retrieve. Also, mix and match with retrieve speed. Fish will respond better to faster speeds when the weather is warmer and slower speeds in colder water.
14. Topwater can be Awesome
Look up at the sky with the sun directly overhead. Now, look up at the sky on an overcast day with plenty of cloud cover. Which one is more enjoyable? Bass and other fish don’t want to track topwater baits on bright blue-bird sky days. It hurts their eyes.
They will still hit topwater, especially in the morning and late afternoon when the sun is low in the sky. But if you want to really kill it on the topwater frog or popper, fish on days with very minimal sunshine showing. The fish will be watching the surface of the water for food.
15. Dry Flies Work well under Cloudy Skies
And just like a frog or popper works great under overcast skies, so too does a dry fly for all you fly fishermen out there.
Trout spend much of their time on sunny days looking down not up for insect larva. Cloudy skies really open up the upper layer of the water for them to search for food. Dry flies work best under less bright skies.
16. Start Trolling to Find Fish
One of my favorite ways to catch trout in big water reservoirs is by trolling. You can also catch striped bass, pike, walleye, and many others this way. If you can’t find fish that are spread out, there is no better way to fish a ton of water and locate fish than by trolling.
Troll at a slow speed at varying depths along points, drop-offs, and other features that will attract fish. Once you get bites, you can either troll back over that area again or drop anchor and start casting.
17. All Else Fails, Fish Deeper Fish
If you are having trouble catching fish in shallower water near cover, try fishing much deeper. During the summer, many fish will head to deeper holes adjacent to shallow bays with weeds because the water is much cooler but the weeds provide food nearby.
During the winter, almost all fish will be in these deeper holes because they are actually warmer than the surrounding shallower areas.
If you aren’t catching fish in shallow water, head for the nearest deep hole. Fish jigs, spoons, soft plastics, or dead diving crankbaits. Do whatever you need to get your baits down to the fish.
18. Keep Up with Weather Forecast
Changes, even subtle ones, in the weather, can create big ripples in your fishing success. Sudden breaking of the cloud cover can send fish quickly to cover where you will be able to target them a lot easier.
Fishing before a storm can be the best fishing you will ever have and after a cold front arrives, it can be some of the slowest. Keep aware of what your weather will soon do and react accordingly.
19. Try Middle of the Day
The middle of the day is oftentimes the worst time to fish for bass and other species on sunny days. But on cloudy days, the middle of the day can be awesome. Fish won’t be as docile in the shade. They will instead be out hunting and trying to explore new waters.
You can still fish early morning and late afternoon because these time windows will always be good but the middle of the day can be just as lucrative. To learn what time of day is best to catch fish, check out this article. To learn the best time of day to catch bass, you really need to read this article I wrote.
20. Observe Lake for Life & Signs
This one should be obvious to anyone who has ever fished before, but you really need to watch for signs of life around you. On cloudy days, fish, baitfish, and other life forms can do some tricky things you don’t often see on sunny days.
Watch the water around you for signs of bait breaking the surface, and boils indicating fish feeding, or frogs croaking on certain shorelines instead of others. Also, watch for shorebirds like cranes and herons. If they are favoring one shoreline, there is a good chance that is where the bait has gone and the bass will follow them.
21. Big Baits for Huge Bites
If you want to catch big fish, big baits are the easiest way to do it. On cloudy days, I really like to throw large swimbaits for big bass. You may not always catch a fish, but when you do, more often than not it will be a monster.
Determine what fish you are after and throw a bait that will attract the big fish of that species. Make it a meal worthy of a trophy fish. The trick is to pick a very realistic swimbait because you are trying to fool a very smart old fish. You could also get a reaction bite out of big fish with a large wake or glide bait and realism isn’t as important.
