Conditions on the water can change in the time it takes you to bait your hook. One minute the seas are calm, the next a 40 mph wind is blowing buckets of rain into your face. Fish are affected by the surface weather, too. Many feed off insects that land on the water. Changes in temperature, rainfall and other weather factors influence their behavior.

The best way to stay safe and optimize your odds for a good catch is to carry good weather gear with you. That's as true standing on the shore as it is cruising on a boat. You need to know when to take shelter and it helps to know why the fish aren't biting.

Good weather instruments will provide a big assist in solving those problems.

There are a variety of tools the smart fisherman can take advantage of, including an anemometer. These hand-held units measure current wind speed and direction, maximum wind gusts and calculate an average for you. All those pieces of information are useful and it helps to have a unit that can store the values so you can cycle through them.

A barometric gauge measures air pressure. At home, that's usually no more than an interesting factoid. TV weathermen rarely even bother to report it anymore. But on the water that little piece of information can be a lifesaver. As pressure drops worsening weather is often not far behind. Air pressure is closely associated with changes in temperature, the chances of rain in the near future and other vital facts. Having a way to measure the current air pressure and the trend can be very useful for safe fishing.

The temperature, of course, interests everybody. It affects how we dress, where we'll steer the boat and the odds of that big trout you've been chasing coming out to play or not. It also affects the odds of rain in the offing and other weather phenomenon. An accurate gauge that tells both the cabin and outdoor temperatures is even more useful on the water than at home.

Weather instruments today often integrate all these features. There are units that will provide digital readouts for indoor and outdoor temperature, display air speed, direction, and pressure and even measure the amount of rainfall received over a period of time. They can include sunrise and sunset times, phases of the moon and storm alerts, too.