TOPIC:

Thinking about going out tomorrow morning heading to Gary lighthouse. Looking at NOAA wind forecast, it says waves less than 2’, but there is also a small craft warning out. Am I reading this wrong?

30 knot winds from the south on Sunday, would probably be fishable in close but would build quickly offshore.

If I were you I’d come outta portage n go west coming from pastric might be really rough coming or going depending on the timing,

I find the NOAA wind/wave predictions to be mostly a joke. Most reliable for me is a site called fishweather.com. No wave predictions, but pretty darned good on wind. Basically, under 10 is great. Under 15 is doable if you are seaworthy. Over 15 fish sheltered areas. Over 20 hang on to your hat. I lost a brand new one overboard today. Then let experience guide you, such as, if it was blowing north 20 to 30 on Friday and is expected to be zero in the morning, there will likely be 3 or 4 foot left over rollers for about 3/4s of a day.

Fish wrote:

Thinking about going out tomorrow morning heading to Gary lighthouse. Looking at NOAA wind forecast, it says waves less than 2’, but there is also a small craft warning out. Am I reading this wrong?

You were probably reading it correctly. There's a couple things tricky with the NOAA forecasts: 1) it'll be for a whole day, so if the wind is building or changing directions, the aggregate forecast can be correct but the on-water conditions for a short period of time might be very different than the whole-day forecast. And, with a south wind, there'll be waves worth of a small craft warning a few miles offshore, but inshore will be nearly flat

2) Also it's very easy to read a zone forecast (which is for a very broad area) instead of finding the appropriate point forecast. Contrary to what Brother Nature has found, I've always found the clickable point forecasts from NOAA to be very good. But you have to double check you're actually getting the point forecast for where you want to fish. Due to our geography on the south end, the wave forecast can often be very different only 5 miles away

marine.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lon=-87....1.70088#.XmZOX-JYaM8