5-19 Bullfrog report

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Still no striper bite yet on bait -north Bullfrog. Observation Wayne- In our 12 years of fishing bait for stripers in the Bullfrog area we have always caught a lot of small catfish and threw them back. We noticed in our approx. 15 fishing days last year that they were almost gone. We have seen none in 10 fishing days so far this year. With their tough mouths, could they be eating mussels? Or are the mussels affecting them some other way?
 
WE caught a number of catfish in the Bullfrog area this past weekend 18-20! We caught them using nightcrawlers on bottom bouncers and even one trolling for stripers.
 
Bikes said:
Still no striper bite yet on bait -north Bullfrog. Observation Wayne- In our 12 years of fishing bait for stripers in the Bullfrog area we have always caught a lot of small catfish and threw them back. We noticed in our approx. 15 fishing days last year that they were almost gone. We have seen none in 10 fishing days so far this year. With their tough mouths, could they be eating mussels? Or are the mussels affecting them some other way?
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Catfish can eat mussels and crush them so they can get nutrition from them as well. The literature does not indicate that cats eat that many mussels but we will investigate that this year and see if that is different in Lake Powell.

I also caught cats on bottom bouncers last week while fishing for walleye. I am not sure why cats are not in the normal spots but I don't think there is a problem with recruitment now. Thanks for the information.
 
Trolling for stripers was really tough...we tried from Halls Creek all the way up to Red Canyon and Good Hope and had a hard time finding stripers. We did catch a few, but trolling was not good. In fact, we had a hard time graphing striper schools and finding the fish. I am wondering if many of the stripers around Good Hope have moved up river to spawn. We also had a hard time finding walleye by trolling. We don't like to key in on largemouth or smallmouth very much and spend most of our time looking for stripers...thankfully, bluegill, sunfish, crappie, catfish, and smallmouth bass saved our trip. They were all relatively easy to catch on curly tails or bottom bouncers. The kids had a lot of fun fishing below a bobber of the rocks with worms catching smallmouth, bluegill, and sunfish.
 
Stripers are spawning so they are close to the surface. Often too close to been seen on the graph because of the cyclical cone that is a foot wide at the surface and 50 feet wide at depth. To find them you have to go out at dusk > night> or dawn. Its not easy but with lots of effort you can eventually find some and that spawning site will probably be used year after year.

Or you can wait two weeks and they will start to slurp ;)
 
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