I had a great week on the lake. Low wind made boat control much more enjoyable but I think wind can make fish more willing to bite. Even with glass like water most of the week, the fish were bitting enough that there was never any down time. I was worried that the cold front Monday would slow down the bite but the water is warm enough that the fish were still very active. Water temperature was mostly in the uppers 60's but would warm up to about 70 most afternoons.
I mostly fish Powell for Smallmouth and Largemouth but my dad and friend were more interested in stripers so I spent about half of my week beating up my hands unhooking stripers.
I fished from as far north as Good Hope Bay to as far south as mile marker 55. We were able to catch some stripers trolling the dirty water of Good Hope Bay but didn't find any big schools so we didn't stay long. Moki Wall was good for bait fishing stripers. We found a number of stripers trolling around the main channel close to the mouth of Halls Creek Bay. We found stripers about anywhere we tried to fish for them. I caught more than a dozen stripers close to the bank in less than 5 feet of water but most stripers I graft and caught were in places that were at least 20 feet deep. Stripers on the down imaging and live scope showed many were suspended 20-80 feet down. In low light conditions might be suspended only 10 feet from the surface. The stripers that were 30 feet down would come up 20 feet and hit my jerk baits, so you don't have to get all the way down to them to get hit. Wind blown points are often good places to find stripers.
I caught most of my stripers while casting jerk baits with
fast retrieves. It is a lot of work fishing jerk baits for stripers but more fun than trolling or bait fishing for me. I did catch a number of stripers on spoons and a few on 1oz jigs with swimbaits but they didn't trigger the nonactive stripers to bite as well as the jerk baits. Bait fishing was the most efficient way to catch numbers of stripers. Trolling was effective to pick up a few stripers while grafting areas for stripers. I caught over a dozen stripers on topwater baits as well.
Below are some of the lures I used to catch stripers. All of them worked well. I think speed, presentation and location are much more important than the particular lure. If I had to pick only one, I would choose the lucky craft pointer 100XD (2nd from top). I learned about this lure on Wayneswords years ago. It works great for trolling and casting. The Lucky Craft is expensive but is durable. I've probably caught over 200 stripers on the lucky craft pointer below and it still runs true with minimal tuning. I have had to replace the hooks multiple times but stripers are tough on hooks. I have a megabass jerkbait that is very effective for casting to stripers but stripers trash the fine wire megabass hooks.
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When we were into a good school of stripers it was common to have every rod hooked up
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Lip gripers were nice to keep my hands from being damaged from all the stripers.
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Plastic bluegill fooled this striper
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I had my best week of Largemouth bass fishing over 30 years of fishing Powell. Part of it is I'm better at targeting Largemouth than I was in the past but I think the current largemouth population is better than most years. The average size of the largemouth I caught was on the smaller side but that is good news for future years. I diid get a few good ones.
These two largemouth were in a "wolf pack" of 4 largemouths all about the same size. I didn't get a weight on either but I'm guessing just under 5lbs on each.
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Another good looking largemouth. I'm guessing I only caught about a dozen 18"+.
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Smallmouth fishing was fantastic as usual. With the stable water level, there were many bass in 5 feet of water or less. I didn't waste much time fishing for bass deeper than 15 or 20 feet but did catch a few smallmouth as deep as 30 and 40 feet deep. Size was highly variable. Many smallmouth were only 5"-7" but there were a few nice ones. I did weigh this one for my friend at 4lbs.
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Evenings were good for topwater.
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My friend wanted to catch multiple species, so we spent some time targeting bluegill, crappie and green sunfish. We also caught a number of panfish while targeting smallmouth.
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We did catch a decent number of walleye and some catfish while targeting smallmouths or stripers.
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We did see a snake swimming. I didn't want to get too close for a good picture. Initially I thought it was a rattlesnake but upon closer inspection I could tell it was a big bull snake.
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