Dave Sellers
Member
I'm back home safe and sound after the best of four trips to Lake Powell over the past 7 years. I teamed up with my friend Charles Carter who spent his college years in Utah and loves both fly fishing and the southern Utah landscape. What made this trip so good was, first, the weather. We had calm and warm conditions from Saturday, May 5th to the morning of May 10th. The second factor, was, of course, the fishing. We found the spawn in full swing with a mega school of tens of thousands of fish on the grab every hour of every day we were there. Without going into detail on the body count for the week, suffice to say we arrived at an area historically known for a spawning rendezvous and between 3 p.m., when we tossed our first fly and 6 p.m. we conservatively caught 80 stripers. Barely half a day and we could tell that we were going to have to pace ourselves! Any notion that we were beating up on the fish, and winning, was quickly replaced by an understanding that we, in fact were the ones who were getting beat up. They just kept coming! The stripers were spread out over acres, perhaps 5 to 10 acres with daisy chained fish making late afternoon and evening appearances both near and far. The fly fishing was straight forward. Throw out, strip in. No countdown. The bass were just below the surface and eager to climb all over our 3 inch Clousers. It was constant doubles. All the fish we caught were prespawn and in prime shape. The size was from 1 and half pounds to 5 pounds. Most were 3 to 4 pounds.
We made camp after our first afternoon close to where the sex party was taking place and dreamed of fishing all night. The next day, Sunday, we paid a visit to our mega school and once again found them eager to chase flies. We did not stay long despite the "just one more potato chip" impulse that set in with, once again, a fish every cast. But we wanted to explore and look for smallies, sunfish, walleye so we headed up Last Chance Canyon and caught all of the above. It was fast fishing at times followed by hunting, which is my favorite, followed by more fast fishing. Our best fly for smallies was anything wooly bugger like. But we also caught stripers on the same relatively tiny fly. Walleye too would eat the wooly bugger.
Over the next three days, we fished from Padre to Dangling Rope marina hitting most of the canyons in between. We did well in Rock Creek canyon on smallies, largemouth, and both post and pre spawn stripers. We did exceptionally well near Dangling rope in the afternoon on stripers and smallies. Some of the stripers were right on shore in small "wolf packs" while others were down deep, around 20+ feet. All were eager. We caught catfish, at bouy 25 along with some very nice smallies and a few stripers. Our favorite structure type was gently sloping slick rock with some amount of rubble mixed in. Generally we could count on smallies up shallow with some bigger females down deeper. Fishing uphill was the secret there. But we also caught plenty of females near beds, virtually all of them with their partners present. We did well in Rock Creek on steep crumbled rock structure mostly for small mouth but surprisingly found quite a few Largemouth too. They were fun to sight fish to, eager to take flies and stunningly strong. Most evenings we finished up near the mega school to use up what little was left of our casting arms for the day. Several evenings we made fresh fish tacos while hanging out and taking in the spectacle seen both on the fish finder and on the surface as bass continued their seasonal ritual. To our surprise, we never saw another fisherman in the area of greatest concentration.
No mechanical problems, no injuries (except bruised sides and hamburger thumbs), easy camping, great food, great company and utterly amazing fishing made this trip, again, one for the books. Lake Powell is a VERY special place in May.
We made camp after our first afternoon close to where the sex party was taking place and dreamed of fishing all night. The next day, Sunday, we paid a visit to our mega school and once again found them eager to chase flies. We did not stay long despite the "just one more potato chip" impulse that set in with, once again, a fish every cast. But we wanted to explore and look for smallies, sunfish, walleye so we headed up Last Chance Canyon and caught all of the above. It was fast fishing at times followed by hunting, which is my favorite, followed by more fast fishing. Our best fly for smallies was anything wooly bugger like. But we also caught stripers on the same relatively tiny fly. Walleye too would eat the wooly bugger.
Over the next three days, we fished from Padre to Dangling Rope marina hitting most of the canyons in between. We did well in Rock Creek canyon on smallies, largemouth, and both post and pre spawn stripers. We did exceptionally well near Dangling rope in the afternoon on stripers and smallies. Some of the stripers were right on shore in small "wolf packs" while others were down deep, around 20+ feet. All were eager. We caught catfish, at bouy 25 along with some very nice smallies and a few stripers. Our favorite structure type was gently sloping slick rock with some amount of rubble mixed in. Generally we could count on smallies up shallow with some bigger females down deeper. Fishing uphill was the secret there. But we also caught plenty of females near beds, virtually all of them with their partners present. We did well in Rock Creek on steep crumbled rock structure mostly for small mouth but surprisingly found quite a few Largemouth too. They were fun to sight fish to, eager to take flies and stunningly strong. Most evenings we finished up near the mega school to use up what little was left of our casting arms for the day. Several evenings we made fresh fish tacos while hanging out and taking in the spectacle seen both on the fish finder and on the surface as bass continued their seasonal ritual. To our surprise, we never saw another fisherman in the area of greatest concentration.
No mechanical problems, no injuries (except bruised sides and hamburger thumbs), easy camping, great food, great company and utterly amazing fishing made this trip, again, one for the books. Lake Powell is a VERY special place in May.
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