Brent R
Active Member
We had another fantastic trip to the San Juan. The fishing was great, although we had to adjust our tactics a bit this year. The fishing started off quickly. On August 29, at about 6:00 p.m., my cousin launched me in the boat at Antelope Pointe and the boat was barely off the trailer when two guys on wave runners came up to me and said a "lot of fishing are jumping out there." I looked beyond them and a big boil was going off. I chatted with them for a few minutes since they had questions about fishing - they were clearly not fisherman, but they did spot a nice boil. I drove out and cast into the boil and immediately started hooking up. I caught about 12-15 stripers in about 20 minutes, but they were all very small. It was a good way to start the trip though. The next morning we pushed all the way up to the San Juan in the houseboat.
We stayed in the channel between the two bays what we call the island - its an actual island depending on how high the water level is. We like that spot since we often do well in the channel and can also easily hit the two bays. My cousin and I fished all week and did very well, but it was definitely an unusual year and we had to experiment with tactics. We saw a lot of boils, but they were either off or on so to speak. When they were boiling it was wild and they were everywhere, but when they were off there were none to be found. For the most part the boils were up for a very short time, although we had one morning where we had huge big boils that stayed up for good periods of time and kept coming up. That was an unusual morning though. The boils were happening in the channel right outside of Deep Canyon. One tactic we modified was how we came up on the boils. Typically we come up on them and cut the motor about 50 yards or so off of them and then cast into them. We were noticing we weren't always hooking up when we were doing this since the fish went down so quickly. Toward the end of the trip we found it to be more effective to drive up right on top of where they were boiling and immediately drop down spoons straight down below the boat on top of them and start jigging. This was very effective and we would typically get nailed at about 40 feet or so. We had multiple double hookups using this tactic. One evening we saw a very small boil off a point in the upper bay and drove over and looked at the graph. I am not a bit graph guy and never really know if its fish, but it was nuts. It was showing we were on a huge school that was just sitting off the point. Picture of graph below. We started jigging and - bam we started hooking up on nice fish.
Here is the most unusual thing of the trip though. There were baitfish everywhere swimming on the surface. The entire upper bay would be ripples of schools of baitfish swimming down river. They would also congregate around the houseboat. I tried to film it on my iPhone, but it didn't show up. I have a feeling this bodes well for next year. There is lots of food out there for the fish to feast on.
All the fish we caught were healthy. A lot of them would spit up Shad as we would catch them. We caught a number of small mouth as well and they were also very healthy. Some of them had bellies that looked like they were going to explode as a result of all the bait they had been feasting on.
This trip also confirmed a tactic I learned a few years ago. I now scan the shoreline (where possible and not just a canyon wall) as we are looking for boils and will stop if we see crows on the shore. I found two boils doing this on this trip. The crows seem to find the boils close to the shoreline and wait for the shad to jump on the shore as the stripers are chasing them. The crows patiently wait there for a tasty morsel to land on the shore in front of them.
We had some great fish tacos on the trip and are having neighbors over to our house tonight for more. My wife has perfected some recipes for marinating and cooking stripers.
Lake Powell is truly a great place and we are already anxious for next year.
We stayed in the channel between the two bays what we call the island - its an actual island depending on how high the water level is. We like that spot since we often do well in the channel and can also easily hit the two bays. My cousin and I fished all week and did very well, but it was definitely an unusual year and we had to experiment with tactics. We saw a lot of boils, but they were either off or on so to speak. When they were boiling it was wild and they were everywhere, but when they were off there were none to be found. For the most part the boils were up for a very short time, although we had one morning where we had huge big boils that stayed up for good periods of time and kept coming up. That was an unusual morning though. The boils were happening in the channel right outside of Deep Canyon. One tactic we modified was how we came up on the boils. Typically we come up on them and cut the motor about 50 yards or so off of them and then cast into them. We were noticing we weren't always hooking up when we were doing this since the fish went down so quickly. Toward the end of the trip we found it to be more effective to drive up right on top of where they were boiling and immediately drop down spoons straight down below the boat on top of them and start jigging. This was very effective and we would typically get nailed at about 40 feet or so. We had multiple double hookups using this tactic. One evening we saw a very small boil off a point in the upper bay and drove over and looked at the graph. I am not a bit graph guy and never really know if its fish, but it was nuts. It was showing we were on a huge school that was just sitting off the point. Picture of graph below. We started jigging and - bam we started hooking up on nice fish.
Here is the most unusual thing of the trip though. There were baitfish everywhere swimming on the surface. The entire upper bay would be ripples of schools of baitfish swimming down river. They would also congregate around the houseboat. I tried to film it on my iPhone, but it didn't show up. I have a feeling this bodes well for next year. There is lots of food out there for the fish to feast on.
All the fish we caught were healthy. A lot of them would spit up Shad as we would catch them. We caught a number of small mouth as well and they were also very healthy. Some of them had bellies that looked like they were going to explode as a result of all the bait they had been feasting on.
This trip also confirmed a tactic I learned a few years ago. I now scan the shoreline (where possible and not just a canyon wall) as we are looking for boils and will stop if we see crows on the shore. I found two boils doing this on this trip. The crows seem to find the boils close to the shoreline and wait for the shad to jump on the shore as the stripers are chasing them. The crows patiently wait there for a tasty morsel to land on the shore in front of them.
We had some great fish tacos on the trip and are having neighbors over to our house tonight for more. My wife has perfected some recipes for marinating and cooking stripers.
Lake Powell is truly a great place and we are already anxious for next year.
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