We went to the “beautiful” south end last Thursday and jumped on a house boat for a week long trip. Had a mix of family and friends. We stayed by Gregory’s butte in a secluded little cove that had a ton of small shad in it. We caught 10 nice cat fish off the back of the boat and I think it cleaned out the cove, never caught another one after that second day. We headed north with two boats and went up the crocodile infested San Juan, saw several burros but no otters this time. The other boat in our party started have out drive vibrations about 10 miles from the mouth and by the main channel it blew up on them. I spent the next two days getting them back to Wahweap to the boat shop. Their boat is still there so I guess we will make a trip back down south in the next few weeks. As I reported from the repair shop that day we had boils from a couple miles below the SJ to marker 60. While we were waiting for them to come up they actually boiled right under the boat, I should have netted a couple cause I couldn’t cast to them! We didn’t catch a fish out of that rise either. We got a dozen stripers but I had a boat full of people so I didn’t stay long. Some of our guests had never been on the lake so with our tour boat down I became the tour/fishing boat. Did not get to fish much and lost two days to a dead boat. We caught SM in 15 to 22 feet of water on a shelf on the west side of Gregory butte every time we made a pass. Some of my guests don’t cast so we trolled and caught around 25 SM and a walleye the two evenings we fished there. If I could have fished it I think we could have caught a bunch of SM. Everyone I talked to was struggling with fishing period. The boils we did work did not stay up long and not every lure thrown in a boil caught a fish but 3 out of 4 did. We spotted a couple of boils while traveling but even those were just above the SJ and we only got two fish out of those. We were trolling an old crawdad lure from years ago to catch the SM that my older brother wanted to try, I thought he was nuts but that is what caught the most SM. Because of the group I was with I didn’t try spooning for long, I did try it when the boils dropped but that technique is new to me and I am not confident in it yet, until I figure it out I would rather be alone or with my fishing buddies to learn how. Kastmasters still the ticket in the boils. Did see what I think were slurps in Padre bay while driving the HB back today but not positive about those. Also saw the trash tracker while returning from the boat shop, I wanted to stop and talk to them but we had been gone all day with 8 people stuck on the house boat so I didn’t pull by them and say hi. They do such good work. As for you Powell Bride my heart is on the same end of the lake as yours! We did catch SM, walleye, stripers and cat fish so it wasn’t a bust. Lots of people on the south end!
Dave
