This was a follow-up trip to the one I took almost 2 weeks ago with Wayne, aka the Lake Powell fish whisperer! His striper pals performed even worse for me on this trip than the last time so I might have to stick with my bass friends until Wayne gets in the boat again! My plan was really to kill a little time in the morning so the water could warm and then I hopefully could go bed fishing but somebody forgot to get reservations with Mr. Wind and he decided he’d go double what the forecast was. BOO! L
With the recent experience of needing the water to warm up I didn’t get a real early start and I poked around in some striper spots on the way to the San Juan to see if the graph would show any schools but none were noted. I went on into Dangling Rope Marina and gassed up on the way just not sure how far or fast I might be running and for those interested, I took right at 8 gals for the 250 Verado/Phoenix 21PHX running about 60 mph from Wahweap and making a few stops here and there along the way.
I caught my first fish, a smallie of course, at 10 AM up the San Juan on an outside rock pile surrounded by deeper water. There were a lot of boats in the area relatively speaking, that were pounding the shoreline so I tried something else. I tried various outside spots until about 11 with only a handful of fish to show for it. I then went back in shallow to some of the same areas that Wayne and I worked 2 weeks ago where there were considerable numbers of fish shallow and just outside visible range and the catching was much less than the previous trip. Granted the wind was blowing pretty good and the water temps were no warmer than previous. I’m guessing that the wind and cold of the previous 2 weeks had these fish delayed in spawn activity. After an hour of catching some here and there, somebody hit the switch and it seemed to turn off completely for 2 hours and then I wised up after getting tired of the wind so I finally decided to just go back into the slot canyons out of the wind and see if I could catch a few…that turned out to be the ticket as from 2:30-5pm I caught 40+ with some stretches having nothing but 14” plus smallmouth and a few bigger LM bass tossed in. Not just any canyon would do but it needed to be longer with a definitive shallowing near the back for a ways. If it was just deep all the way to the back, it was mostly a waste of time.
I trolled up a few with a DT10, caught some on drop shot power grubs and also in that skinny water in the back of coves a hard jerkbait was OK but the Ned Rig was what loaded the boat and you could troll it (electric motor) med speed down the middle of the long, shallow canyons in 8-10’ and they’d really whack it. Even a few of Wayne’s striper friends were in the BACK of coves in 5’ of water and wanted to play the Ned Rig game, which Ned won!! And BTW, I did see several beds in these conditions but no fish were noted on them so maybe later this week with less wind and more warmth it could happen. It looks like I’ll be back Friday with some newbies to find out.
Sam B Sherwood
Mesa, AZ
With the recent experience of needing the water to warm up I didn’t get a real early start and I poked around in some striper spots on the way to the San Juan to see if the graph would show any schools but none were noted. I went on into Dangling Rope Marina and gassed up on the way just not sure how far or fast I might be running and for those interested, I took right at 8 gals for the 250 Verado/Phoenix 21PHX running about 60 mph from Wahweap and making a few stops here and there along the way.
I caught my first fish, a smallie of course, at 10 AM up the San Juan on an outside rock pile surrounded by deeper water. There were a lot of boats in the area relatively speaking, that were pounding the shoreline so I tried something else. I tried various outside spots until about 11 with only a handful of fish to show for it. I then went back in shallow to some of the same areas that Wayne and I worked 2 weeks ago where there were considerable numbers of fish shallow and just outside visible range and the catching was much less than the previous trip. Granted the wind was blowing pretty good and the water temps were no warmer than previous. I’m guessing that the wind and cold of the previous 2 weeks had these fish delayed in spawn activity. After an hour of catching some here and there, somebody hit the switch and it seemed to turn off completely for 2 hours and then I wised up after getting tired of the wind so I finally decided to just go back into the slot canyons out of the wind and see if I could catch a few…that turned out to be the ticket as from 2:30-5pm I caught 40+ with some stretches having nothing but 14” plus smallmouth and a few bigger LM bass tossed in. Not just any canyon would do but it needed to be longer with a definitive shallowing near the back for a ways. If it was just deep all the way to the back, it was mostly a waste of time.
I trolled up a few with a DT10, caught some on drop shot power grubs and also in that skinny water in the back of coves a hard jerkbait was OK but the Ned Rig was what loaded the boat and you could troll it (electric motor) med speed down the middle of the long, shallow canyons in 8-10’ and they’d really whack it. Even a few of Wayne’s striper friends were in the BACK of coves in 5’ of water and wanted to play the Ned Rig game, which Ned won!! And BTW, I did see several beds in these conditions but no fish were noted on them so maybe later this week with less wind and more warmth it could happen. It looks like I’ll be back Friday with some newbies to find out.
Sam B Sherwood
Mesa, AZ