Boil report (Thanks Dan Keller)

[Jack Herrin]

Aug 13-17. We fished for boils up north between GHB and the Horn., We only found a few boils in the mornings that were quick and really only slurps. The fish we caught from the boils were young Stripers. We only average about 10 fish a day. The ones we caught trolling were larger fish but some of them not in good shape (skinny) Also did not mark a lot of shad on the Lowrance. On Wednesday we notice a larger boat going back and forth from up north of the horn and back to GHB. I was curious so when this boat beached I cursed over to find out if they had seen any boils. It turned out to be Dan Keller and crew and they were up setting nets to catch and count the shad populations. I asked Dan about boils in the area. He said they had seen the best boils the day before in the Ricon and Esacalante area. So with that info next two days were best boil fishing. Did not see any in the Ricon area so kept on going to Escalante only about two miles in we found the first boil. And it was a good one. The fish were averaging 2-4 pounds and so fat they were very hard to swing over the railing into pontoon so we had to use the net. We caught them on top water, walleye assassins and jigging spoons. In about two hours we had about 35 in the cooler on ice. We went back the next day same spot not so much boiling but could be caught on walleye assassins and trolling with flicker shad and Storm Thundersticks. Caught another 25. Again these fish were very fat and spitting up lots of shad when pulled into the deck. Big thanks to Dan for telling us about the boils he had seen and putting us in the area. There was so much shad the their stomach. Did not get a lot of pic;s but here a couple showing the size of these fish. Also found one Striper belly was so full of shad all came out when cleaning. We thought why did this fish even eat our lure with the stomach so full If your looking for very fat Stripers head up into the Escalante

Hotwheels

 

[Dan Keller]

I'm very glad you got into some good striper boils ! After talking to you up at GHB I kept thinking I sure hope they find some good boils if they make the trip down to Escalante. You just never know for sure, I guess that's part of the excitement, if fish did the same thing every day it would take some fun out of the hunt ! Your timing was better than ours, on our boat ride from GHB to San Juan on Aug 16th we didn't see many boils, a few near the mouth of the Escalante. We camped on the San Juan 16 -17 and didn't see one boil, despite there being a decent number of shad in our trawling survey. Boils should pick up and last longer as surface temperature cools allowing stripers to stay near the surface longer, boils this fall should be fantastic !