This is a little late but I figure better late than never. We drove to Bullfrog on the morning of March 23rd (last Thursday) to do some work on the houseboat. We worked the morning and started fishing in the afternoon on Thursday. It was a bit windy but that seemed to really increase the activity of the fish. I caught a bunch of largies and crappie off the ends of the docks on a jerkbait working it about as aggressively as I could. We boated over to a cove just outside of the marina and hammered a bunch of good sized smallies and largies most of which were fairly shallow. Water temps back in the cove we went up were 62 to 66 degrees. We did not do well on ned rigs or other soft plastics but cranks and jerkbaits were doing very well.
Thursday night we ate a dinner of 3 crappie, 1 bluegill and 1 smallie
Friday we worked more during the morning and took off to fish during the afternoon. We headed north of Bullfrog and found several schools of striper on the way. Most of them we found by sight and not fish finder lol. We would pull into some of the shallower off shoots on the main channel and throwing a jerkbait out, the water was clear enough to see close to 15 to 20 feet down so if the stripers chased in the jerkbait we new they were there. Often you could see huge schools of a few hundred stripers pass under the boat. Most were small but we found a few medium sized large ones as well.
The stripers seemed to be willing to bite anything. Jerkbaits, crank baits, soft plastics, etc.
After catching enough to be sick of small stripers we headed to a canyon I think was knolls or knowles I'm not sure but we caught 1 smallie and a few stripers but it was not great.
Friday night we turned the lights on the back of the houseboat on and put a green light out and did really well catching tons of crappie along with a few striper and also one giant carp. I was surprised at how many carp started showing up, I've never seen them come into a green light before. By morning, the green light was surrounded by massive carp all the way around just sucking up the plankton.
Unfortunately, Saturday we didn't fish
had to finish what we were working on and headed home.
All in all super fun trip. Key takeaways I would suggest to anyone going down is we did not catch many smallies or largies when the water temps were under 62. Warm water close to deepish (35+ feet) seemed to yield the best results. We hardly caught any dink smallies this trip. Most were decent size for what lake powell normally has. Jerkbaits worked by far the best for me. I fished a megabass vision 110 quite a bit as well as a lucky craft pointer 100xd (deeper diving one) until I broke off on a striper with it :'( Neds, drop shots, and soft plastic swim baits did well for stripers but not smallies or largies.
Thursday night we ate a dinner of 3 crappie, 1 bluegill and 1 smallie
Friday we worked more during the morning and took off to fish during the afternoon. We headed north of Bullfrog and found several schools of striper on the way. Most of them we found by sight and not fish finder lol. We would pull into some of the shallower off shoots on the main channel and throwing a jerkbait out, the water was clear enough to see close to 15 to 20 feet down so if the stripers chased in the jerkbait we new they were there. Often you could see huge schools of a few hundred stripers pass under the boat. Most were small but we found a few medium sized large ones as well.
The stripers seemed to be willing to bite anything. Jerkbaits, crank baits, soft plastics, etc.
After catching enough to be sick of small stripers we headed to a canyon I think was knolls or knowles I'm not sure but we caught 1 smallie and a few stripers but it was not great.
Friday night we turned the lights on the back of the houseboat on and put a green light out and did really well catching tons of crappie along with a few striper and also one giant carp. I was surprised at how many carp started showing up, I've never seen them come into a green light before. By morning, the green light was surrounded by massive carp all the way around just sucking up the plankton.
Unfortunately, Saturday we didn't fish
had to finish what we were working on and headed home.All in all super fun trip. Key takeaways I would suggest to anyone going down is we did not catch many smallies or largies when the water temps were under 62. Warm water close to deepish (35+ feet) seemed to yield the best results. We hardly caught any dink smallies this trip. Most were decent size for what lake powell normally has. Jerkbaits worked by far the best for me. I fished a megabass vision 110 quite a bit as well as a lucky craft pointer 100xd (deeper diving one) until I broke off on a striper with it :'( Neds, drop shots, and soft plastic swim baits did well for stripers but not smallies or largies.
