Dorado
Keeper of San Juan Secrets
Drove partway down from Wyoming on Wednesday night, hit bullfrog around 9:00 a.m. Thursday. Loaded the boat and Launched without issue at the primitive ramp and headed north. Started seeing stained water around Knowles Canyon, but the real stained water was a mile or 2 south of the floating bathroom. The mudline, with just a few inches of visibility, started around Ticaboo. The east side of the big bay was still fishable, as was Popcorn Canyon and Red Canyon. Heavily stained, but fishable.
We ended up with around 60 striper, 30 walleye, plus a handful of smallmouth, bluegill and catfish each day. Mostly Trolling crankbaits, and casting Ned rigs tipped with a piece of crawler.
The highlight was finding a school of striper in about 20 feet of water and breaking out the fly rods. For an hour or it was on fire, but they moved off. Great fun! We tried a bunch more times, but never found more than a couple fish. Sinking lines, jig hook clouser minnows in chartreuse over white.
By the time we left on Sunday morning, the lake had come up a foot or so, and the river channel mudline was past the bathroom. It it going to be muddy quite a ways downstream once runoff begins in earnest!
Edit: forgot to mention, about 1/3 of the stripers were marginal, sunk them. Spawned out walleyes were not worth fileting, the14- 15" fish were much healthier. Ended up with 18 pounds of great looking, translucent striper filets and 7 pounds of walleye filets. Tasty
We ended up with around 60 striper, 30 walleye, plus a handful of smallmouth, bluegill and catfish each day. Mostly Trolling crankbaits, and casting Ned rigs tipped with a piece of crawler.
The highlight was finding a school of striper in about 20 feet of water and breaking out the fly rods. For an hour or it was on fire, but they moved off. Great fun! We tried a bunch more times, but never found more than a couple fish. Sinking lines, jig hook clouser minnows in chartreuse over white.
By the time we left on Sunday morning, the lake had come up a foot or so, and the river channel mudline was past the bathroom. It it going to be muddy quite a ways downstream once runoff begins in earnest!
Edit: forgot to mention, about 1/3 of the stripers were marginal, sunk them. Spawned out walleyes were not worth fileting, the14- 15" fish were much healthier. Ended up with 18 pounds of great looking, translucent striper filets and 7 pounds of walleye filets. Tasty

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