GHB Nov 7-9

[Seekandfillet]

What fun! Went up that way for the first time this weekend. Perfect weather, beautiful ride, tons of fish, and great camping in Blue Notch as was indicated by all in my other thread. Met @Pryor , nice talking with you and damn you, gave me boat envy! Bad *** boat man. On to the fishing - it was lights out for Stripers pretty much whenever in the main bay wherever a feeder canyon came into it. I now understand how folks say they caugt hundreds in a day - crazy fishing. Only thing that stopped us from catching more was the ability to fillet them all. Ended up making taco meat out of about 150. Got them trolling at first untill we figured out where they were, then just spot locked and spooned them with numerous doubles and triples. Caught 3 walleyes trolling blue flicker shad for stripers, but did not get any walleyes trolling crawler rigs for walleyes, go figure. Would love to learn how to target them better. Water is 64 degrees up in that area right now. Saw some huge bait balls and insanely large schools of stripers. For the Powell veterans, what fish is breaking the water in the mornings? We thought stripers, but never did get anything to hit. Are they carp? Shad? They are single fish spread throughtout the bay, not a striper boil.

 

[PBH]

my guess would be gizzard shad.

Glad you found some fish.

 

[Seekandfillet]

my guess would be gizzard shad.

Glad you found some fish.

Thanks for your recomendations - great help.

 

[desert shep]

early morning most are carp, later morning some gizzard some carp, noon on who knows?

 

[Clark Felt]

What fun! Went up that way for the first time this weekend. Perfect weather, beautiful ride, tons of fish, and great camping in Blue Notch as was indicated by all in my other thread. Met @Pryor , nice talking with you and damn you, gave me boat envy! Bad *** boat man. On to the fishing - it was lights out for Stripers pretty much whenever in the main bay wherever a feeder canyon came into it. I now understand how folks say they caugt hundreds in a day - crazy fishing. Only thing that stopped us from catching more was the ability to fillet them all. Ended up making taco meat out of about 150. Got them trolling at first untill we figured out where they were, then just spot locked and spooned them with numerous doubles and triples. Caught 3 walleyes trolling blue flicker shad for stripers, but did not get any walleyes trolling crawler rigs for walleyes, go figure. Would love to learn how to target them better. Water is 64 degrees up in that area right now. Saw some huge bait balls and insanely large schools of stripers. For the Powell veterans, what fish is breaking the water in the mornings? We thought stripers, but never did get anything to hit. Are they carp? Shad? They are single fish spread throughtout the bay, not a striper boil.

I’m not experienced as well with lake Powell but in Kokanee fisheries during low light hours, many juvenile Kokanee schools break the surface like your description because of brown trout or other predators pushing them up to the surface. Could be small shad slurps. When I fish Bear Lake, carp are always on the surface feeding during low light hours as well when the daphnea is near the surface. If I were to guess I’d say they could also be carp feeding on the surface.

How was the clarity in GHB when you were out?

 

[Seekandfillet]

I’m not experienced as well with lake Powell but in Kokanee fisheries during low light hours, many juvenile Kokanee schools break the surface like your description because of brown trout or other predators pushing them up to the surface. Could be small shad slurps. When I fish Bear Lake, carp are always on the surface feeding during low light hours as well when the daphnea is near the surface. If I were to guess I’d say they could also be carp feeding on the surface.

How was the clarity in GHB when you were out?

Thanks, these were definitely larger fish, so thinking carp or big gizzards. Clarity seemed to be pretty decent, around 4-5 feet.

 

[cfulton]

I've seen that a number of times. Cast a surface lure to individual fish and you may find it's scattered stripers. I think they break up a bait ball and hunt the shad down individually. Caught lots of fish that way. Chuck

 

[Pryor]

I’ve tried catching the “night jumpers” lots of times. Never caught one. I always assumed they were smallies. I’ve thought of a fly and bubble, or a fly rod. We ended up staying in your camp after you guys left. It was good to meet you guys. Sounds like you guys caught more than us. Were you jigging, or speed reeling. We seemed to do better by speed reeling cast masters through the schools. Almost seemed like you can’t reel fast enough sometimes.

 

[Seekandfillet]

I’ve tried catching the “night jumpers” lots of times. Never caught one. I always assumed they were smallies. I’ve thought of a fly and bubble, or a fly rod. We ended up staying in your camp after you guys left. It was good to meet you guys. Sounds like you guys caught more than us. Were you jigging, or speed reeling. We seemed to do better by speed reeling cast masters through the schools. Almost seemed like you can’t reel fast enough sometimes.

Right on man that's a good spot to camp, hopefully you were able to utilize the fillet station. We got the big numbers by jigging them. But before we started jigging, we were trolling flicker shad at 4.3mph and getting them that way too, just not as crazy as the jigging. It surprises me you guys didn't get into them I figured you were hammering them as well.

 

[Dan Keller]

What fun! Went up that way for the first time this weekend. Perfect weather, beautiful ride, tons of fish, and great camping in Blue Notch as was indicated by all in my other thread. Met @Pryor , nice talking with you and damn you, gave me boat envy! Bad *** boat man. On to the fishing - it was lights out for Stripers pretty much whenever in the main bay wherever a feeder canyon came into it. I now understand how folks say they caugt hundreds in a day - crazy fishing. Only thing that stopped us from catching more was the ability to fillet them all. Ended up making taco meat out of about 150. Got them trolling at first untill we figured out where they were, then just spot locked and spooned them with numerous doubles and triples. Caught 3 walleyes trolling blue flicker shad for stripers, but did not get any walleyes trolling crawler rigs for walleyes, go figure. Would love to learn how to target them better. Water is 64 degrees up in that area right now. Saw some huge bait balls and insanely large schools of stripers. For the Powell veterans, what fish is breaking the water in the mornings? We thought stripers, but never did get anything to hit. Are they carp? Shad? They are single fish spread throughtout the bay, not a striper boil.

I agree the fish you saw are likely adult gizzard shad, they tend to cruise around the surface feeding and often get spooked easy and dart off creating an audible splash that sounds a bit like a bass chasing bait, if you cast a topwater lure to these areas and don't get any strikes its probably gizzard shad. We caught lots of adult gizzard shad in our gillnets around Red Canyon/Blue Notch 2 weeks ago. We also caught many 1.5-3.5 striped bass in good condition, very few older fish, which tracks with the die offs of older fish in poor condition all summer. Thanks for the report, nice to hear the striper fishing was so fast for you, right now is a great time to find them. The weather was awesome the past few weeks, colder weather is on the way, a good cold front will make fishing even better, the lake temps have been a bit high for this time of year.