Wet1
Well-Known Member
Just returned from my first trip of the year to Powell. The weather was not ideal but when your not retired yet you sometimes have to go when you can. We loaded up camp on the boat and left Bull Frog about noon on Thursday. Temp was Ccccccccold with the 15 - 20 mph wind. Once we made it past Ice Berg and the canyon narrowed up the waves laid down quite a bit and made for better running. We set up camp in our normal spot on the south side of Red Canyon.
Fishing was pretty slow and we really had to work for them. I attributed this to the major cold front we were dealing with. Not sure exactly on the temps but we had 4 cups of the 10 cup water reservoir in the coffee maker frozen one morning so I'm guessing it was mid 20s that night. We fished 2 days and ended up with 8 walleye, 12 stripers, 1 crappie, and 1 large mouth. I'm sure we could have caught alot more stripers but we were really focused on trying to find some crappie and walleye. All fish were caught on jigs in 12 to 35 foot of water.
Shocker of the trip was the discovery of the major mussel infestation on the north end of the lake. We had never seen any mussels on the upper end of the lake but from Good Hope all the way to Tracheyte every hard surface under water of covered with tiny little mussels. They mostly seem to be about the same size, not much bigger than a pencil lead. It's almost like the kind of dispersal you would expect from an algea bloom. Anywhere the water was clear enough to see the bottom you would see them on every rock. And everywhere above water line you will see them. It' is scary how fast this happened. I had thought this would be a slow progression over the course of years but it does not look like that will be the case. Question I have for Wayne. Is there any concern that with the mussels being filter feeders that they will compete with the shad for plankton and cause the shad to crash? Over 3 days of looking at this infestation where we hadn't noticed any last year I couldn't help but think that with the bottom of the lake paved with these things they could impact the plankton.
When we got back to Bull Frog on Sunday I searched all around in the shallow water while waiting for my buddy to bring the boat trailer down and didn't see any. Looks like they definitely came down the Colorado river on the north end. Wayne, if you haven't been up there this year to see it I highly recommend you go take a look.
Fishing was pretty slow and we really had to work for them. I attributed this to the major cold front we were dealing with. Not sure exactly on the temps but we had 4 cups of the 10 cup water reservoir in the coffee maker frozen one morning so I'm guessing it was mid 20s that night. We fished 2 days and ended up with 8 walleye, 12 stripers, 1 crappie, and 1 large mouth. I'm sure we could have caught alot more stripers but we were really focused on trying to find some crappie and walleye. All fish were caught on jigs in 12 to 35 foot of water.
Shocker of the trip was the discovery of the major mussel infestation on the north end of the lake. We had never seen any mussels on the upper end of the lake but from Good Hope all the way to Tracheyte every hard surface under water of covered with tiny little mussels. They mostly seem to be about the same size, not much bigger than a pencil lead. It's almost like the kind of dispersal you would expect from an algea bloom. Anywhere the water was clear enough to see the bottom you would see them on every rock. And everywhere above water line you will see them. It' is scary how fast this happened. I had thought this would be a slow progression over the course of years but it does not look like that will be the case. Question I have for Wayne. Is there any concern that with the mussels being filter feeders that they will compete with the shad for plankton and cause the shad to crash? Over 3 days of looking at this infestation where we hadn't noticed any last year I couldn't help but think that with the bottom of the lake paved with these things they could impact the plankton.
When we got back to Bull Frog on Sunday I searched all around in the shallow water while waiting for my buddy to bring the boat trailer down and didn't see any. Looks like they definitely came down the Colorado river on the north end. Wayne, if you haven't been up there this year to see it I highly recommend you go take a look.
