I am usually hunting in September, but with the freakish warm dry weather, and the wildfires, we were on our way from Bullfrog Wednesday morning. Got up to GHB around noon, and trolled up a few stripers, walleye and smallies before setting up camp. There was not another camper in Red Canyon. The fishing was OK, never great, but consistent. We basically caught everything in 20-25 FOW. Even though we were marking fish in deeper water, we could not get them to eat after hooking one or 2 fish. We tried spoons, flies on sinking lines, swimbaits and jigs, we could not get the striper schools going. We also went up to Trachyte, and found some fat stripers trolling the bank oposite 2-Mile canyon, along with a few fat walleye. But we would get 5-6 out of a school and they would dissapear.... Smallmouth were pretty much everywhere in the 15-25 foot depth, especially around rocky humps. We ended up with 3 dozen stripers, probably the same number of 13-14" smallmouth, and dozen walleye or so. Only at lake powell is that just OK fishing!!!
The weather was amazing, more like summer than fall, with 90 degree temps and calm winds until Saturday. We headed back toward Bullfrog on Saturday, the wind came up earlier than forecast and the drive back into the wind was a bit lumpy. Bullfrog was a mob of wakeboarders and pleasure boaters, still, we got a few more stripers, walleye and smallies before taking off the water at 5:00. The mussel check station was closed....
The only negatives about the trip was seeing the dense mussels, they are awful on some of the big rocks, makes you wonder what it looks like down in the water? They also repeatedly would cut you off with just the slightest tick, but as Wayne pointed out, we found our lures floating every single time that happened. Also, when we went to set up camp we found human feces recently left behind, right near the water line, not even buried....disgusting.
All in all a great trip, looks like we timed this trip perfectly!!!
