Greetings,
I am a long time reader but this is my first post. I felt obligated to report as we have used information from this board on so many occasions. We didn't have high hopes for the fishing due to the many recent reports of slow fishing. We knew we would have excellent camp fires and fish dinners and that was enough to entice us to go.
We started out from Bullfrog at first light and made camp by the horn. Very few fisherman compared to other years. We maybe saw a half dozen different boats north of the horn all weekend; especially surprising considering it was the perfect weather; 68 degrees and no wind every day.
The smallmouth were not scattered around like usual. When we found them, we caught them in bunches and they are so healthy. Never landed a decent largemouth. A few the size of our jigs.
The crappie gave us the slip. We did not try to hard for them though. Once we find a good bite we tend to just stick with it, especially on a short trip like this. We have been doing camping trips to the north two or three times a year since 2006. The crappie are my favorite. I was excited to see hundreds of babies in the shoreline driftwood this trip. We did catch a few really nice bluegill and had several misses on our 4" grubs. The bluegill hits are very distinctive.
We noticed a boat trolling the south shoreline across the bay from trachyte Friday evening. There are several small main lake points and reefs in this area. We headed over there Saturday morning to try our hand at the trolling. We were equipped with downriggers and out riggers. We were over the settlement area in around 30' of water so we went with the planer boards. It was great fishing for very FAT stripers and walleye. We were trolling around 3.5. The best lures seem to be SR6/7 or similar style cranks. Pretty much everything we put back there that dove to 15' or so was getting bit. We noticed one good boil Saturday evening in one of the cuts along that shoreline. I was unable to talk the other occupants in the boat into reeling in our planer board setup to chase them. When we finally quit for the evening we stopped at the cove and they were still boiling!!! It was dark and we fished for them for just a few minutes. They were crushing our white curly tails and rebel poppers. They were still hitting when we left.
Sunday morning we went and checked for boils. None were evident so we trolled up another live well full of stripers and walleye by 9AM and headed back to camp to pack up and make the trip back to salt lake.
I'm excited for the future. We caught stripers up to six pounds and they were soooo very healthy, even at that size. Due to our great lakes planer board setup, we have to leave the boat in gear while we fight the fish. Our wrists hurt on those bigger stripers they fought so hard. There were constantly clouds of bait fish on the sonar and the brush and drift wood is stuffed with young sport fish. I imagine next year instead of catching a few six pounders, they will be the norm.
I am a long time reader but this is my first post. I felt obligated to report as we have used information from this board on so many occasions. We didn't have high hopes for the fishing due to the many recent reports of slow fishing. We knew we would have excellent camp fires and fish dinners and that was enough to entice us to go.
We started out from Bullfrog at first light and made camp by the horn. Very few fisherman compared to other years. We maybe saw a half dozen different boats north of the horn all weekend; especially surprising considering it was the perfect weather; 68 degrees and no wind every day.
The smallmouth were not scattered around like usual. When we found them, we caught them in bunches and they are so healthy. Never landed a decent largemouth. A few the size of our jigs.
The crappie gave us the slip. We did not try to hard for them though. Once we find a good bite we tend to just stick with it, especially on a short trip like this. We have been doing camping trips to the north two or three times a year since 2006. The crappie are my favorite. I was excited to see hundreds of babies in the shoreline driftwood this trip. We did catch a few really nice bluegill and had several misses on our 4" grubs. The bluegill hits are very distinctive.
We noticed a boat trolling the south shoreline across the bay from trachyte Friday evening. There are several small main lake points and reefs in this area. We headed over there Saturday morning to try our hand at the trolling. We were equipped with downriggers and out riggers. We were over the settlement area in around 30' of water so we went with the planer boards. It was great fishing for very FAT stripers and walleye. We were trolling around 3.5. The best lures seem to be SR6/7 or similar style cranks. Pretty much everything we put back there that dove to 15' or so was getting bit. We noticed one good boil Saturday evening in one of the cuts along that shoreline. I was unable to talk the other occupants in the boat into reeling in our planer board setup to chase them. When we finally quit for the evening we stopped at the cove and they were still boiling!!! It was dark and we fished for them for just a few minutes. They were crushing our white curly tails and rebel poppers. They were still hitting when we left.
Sunday morning we went and checked for boils. None were evident so we trolled up another live well full of stripers and walleye by 9AM and headed back to camp to pack up and make the trip back to salt lake.
I'm excited for the future. We caught stripers up to six pounds and they were soooo very healthy, even at that size. Due to our great lakes planer board setup, we have to leave the boat in gear while we fight the fish. Our wrists hurt on those bigger stripers they fought so hard. There were constantly clouds of bait fish on the sonar and the brush and drift wood is stuffed with young sport fish. I imagine next year instead of catching a few six pounders, they will be the norm.
