July 2005

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wayne gustaveson

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July 27, 2005
By Wayne Gustaveson
Lake Elevation: 3607
Water Temp: 80-86 F
Last week big stripers had me worried because they were apparently trapped in cold deep water and separated from their shad food source. Somehow the word got out that feeding was good in warm surface water. Big stripers came up from the deep and starting boiling all over Lake Powell. Where only yearlings were feeding before, now 4-6 pound adults are hitting the top and eating 1-3 inch shad.
Fishing stripers boils has become synonymous with summer fishing at Powell and it is now in the early stages. Slurps are still common especially uplake from Bullfrog where larval shad are still abundant. But, there are now just as many boils where stripers feed more actively on larger shad. Scattered boils with large stripers were seen in the Escalante and San Juan last week. Those fish continue to feed. In addition, boils have erupted from Antelope Point to Navajo Canyon, Gregory Butte to Rainbow Bridge, San Juan to Escalante and from Bullfrog to Good Hope.
Most of the action is main channel or main canyon where stripers can rest in deep water and still see shad on top. Bigger stripers need to have a cool water sanctuary to refresh themselves following a surface feeding spree in uncomfortable warm water. The boil is quick but obvious for a great distance. Feeding lasts for about 2 minutes. Then stripers zip down to cool water where they rest for a time. Still hungry, they stalk another surface shad pod and attack once more. Boils are going sporadically all day long. It takes a bit of luck. If you pass over the school when its down instead of on top the boil may be missed. Stripers often boil in the same general area time after time with an indefinite duration rest period in between. Find a boil and return to that spot often for another chance to get into the fish when they are hot.

Catching is easy if the boil pops up in casting range. Stripers will hit full size surface lures, medium running crank baits and spoons. My favorite is the Rebel Jumpin’ minnow. They hit plastic grubs and swim baits but tend to tear them up, so using hard plastic bait is more economical. When boiling fish dive, follow them down with a spoon to catch one more fish.
Bass are surface feeding in loose groups around stripers. Look for single splashes with some distance between fish if targeting bass. All game fish are preying on shad in the warm water. Shad color crank baits are working well morning and evening. I prefer a spitting top water lure like a Sugoi Splash or Pop-R for bass. When using soft plastic for bass try shad colors in white and silver. Spinner baits with white and chartreuse were effective this past week.
Now that the lake is going down catfising is improving because there is more shallow beach area devoid of brush. Wave action has uprooted and moved a lot of the annual brush. That makes camping better too.
Catching and Graphing Small Stripers
When chasing yearling striper boils, the school of small fish often sounds as the boat nears. Stripers then take up a fairly constant station under the boat if they do not pop right back to the surface. Water depth is usually 20-30 feet. The school of stripers layers out half way between the surface and bottom. When stripers are seen on the graph under the boat they are really catchable and quite fun to watch.
Yearling stripers pictured on a graph
Just lower a small plastic grub or tiny spoon over the side of the boat. Watch the bait as it goes down. When the bait disappears from view give it a jerk to bring it back into view. Stripers will shoot up after the lure and flash into visible range. Their numbers will astound you. Looks like a school of feeding pirhanas with 10 fish attacking the lure and many others on the perimeter.
Try it just to get a good feel for seeing what your graph sees. Its good practice and will help you with identifying larger fish at greater depths.
When the school dives to the bottom, as shown here, just lower the bait all the way to the bottom to catch more fish.
Keep all the little stripers caught to save the 100,000 shad that that fish would eat during its life time.
July 21, 2005
By Wayne Gustaveson
Lake Elevation: 3608
Water Temp: 82-86 F
The only thing hotter than a summer day in July is the fishing for big stripers on the southern end of Lake Powell. Bait fishing for 4-6 pound stripers continues to delight all those who quit swimming long enough to go fishing. Actually early morning air temperature is near 70 degrees during prime fishing time. From dawn to 8 AM bait fishing continues to be very good along shady cliff walls from the dam to Navajo Canyon.
With the exception of Glen Canyon Dam, there is little fishing competition along the walls near the mouth of Antelope Canyon, Antelope Point Marina, the power plant intake, the mouth of Navajo Canyon and many places in Navajo, the mouth of Warm Creek and so on uplake to the Escalante. Fish anchovy bait interspersed with lots of chumming to wake up resting adult stripers and entice them to feed. Schools can be restarted just about any time of day when another storm of chum descends upon them.
Use a #4 circle hook and a small weight or even a plain lightweight jig head. The real important feature is to use fluorocarbon line which is strong yet invisible to stripers visually inspecting each piece of bait before eating. Bites may be light so gently move the bait often just to test for extra pressure which indicates a fish is attached.
Night fishing is just as good under fish attracting lights near the marinas.
Boiling 3-5 pound stripers have been reported in the Escalante and San Juan. Other mid lake main channel locations are sporting boiling 2-pound stripers. Rock Creek, Last Chance, Rainbow Bridge Canyon, Dangling Rope and Good Hope Bay have recurring boils. Yearlings are seen near shore from Wahweap bay to Escalante.
I saw my first real boil Wednesday (7-20) in Wahweap Bay. I have been chasing slurping stripers who calmly feed on tiny shad. But today the same 12-14 inch stripers put on their game faces and started attacking larger shad. Bodies were flying, shad were jumping, and the boil fed in a circle instead of a straight line like slurping fish do. Boiling fish hit the rattletrap while slurpers only took a tiny plastic grub.
Smallmouth bass were boiling on the flats at the mouth of Ice Cream Canyon in Wahweap Bay. Bass were more widely scattered than boiling stripers but the action was nonstop for over an hour. Bass would hit both rattletrap and top water baits if the lure was placed near the spot where 2-20 bass were feeding on top. Bass do not feed as quickly as stripers and a trolling motor kept me in casting range the entire time. My biggest fish today was a 15-inch smallmouth caught on a Sugoi Splash.


July 14, 2005
By Wayne Gustaveson
Lake Elevation: 3608.4
Water Temp: 80-85 F
Lake Powell is large enough that fishing conditions at one end can be completely different than that found on the other. Such is the case now with the remnants of the massive spring flood clouding the water in the Colorado River arm above Bullfrog. Compounding factors include a huge shad crop in the upper lake that offers such plentiful forage that fish have all they want to eat. Fishing upstream from Bullfrog is slow.
Conversely, clear water and fewer shad in the lower lake make for hungry fish eager to feed. Larval shad are the target and both bass and stripers are skimming the surface in large herds. Slurping schools of fish are surface feeding morning and evening. Slurps can be seen from first light to 10 AM and then again in the afternoon from 3 PM until dark. Slurps are seen most often from the mouth of Last Chance to the Escalante. The San Juan may be the best place to catch surface feeding fish.
The feeding nature of slurping schools is such that all fish face the same direction so a cast must land in front of the school to be seen. When the school sounds all fish move as a unit to the depths and then return to the surface near a new shad school at some distant location. Try to guess direction of travel and stealthily move the boat to the next expected eruption site. Guess right and fish are caught. Guess wrong and the chase resumes. Each time a school surfaces close enough to cast the chance of catching a fish diminishes. After 3 or 4 up and down events it is time to find a new school to chase.
The most effective presentation is a 2-inch plastic grub on a 3/8th ounce jig head with light line. The heavy jig casts far enough to reach the fish while the tiny plastic grub is small enough to resemble a larval shad. Let the jig fall through the school and then work it back with a steady retrieve while twitching the rod tip to provide an erratic swimming motion.
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Anchovy caught stripers from Navajo Canyon July 13th
If you want to catch fish instead of just chasing them then bait fishing is the best strategy. Adult stripers continue to sulk in the depths along the canyon walls in the lower half of the lake. Fishing anchovies at 40-60 feet is the best technique for catching 4-6 pound stripers. The hot spot is Navajo Canyon from the mouth to the second point past the double island. The mouth of Warm Creek on the east side and Antelope Canyon are producing fish as well. Steady catching continues at the dam on both the east and west sides depending on time of day. Fish in the shade of the canyon walls during the heat of the day. Stripers prefer the shaded areas.
Please harvest as many stripers as possible. Last year’s striper crop was huge. There are millions of young stripers very effectively feeding on larval shad right now. Shad must grow larger to become a positive food source for adult fish. Young stripers may prevent that from happening in southern Lake Powell. Catch a striper to help keep fishing good.
Anchovy tail on quarter ounce jighead.
July 7, 2005
By Wayne Gustaveson
Lake Elevation: 3607
Water Temp: 76-82 F
Stripers are feeding nonstop on tiny shad. The onslaught starts before dawn and continues until dark. Slurping boils can be seen anytime and anywhere. This intense feeding has continued for two weeks now and stripers are very comfortable eating larval shad and ignoring larger baits. That makes it tough since anglers really don’t have a larval shad lure in their tackle box. Tiny shad resemble a one-inch long piece of spaghetti.
Sometimes the very first cast to a slurping school with a surface lure or rattletrap will get a strike. More often the lure is ignored in high use areas. One fishing strategy for spooky, boat-shy fish is to find boils just as they start before first light or just before dark. The ends of the day are the best fishing times, with evening far superior to morning if the wind is not blowing. The last two hours before dark are prime. Stripers will hit full size topwater lures in the evening.
The next best strategy is to find fish that are not boat shy. Stripers that have not been chased often are much more likely to hit a wide variety of lures including surface lures, spoons, rattletraps, jerk baits, and plastic grubs.
Shad are found in about half of the open bays and coves along the length of Lake Powell. Wahweap, Warm Creek, Rock Creek, Dangling Rope, Escalante, San Juan, Rincon, Lake Canyon, Halls and Bullfrog all have slurping stripers. The lake upstream from Bullfrog is clearing and getting better every day.
Today there was one sure thing when fishing boils. Yearling stripers (10-12 inches) can consistently be found between Stateline ramp at Wahweap and the fuel dock at the rental marina. Cruise along the tire breakwater from 8-10 AM looking for surface feeding fish. When found cast a 2-inch plastic grub to these bold little fighters who feed right along side or under the boat. When the fish leave the surface they are extremely vulnerable to a grub descending through the 200 fish schools. Find the school on the graph, drop the grub straight down through the school and catch foot-long stripers as fast as they can be unhooked. Plastic grubs are ripped quite easily so use a drop of super glue between the grub and jig head to extend the life of each grub.
Harvest some of these yearling stripers to save shad. Stomach analysis reveals yearling stripers are eating 2-3 times as many shad as their larger counterparts.
Adult stripers feed on larval shad only during low light. Then they go deep along the canyon walls to rest during the day. Fish anchovy bait on canyon walls, points, and ledges for the most consistent striper fishing of the year. Bait fishing is excellent for 4-6 pound stripers in Antelope and Navajo canyons and many other main channel spots further uplake. Chumming increases catch rate immensely.
Night fishing under green lights is very good for all size stripers at Wahweap and Antelope Marinas.
Bass fishing is only fair to good with a quick topwater bite each morning and evening. Bass hold during the day at 25 feet. Best bass fishing is found from Last Chance to Escalante Canyon. During the day select 45-degree rocky slopes with very little brush when pursuing smallmouth bass. Surface lures, jerk baits and soft plastic grubs are working. Small bass are on shore with adult smallmouth down much deeper.
Catfish are active on shallow sloping sandy beaches each evening. They may be the fish caught most consistently right now.
 
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