Lake Elevation: 3614
Water Temperature 76 - 80 F
By: Wayne Gustaveson Wayne's Words
Our trawling crew just completed shad sampling with a midwater trawl for the month of July. The trawl has a 10-foot square opening that leads into a 50-feet long funnel-like net culminating in a plankton bucket where shad are captured before being counted and measured. This survey has been done every summer since 1976 which gives a long history of how shad have fared over the last 40 years. The survey also indicates much about how striped bass behave as they pursue shad throughout the lake.
Bullfrog was the winner among trawl sampling sites with over 400 shad of various sizes collected in each sample. Good Hope Bay was second with 170 shad collected. Wahweap came in last with only 50 larval shad per trawl tow. Now when we compare fishing success for stripers, it makes more sense that the best fishing is found midlake where shad numbers are greatest. Likewise the least number of stripers are caught in the southern lake where shad are low in number.
In the southern lake there are a few slurps with yearling stripers feeding on a small number of tiny shad. The good news here is that shad will grow and boils will occur in August when the tiny shad now living in turbid water in the backs of canyons swim into open water where larger stripers can find them. Southern stripers can still be caught but it requires trolling, or spooning, or bait fishing to get down to the striper holding level.
For now, go north to Bullfrog/Halls and then look upstream or down for serious boil action that occurs in the main channel very early in the morning and repeats regularly throughout the day and into the evening when winds are calm. These stripers will take full size surface lures, swim baits, spoons and crankbaits. It’s your choice.
Catch them and keep as many as you can use or give away.These fish are healthy and strong. All you have to do is keep them on ice immediately after capture and vacuum pack them if they are not eaten fresh within 3 days in the refrigerator.
NEVER – NEVER - NEVER put striped bass on a stringer and tow them around for hours in 80 degree water. The water in your live well is also 80 degrees. If stripers are put in the live well, do not allow water to circulate. Replace water with crushed ice where stripers will stay fresh. Treat stripers like ice cream. Always keep them cold. You will thank me for this chastisement later if you take my advice and fry up striper fillets that never got warm. Do your own taste test to rediscover how good eating fresh striped bass can be.
Smallmouth bass are still at it. While searching for stripers in the southern lake by casting and trolling and spooning we caught 11 stripers and over 25 smallmouth bass – without even trying. Bass were on 45 degree angle sloping shorelines with brush along the edge. Crankbaits cast toward the shore were viciously attacked by smallmouth from 8 inches to 2 pounds. We could have targeted bass and caught 100 fish. But we kept looking for the elusive stripers and did not have time, on a one day trip, to run to midlake where the boiling action starts.
