Mid Lake

BrianID

BrianID

Well-Known Member
Just returned from a week of fishing on Powell. I had a great trip. Caught many stripers, largemouth, smallmouth, crappie and bluegill. Caught a few walleye and catfish as well but never specifically targeted them.
Cold front on 17th/18th and 26th did have some effect on catching but fishing was still good. Water temperatures from 56 to 67 degrees. Cold front on the 26th did cool surface temperature by almost 5 degrees in places. Mid week most of the main channel was around 62 to 64 degrees but after the cold front it was 58 degrees or less in most places Monday morning.
Launched at Stateline went up lake to MM 25. Tried trolling through there without finding many stripers and left after about an hour. Graphed more stripers while going through wakeless zones around Wahweap.
Best advice I can give on stripers is to graph for them and take advantage of them when you find them. My dad and I caught about 100 stripers on a spot on Wednesday and went back Friday and only caught a handful. We did not catch a striper over 3lbs this trip and most were smaller 2 year old fish. The past few springs we have been able to get a number of 4lb and a few 5lb stripers. Overall striper population seems significantly lower and smaller than previous years. I know this is a normal cycle for Powell and Dan Keller had warned all of us about this. Maybe there are a few more 4lb+ stripers north of Bullfrog.
Smallmouth fishing was great as always but their numbers and size also doesn't seem as good as previous springs.
Largemouth were good for Powell. There seems to be a strong age class around 13" that are fat and healthy and a few larger ones mixed in.
Bluegill and crappie were both in great shape. My dad and I both caught slab crappie just under 16" with a good number of 13"-15" crappie.
I'll work on posting some pictures.
 
BrianID said:
Just returned from a week of fishing on Powell. I had a great trip. Caught many stripers, largemouth, smallmouth, crappie and bluegill. Caught a few walleye and catfish as well but never specifically targeted them.
Cold front on 17th/18th and 26th did have some effect on catching but fishing was still good. Water temperatures from 56 to 67 degrees. Cold front on the 26th did cool surface temperature by almost 5 degrees in places. Mid week most of the main channel was around 62 to 64 degrees but after the cold front it was 58 degrees or less in most places Monday morning.
Launched at Stateline went up lake to MM 25. Tried trolling through there without finding many stripers and left after about an hour. Graphed more stripers while going through wakeless zones around Wahweap.
Best advice I can give on stripers is to graph for them and take advantage of them when you find them. My dad and I caught about 100 stripers on a spot on Wednesday and went back Friday and only caught a handful. We did not catch a striper over 3lbs this trip and most were smaller 2 year old fish. The past few springs we have been able to get a number of 4lb and a few 5lb stripers. Overall striper population seems significantly lower and smaller than previous years. I know this is a normal cycle for Powell and Dan Keller had warned all of us about this. Maybe there are a few more 4lb+ stripers north of Bullfrog.
Smallmouth fishing was great as always but their numbers and size also doesn't seem as good as previous springs.
Largemouth were good for Powell. There seems to be a strong age class around 13" that are fat and healthy and a few larger ones mixed in.
Bluegill and crappie were both in great shape. My dad and I both caught slab crappie just under 16" with a good number of 13"-15" crappie.
I'll work on posting some pictures.
Click to expand...
Great report!! Where did ya spend your time??
 
BrianID said:
Just returned from a week of fishing on Powell. I had a great trip. Caught many stripers, largemouth, smallmouth, crappie and bluegill. Caught a few walleye and catfish as well but never specifically targeted them.
Cold front on 17th/18th and 26th did have some effect on catching but fishing was still good. Water temperatures from 56 to 67 degrees. Cold front on the 26th did cool surface temperature by almost 5 degrees in places. Mid week most of the main channel was around 62 to 64 degrees but after the cold front it was 58 degrees or less in most places Monday morning.
Launched at Stateline went up lake to MM 25. Tried trolling through there without finding many stripers and left after about an hour. Graphed more stripers while going through wakeless zones around Wahweap.
Best advice I can give on stripers is to graph for them and take advantage of them when you find them. My dad and I caught about 100 stripers on a spot on Wednesday and went back Friday and only caught a handful. We did not catch a striper over 3lbs this trip and most were smaller 2 year old fish. The past few springs we have been able to get a number of 4lb and a few 5lb stripers. Overall striper population seems significantly lower and smaller than previous years. I know this is a normal cycle for Powell and Dan Keller had warned all of us about this. Maybe there are a few more 4lb+ stripers north of Bullfrog.
Smallmouth fishing was great as always but their numbers and size also doesn't seem as good as previous springs.
Largemouth were good for Powell. There seems to be a strong age class around 13" that are fat and healthy and a few larger ones mixed in.
Bluegill and crappie were both in great shape. My dad and I both caught slab crappie just under 16" with a good number of 13"-15" crappie.
I'll work on posting some pictures.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the report!
 
BrianID said:
Just returned from a week of fishing on Powell. I had a great trip. Caught many stripers, largemouth, smallmouth, crappie and bluegill. Caught a few walleye and catfish as well but never specifically targeted them.
Cold front on 17th/18th and 26th did have some effect on catching but fishing was still good. Water temperatures from 56 to 67 degrees. Cold front on the 26th did cool surface temperature by almost 5 degrees in places. Mid week most of the main channel was around 62 to 64 degrees but after the cold front it was 58 degrees or less in most places Monday morning.
Launched at Stateline went up lake to MM 25. Tried trolling through there without finding many stripers and left after about an hour. Graphed more stripers while going through wakeless zones around Wahweap.
Best advice I can give on stripers is to graph for them and take advantage of them when you find them. My dad and I caught about 100 stripers on a spot on Wednesday and went back Friday and only caught a handful. We did not catch a striper over 3lbs this trip and most were smaller 2 year old fish. The past few springs we have been able to get a number of 4lb and a few 5lb stripers. Overall striper population seems significantly lower and smaller than previous years. I know this is a normal cycle for Powell and Dan Keller had warned all of us about this. Maybe there are a few more 4lb+ stripers north of Bullfrog.
Smallmouth fishing was great as always but their numbers and size also doesn't seem as good as previous springs.
Largemouth were good for Powell. There seems to be a strong age class around 13" that are fat and healthy and a few larger ones mixed in.
Bluegill and crappie were both in great shape. My dad and I both caught slab crappie just under 16" with a good number of 13"-15" crappie.
I'll work on posting some pictures.
Click to expand...
Nice report. Would you say it would be prudent to harvest less smallmouth, especially the midsized to larger ones?
 
jlandon said:
Nice report. Would you say it would be prudent to harvest less smallmouth, especially the midsized to larger ones?
Click to expand...
I'm not the best authority to know what should and shouldn't be harvested. Wayne gave great advice on this years ago. If you are fishing an area with a lot of sub 12" smallmouth, it would likely be beneficial to keep a limit of 20 short smallmouth. I personally don't think anglers keeping a few midsized or larger smallmouth is extremely harmful to the Powell fishery but smallmouth harvest should mostly target sub 12" fish.

I do think anglers could keep every striper they catch and it would only help all the other stripers and fish in the lake.

I do have a strong opinion that largemouth harvest should be minimal but I would speculated the tournaments with live weigh ins cause more harm to the 18"+ largemouth than the few anglers that are keeping bigger largemouth to eat.

A guy like me that catches a bunch of fish in a week is without a doubt killing more fish than the guy that keeps a couple dozen fish. Even though I think I have a lower than average mortality rate with my catch and release fish, it is probably still at least 5%. I only had one striper and one crappie go belly up that I saw after release this week but I'm sure there were dozens of others that didn't make it.
 
BrianID said:
I'm not the best authority to know what should and shouldn't be harvested. Wayne gave great advice on this years ago. If you are fishing an area with a lot of sub 12" smallmouth, it would likely be beneficial to keep a limit of 20 short smallmouth. I personally don't think anglers keeping a few midsized or larger smallmouth is extremely harmful to the Powell fishery but smallmouth harvest should mostly target sub 12" fish.

I do think anglers could keep every striper they catch and it would only help all the other stripers and fish in the lake.

I do have a strong opinion that largemouth harvest should be minimal but I would speculated the tournaments with live weigh ins cause more harm to the 18"+ largemouth than the few anglers that are keeping bigger largemouth to eat.

A guy like me that catches a bunch of fish in a week is without a doubt killing more fish than the guy that keeps a couple dozen fish. Even though I think I have a lower than average mortality rate with my catch and release fish, it is probably still at least 5%. I only had one striper and one crappie go belly up that I saw after release this week but I'm sure there were dozens of others that didn't make it.
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100% agree on the largemouth. They’re making a good comeback right now on the lake. I ask about the smallmouth because at this time of year, I’m sure we’re catching many fish guarding beds or spawning. If we end up keeping those, it’s got to cause ripple effects down the road. But like you said, we’re no biologists like Wayne.
 
Here are a few pictures of stripers on my graphs. I didn't see near as many stripers on my graphs as I did last spring or the year before but there are still plenty of stripers in Powell to catch. I apologize my graph screens are dirty and more glare in these pictures than they looked in person. I still think some of you would find them beneficial. Being able to troll around and graph different areas and then focus on areas with larger populations of stripers helped me catch many more stripers than I would have otherwise.

This first picture shows a group of 40 or more stripers on the right middle next to a school of bluegills just above them on the right. It can be difficult to distinguish bluegills from stripers on the graph. Bluegill and stripers can be found in many of the same areas and both can have large group sizes. I wouldn't be 100% sure what I was looking at every time until I started catching them or shined my live scope on them to get a better look.
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The below image shows a clear image of two groups of stripers. Each school has probably around 50 fish.
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This isn't a great image but the only one I took this trip. It shows a group of stripers on my down imaging and traditional sonar side by side. Normally the traditional sonar shows a much clearer picture but I needed to change the settings to see the school of stripers better on the traditional sonar.
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Image of stripers on Livescope.
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I found a fast moving jerk bait was my most consistent lure for this trip but also caught them consistently on ned rigs, lipless crank baits. I did catch some of blade baits and spoons also caught a few stripers for me. Chumming with anchovies was also an effective way to catch stripers but had 4 bags for the week.
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jlandon said:
100% agree on the largemouth. They’re making a good comeback right now on the lake. I ask about the smallmouth because at this time of year, I’m sure we’re catching many fish guarding beds or spawning. If we end up keeping those, it’s got to cause ripple effects down the road. But like you said, we’re no biologists like Wayne.
Click to expand...
This is just my opinion and I don't have facts to back it but I think anglers would have to keep a whole lot of smallmouth off beds to have a significant impact in the number of 1 year old smallmouth a year later. I think the real bottle neck for smallmouth in Powell is having enough food to get to 2lbs. I think anglers keeping more short smallmouth has significantly improved the number of 2lb smallmouth in Powell. I do think anglers could over harvest 15" smallmouth in Powell but I don't think anglers can over harvest 8" smallmouth in Powell.
 
Smallmouth were plentiful and seemed more sensitive to the cold fronts than other species. I caught them on whatever I wanted to fish with.
Ned rigs are a very efficient way to catch smallmouth but you can catch them with any lure you want.

A few of the smallmouth on Ned rigs.
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Ned Rig next to a crawfish a smallmouth left on the deck of my boat. I tried multiple different colors and caught them well on green pumkin, watermelon, orange/green pumpkin, Chartruese/green pumpkin.
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I did catch a few on topwater baits but the water needs to warm up a little more for them to be more consistent on topwater baits.
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Couple smallmouth caught on jerkbait and an underspin
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Largemouth seemed like they were in decent shape. Hopefully we get above average rain and snow the next 12 months and we can see the lake come up and flood more brush so the largemouth, crappie and bluegill can thrive.
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