Dan Spitzer
Well-Known Member
Launched at Hite Sunday afternoon. Fortunately, as we were looking over the launching conditions another boat was getting ready to trailer and they told us to angle towards the back of the courtesy dock from the north side of the dock. We got launched fully loaded. Hite is one of those places where the shoreline steps down (not a consistent slope) and so regardless of water level sometimes it's ez and other times one needs to back way out. Near the end of July we launched form the south side of the dock and we could see the step down where the shoreline dropped rapidly making launching a fully loaded boat ez. This time we had to get quite a ways out. Right now back out and aim for the tires out in the water. We set up camp in Red Canyon with reasonably clear and clean water which was a must for enjoyable swimming to cool off.
Water temp: I bring up water temp as I think that directly affected the fishing. Temps varied from about 80 to 84+. While swimming I dove to probably about 10' to 12' ft. and felt no change in temp, unlike past experience when a definite water temp change could always be felt at about 6'-8'.
Stripers were boiling all over the north end of the lake but were of very short duration first thing in the morning, again around 10:00 and again in the afternoon anytime between 3:00 and 6:00. They did not follow any specific direction and so were hard to anticipate where they might come up. Drained my trolling batteries on Monday (I admittedly told Gloria before we left that we didn't need the generator or extra batteries). The big motor put down the boils long before we could get within casting distance. However we did mange enough stripers to get us through another 3-4 months of eating striper once a week.
I finally found the SMB. First, we caught a few trolling shad colored fat free shads over 20' of water. Others were caught letting grubs sink to about 30' and then slow reeling back to the boat. The SMB seemed to key on the movement of the swimming grub more than the sinking and/or jigging grub. They were keying on shad of course. Kept a few SMB - makes great ceviche.
Wednesday morning I tried jigging spoons over a known shelf in about 35' - 50' of water hoping to find a few walleye (a pattern that worked for us in the same area once before). No walleye, but after drifting over a resting striper school with no strikes, it wasn't 5 minutes later when I hooked something - no visible fish on the sonar - but it was a striper followed by about 20 others. Gloria was casting a Rattle Trap towards the shoreline with her 2nd rod with a spoon in the water resulted in a hookup also. I managed a 2nd striper and a catfish before that ended. Within minutes the stripers were boiling about 50 yards from the boat.
Headed north and found boils near the mouth of White. We chased those with 1 or 2 caught here and there and finally made a wide circle around them to try and get ahead of their general direction which finally paid off. Again the boils were very short in duration but we managed 3-4 this time. Basically, if we could catch more than 1 each out of a boil before it went down we were doing good.
As mentioned in the thread on the rec board, the black flies were bad, especially at camp.
Water temp: I bring up water temp as I think that directly affected the fishing. Temps varied from about 80 to 84+. While swimming I dove to probably about 10' to 12' ft. and felt no change in temp, unlike past experience when a definite water temp change could always be felt at about 6'-8'.
Stripers were boiling all over the north end of the lake but were of very short duration first thing in the morning, again around 10:00 and again in the afternoon anytime between 3:00 and 6:00. They did not follow any specific direction and so were hard to anticipate where they might come up. Drained my trolling batteries on Monday (I admittedly told Gloria before we left that we didn't need the generator or extra batteries). The big motor put down the boils long before we could get within casting distance. However we did mange enough stripers to get us through another 3-4 months of eating striper once a week.
I finally found the SMB. First, we caught a few trolling shad colored fat free shads over 20' of water. Others were caught letting grubs sink to about 30' and then slow reeling back to the boat. The SMB seemed to key on the movement of the swimming grub more than the sinking and/or jigging grub. They were keying on shad of course. Kept a few SMB - makes great ceviche.
Wednesday morning I tried jigging spoons over a known shelf in about 35' - 50' of water hoping to find a few walleye (a pattern that worked for us in the same area once before). No walleye, but after drifting over a resting striper school with no strikes, it wasn't 5 minutes later when I hooked something - no visible fish on the sonar - but it was a striper followed by about 20 others. Gloria was casting a Rattle Trap towards the shoreline with her 2nd rod with a spoon in the water resulted in a hookup also. I managed a 2nd striper and a catfish before that ended. Within minutes the stripers were boiling about 50 yards from the boat.
Headed north and found boils near the mouth of White. We chased those with 1 or 2 caught here and there and finally made a wide circle around them to try and get ahead of their general direction which finally paid off. Again the boils were very short in duration but we managed 3-4 this time. Basically, if we could catch more than 1 each out of a boil before it went down we were doing good.
As mentioned in the thread on the rec board, the black flies were bad, especially at camp.