russellweight
Active Member
We had the opportunity to bring along my wife's older brother on our annual trip this year! It sure is fun showing someone new the awesomeness and beauty of Lake Powell. Even with fishing being a bit slower than we had hoped, it was another amazing trip on beautiful Lake Powell.
We launched from stateline at safe-light Saturday morning and headed up lake to Neskahi Bay in the San Juan. We hoped to see some boils as we traveled up lake nice and early in the morning, but didn't see a single one... We got back into our spot around 8:30am. Boat traffic was basically none when we got back in there Saturday morning and we didn't have to share the water with anyone until Saturday evening when one houseboat towing 3 wakeboard boats came back in. However even with them back in there there was little to no water traffic to speak of all weekend.
Day 1 - We started fishing for bass around 9:00am Saturday morning. I of course went to throwing my whopper plopper and had a few fish on pretty quick, but we had mostly missed the moring bite by this time. We picked up a fish here and there, but we never found any large concentration of fish on this trip like we have found in years past. In fact the fish just didn't seem to be there in general. This time of year we normally will find them chasing shad or pushing them up in areas. This was not the case this time (in hindsight I believe that most of the bass were out in open water chasing shad schools which is why we weren't finding them in their normal shoreline structure) The fish we did find were generally smaller than normal, and we had very few doubles at all on this trip. The mid day bass bite (after 10:00am to 2:00pm) was basically nonexistent. We did however start seeing boils during this time of day out in the main lake, but they would go down just as quickly as they came up. It was like chasing shadows, but we did finally have one or two pop up next to the boat. On one of these my bro in law was able to hook into his first ever striper which was awesome! These boils went up and down for about an hour, and we did catch a few random smallies chasing shad in open water while chasing these boils. After that the evening bite was rather slow. We ended up with 32 the first day for our boat - a mix of SM, a few LM and a hand full of stripers. These mostly came in on whopper ploppers, but we also caught a few on plastics and one striper on a spoon.
Day 2 - We were up and fishing at first light. The morning bite was much better, and we quickly picked up smallies an LM on our whopper ploppers. These were mainly point related or halfway back into coves. There was a decent amount of submerged brush in the lake, but we did not find any LM back in brushy coves as I would have guessed. The mid day bite was slow like the day before, but I did end up picking up the biggest catfish i've ever caught at Powell on my whopper plopper! That was a fun treat to pull in. The afternoon bite was again slow, but that evening we had fun chasing boils. As with the day before they would go down as quickly as they came up, but we did manage to pick up one here and a couple there when they came up close enough to our boat. Our daily total was right at 50 fish sunday. Again a mix of SM, some LM and stripers and the one confused catfish. These again mainly came in on whopper ploppers with a handful on ned rigs.
Day 3 - We again had a good early morning bite on topwater, which lasted until around 9:00am. After that we tried plastics, cranks and rattle traps, but these only produced a few fish here and there. We even tried trolling for a while where we could see random splashes and large concentrations of bait fish at the surface and the graph showed good schools below, but no takers. We didn't see any boils this day. We packed things up and headed back down the lake around 2:00pm. Boat traffic was lite and made for an easy drive back to the launch after stopping on the way back for an ice cream at dangling rope. On the way back we didn't see a single boil which was disappointing, as the water was nice and calm. We ended this day at 29 with a mix of SM, some LM and a small bluegill on a whopper plopper who's eyes were much bigger than his stomach.
All in all it was a good trip. Just over 100 fish for 2.5 days. 70% were caught on Whopper Ploppers, with the remaining 30% on a mix of plastics, cranks and spoons. As with most of the current reports on WW, the boils were not as prominent as one would have hoped for this time of year. However the good news is (at least in the San Juan) there is TONS of bait fish out there! Every evening you could see the disturbance of pods after pods of shad rippling over the entire surface of the lake! So don't let the lack of boils discourage you! Our fish our eating good right now, and this fall should be an amazing event at Lake Powell.
Thanks again Wayne for all you do!!!
We launched from stateline at safe-light Saturday morning and headed up lake to Neskahi Bay in the San Juan. We hoped to see some boils as we traveled up lake nice and early in the morning, but didn't see a single one... We got back into our spot around 8:30am. Boat traffic was basically none when we got back in there Saturday morning and we didn't have to share the water with anyone until Saturday evening when one houseboat towing 3 wakeboard boats came back in. However even with them back in there there was little to no water traffic to speak of all weekend.
Day 1 - We started fishing for bass around 9:00am Saturday morning. I of course went to throwing my whopper plopper and had a few fish on pretty quick, but we had mostly missed the moring bite by this time. We picked up a fish here and there, but we never found any large concentration of fish on this trip like we have found in years past. In fact the fish just didn't seem to be there in general. This time of year we normally will find them chasing shad or pushing them up in areas. This was not the case this time (in hindsight I believe that most of the bass were out in open water chasing shad schools which is why we weren't finding them in their normal shoreline structure) The fish we did find were generally smaller than normal, and we had very few doubles at all on this trip. The mid day bass bite (after 10:00am to 2:00pm) was basically nonexistent. We did however start seeing boils during this time of day out in the main lake, but they would go down just as quickly as they came up. It was like chasing shadows, but we did finally have one or two pop up next to the boat. On one of these my bro in law was able to hook into his first ever striper which was awesome! These boils went up and down for about an hour, and we did catch a few random smallies chasing shad in open water while chasing these boils. After that the evening bite was rather slow. We ended up with 32 the first day for our boat - a mix of SM, a few LM and a hand full of stripers. These mostly came in on whopper ploppers, but we also caught a few on plastics and one striper on a spoon.
Day 2 - We were up and fishing at first light. The morning bite was much better, and we quickly picked up smallies an LM on our whopper ploppers. These were mainly point related or halfway back into coves. There was a decent amount of submerged brush in the lake, but we did not find any LM back in brushy coves as I would have guessed. The mid day bite was slow like the day before, but I did end up picking up the biggest catfish i've ever caught at Powell on my whopper plopper! That was a fun treat to pull in. The afternoon bite was again slow, but that evening we had fun chasing boils. As with the day before they would go down as quickly as they came up, but we did manage to pick up one here and a couple there when they came up close enough to our boat. Our daily total was right at 50 fish sunday. Again a mix of SM, some LM and stripers and the one confused catfish. These again mainly came in on whopper ploppers with a handful on ned rigs.
Day 3 - We again had a good early morning bite on topwater, which lasted until around 9:00am. After that we tried plastics, cranks and rattle traps, but these only produced a few fish here and there. We even tried trolling for a while where we could see random splashes and large concentrations of bait fish at the surface and the graph showed good schools below, but no takers. We didn't see any boils this day. We packed things up and headed back down the lake around 2:00pm. Boat traffic was lite and made for an easy drive back to the launch after stopping on the way back for an ice cream at dangling rope. On the way back we didn't see a single boil which was disappointing, as the water was nice and calm. We ended this day at 29 with a mix of SM, some LM and a small bluegill on a whopper plopper who's eyes were much bigger than his stomach.
All in all it was a good trip. Just over 100 fish for 2.5 days. 70% were caught on Whopper Ploppers, with the remaining 30% on a mix of plastics, cranks and spoons. As with most of the current reports on WW, the boils were not as prominent as one would have hoped for this time of year. However the good news is (at least in the San Juan) there is TONS of bait fish out there! Every evening you could see the disturbance of pods after pods of shad rippling over the entire surface of the lake! So don't let the lack of boils discourage you! Our fish our eating good right now, and this fall should be an amazing event at Lake Powell.
Thanks again Wayne for all you do!!!
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