TR.
Escalante-Class Member
Sorry for the delay in this report, hopefully it will still be of some use. Had a great 12 days on the lake, taking off July 2. We were there for the heat and according to the ranger when taking out it was 120 one day. We fished for an hour and swam for an hour during the heat wave, keeping cool. The only time it was really hot was at night, as in waking up at 1 pm to see 99 on the thermometer. Stripers were slurping the first week very well, especially in Paiute. Cha they were a little more skittish. The schools were fairly uncoordinated and very fast. Average size around 2+ pounds. I got some occasional action on a small pencil popper however the best fly for the bills was a very small white guy that intie up. The second week the winds came up and the slurps were harder to find. We trolled one day in Paiute, sorry don't know the name if the lure but it cost $16 dollars and rattled 
. Fish every 30 seconds, kind of ridiculous. As I posted earlier, any area that had plenty of brush and had not been under water for a number of years was LOADED with bass. Almost every cast was a fish. We worked the benches that I usually camp on in the side canyons and it was game on. I was determined to learn it use plastics on this trip and I did indeed. Yamamoto 4inch senko in pumpkin with flake on a seedless wacky rig brought in some healthy largemouth. The real winner was a white Yamamoto grub on a heavy jig head. Crazy fishing and I went through two packs of those in a few days...hundreds of fish. After I ran out of white I went to dark green and they worked but I don't think as well. The fish seemed to be about 10 ft down for the most part. Also tried a Yamamoto shad wacky rigged with some success. All I can say is absolutely silly fishing and it was awesome. Water surface temps were all over the board, from 73-82 depending on the wind and day to day. Clarity was good and we saw plenty of floating wood but no trash whatsoever. The down side was we went to DR for fuel on about day 10 and as we were pumping the guy said he did not know if he had enough gas for us to fill up. Warning bells went off in my mind but what can you do? Unfortunately my boatbstarting coughing and stalling by that afternoon. I put in all the stabilizer I had along with all of my octane boost but it didn't fix it. I had two spare filters with me but forgot my filter wrench and no matter what we did we could not get the filter off...bummer. The filter on my boat is in a bad place and even using a belt as a wratchet we were out of luck. We took off two days early and stalled out a number of times getting back, but did make it. Slurps everywhere the whole way back on the main channel and could not stop to fish. I need to drain the tank and do some work so I can get back to the lake, but that won't happen for a few weeks. It was very sad leaving the boat in my driveway when we had to evacuate for the fire however it survived to float another day. Hopefully will get back by August.
TR
. Fish every 30 seconds, kind of ridiculous. As I posted earlier, any area that had plenty of brush and had not been under water for a number of years was LOADED with bass. Almost every cast was a fish. We worked the benches that I usually camp on in the side canyons and it was game on. I was determined to learn it use plastics on this trip and I did indeed. Yamamoto 4inch senko in pumpkin with flake on a seedless wacky rig brought in some healthy largemouth. The real winner was a white Yamamoto grub on a heavy jig head. Crazy fishing and I went through two packs of those in a few days...hundreds of fish. After I ran out of white I went to dark green and they worked but I don't think as well. The fish seemed to be about 10 ft down for the most part. Also tried a Yamamoto shad wacky rigged with some success. All I can say is absolutely silly fishing and it was awesome. Water surface temps were all over the board, from 73-82 depending on the wind and day to day. Clarity was good and we saw plenty of floating wood but no trash whatsoever. The down side was we went to DR for fuel on about day 10 and as we were pumping the guy said he did not know if he had enough gas for us to fill up. Warning bells went off in my mind but what can you do? Unfortunately my boatbstarting coughing and stalling by that afternoon. I put in all the stabilizer I had along with all of my octane boost but it didn't fix it. I had two spare filters with me but forgot my filter wrench and no matter what we did we could not get the filter off...bummer. The filter on my boat is in a bad place and even using a belt as a wratchet we were out of luck. We took off two days early and stalled out a number of times getting back, but did make it. Slurps everywhere the whole way back on the main channel and could not stop to fish. I need to drain the tank and do some work so I can get back to the lake, but that won't happen for a few weeks. It was very sad leaving the boat in my driveway when we had to evacuate for the fire however it survived to float another day. Hopefully will get back by August. TR
