Camped at Paiute Canyon/Neskahi Wash basin from Aug 17 to Aug 24. The graphs show a medium- size school of stripers with an interesting sidescan view on the eastern shore of the basin. I say medium because earlier we graphed a huge school at the entrance of Paiute between two boat-eating reefs. As was described earlier, it was like an aggressive surface boil 40 feet under. Anything silver worked, every drop was a fish. We fished there three days in a row, same spot, as much as you wanted and at 4 PM. Mornings didn't graph so well, so we fished only afternoons. We came to assume this school had taken up residence because the graph displayed sizable shad schools in the same area as well. The fourth day the fish had scattered into smaller schools so we spot-locked a position with the i-Pilot and every 4 or 5 minutes thay showed up on the graph as if swimming a repetitive circuit.
We got a nice early-morning boil crashing shad on the east shore. The ravens were filling up and the smallies were going ballistic on topwater. We graphed that school straight out from the boil during the afternoon, and like Paiute, 40 feet down, silver spoons, as much as you wanted. We noticed ravens hanging out on the shoreline all day as if waiting for the next boil, so again; were they resident fish? Exercise caution because the east and south shores are full of wicked- looking rock reefs just above and below the surface. A couple of small boils swam within casting distance of camp and one of our friends caught two on a fly rod from shore. Smallmouth were everywhere and easily caught on Yamamoto grubs. Surprisingly, topwater worked all day on smallies over those wicked reefs.
Tuesday our camp blew out from the thunderstorms that day. We didn't see it because we were making our way back from the Escalante. Ferocious wind and rain, but no long fetch distances up there so surface conditions weren't too rough. But we saw 30 miles of waterfalls that were jaw dropping; a real NatGeo moment we were lucky to see.
We got a nice early-morning boil crashing shad on the east shore. The ravens were filling up and the smallies were going ballistic on topwater. We graphed that school straight out from the boil during the afternoon, and like Paiute, 40 feet down, silver spoons, as much as you wanted. We noticed ravens hanging out on the shoreline all day as if waiting for the next boil, so again; were they resident fish? Exercise caution because the east and south shores are full of wicked- looking rock reefs just above and below the surface. A couple of small boils swam within casting distance of camp and one of our friends caught two on a fly rod from shore. Smallmouth were everywhere and easily caught on Yamamoto grubs. Surprisingly, topwater worked all day on smallies over those wicked reefs.
Tuesday our camp blew out from the thunderstorms that day. We didn't see it because we were making our way back from the Escalante. Ferocious wind and rain, but no long fetch distances up there so surface conditions weren't too rough. But we saw 30 miles of waterfalls that were jaw dropping; a real NatGeo moment we were lucky to see.
