We only trolled and used plugs. We started early but found the best fishing in late afternoon. We found the fishing to be fabulous and the stripers to be in great shape and filled out. Fishing from 6 pm to 8:30 pm, at times we were boating 3 and 4 fish at a time. For the four days, I would estimate we caught over 300 fish (mostly stripers) and kept 10 which was all we could use. Late at night, the bigger stripers came out. Largest ones were around 5 lbs. and boy could they hit our plugs. Great trip......Jim

Date Received: May 4, 2000 Reed and Arlow Freestone, West Jordan, Utah
Just a note for those who would love to fish Lake Powell but do not have a boat to get to all the great places everyone tells about in their reports. You can still catch plenty of stripers and have a great fishing experience at Lake Powell without a boat.

My Dad and I camped at the Halls Crossing campground May 1-3. We hiked down to the lake just below the campground and fished off the point. We had our best success bait fishing with anchovies. We tried night crawlers and some lures and jigs with no success. In the past, night crawlers had worked as well as anchovies. We caught as many as 25 stripers in a day of fishing which was better than many of the boats who came trolling by to see how we where doing. Several boats stopped and bait fished with us because they where having no luck trolling. We also caught catfish and SMB as well as some huge carp, what a blast reeling those in. The fishing action came and went, but with patience we always caught more fish than we cared to carry back up the hill.

We went a little early this year and I believe the fishing will only get better later in the month. We do this several times a year and we always catch plenty of fish and have a great time. The only problem with the whole trip was none of the stripers had the Million Dollar TAG. I guess that means we will have to come back soon. Thanks for hosting such a great site.

Date Received: May 8, John Vosika
The southwest walleye anglers went fishing up by slickrock canyon and lake canyon on the northern end of the lake during the last week of April. We were out to catch and record as many walleyes as were we allowed. The week produced 130 walleyes ranging from [15"]to [25"]. Weights of the fish recorded were [1.68to2.85lbs ]. The fishing technique was whistler jigs, limegreen 3/8 ounce and the gold & chrome jigs by Cabela"s tipped with a nightcrawler. Our fishing line of choice was 6 to 8 LB mono or firerline 4lb test with this we found out we had better luck not loosing jigs and increase our fish intake. Fishing depths ranged from 27 to 50 ft. The walleyes were biting real soft like bluegill you really had to pay attention to the line other wise you would loose your nightcrawler. We had tied a stinger hook on the back but it did not increase our odds.

Walleyes were caught in the main channel of points and cliff walls that had step shelves with deep water outside. Fish could be caught until noon or 1 o'clock as long as there was shade. Walleyes were visually spotted on large boulders in 15 ft of water late in the morning we would remember the spots and go back later that evening and locate our boat out in deeper water while casting to the spot catching our tasting little friends.

Wayne, the smallmouth bass bite was shallow up by shore to 25 ft . When fish were caught they were small, all under 1 1/2 lbs. Most fish were released. The small mouth bass count 300 to 400 hundred. Fishing at lake powell can a real treat thats to all the services that make it so great. The men and woman at bullfrog medical center a very special thanks and may GODBLESS YOU!! Wayne were are always looking for new members. Help us by sending your name and 15.00 yearly dues to (SWA PO BOX 8592 MESA AZ 58214).

Date Received: May 8, 2000 Bob Smith, Paonia, Colorado
Wayne my father and i just returned from powell again. We fished for 4 days (May 3rd thrue May 7th) and had fair luck. First 2 days were great for both striper and bass. But on Friday the 5th the stripers just quit biting. We were fishing in the area of the Moki wall at the time. We tried several other locations with the same results.After talking with many other fishermen on those 2 days everbody said the same thing. During the 2 bad days we seen a total of 3 stripers caught. Still we had a great time and ended up with 98 fish. I did hear rumor of a tagged fish being caught on the first day of the contest but have not heard anymore about it. We did have the pleasure of meeting Ron Peterson and visiting with him for a short time at his new bait shop in Ticaboo, nice place. He did inform us that he would soon be selling waterdogs there, so for those of you that were wanting waterdogs thats the place to find them.

Date Received: May 11, 2000 Chet, Glenwood Springs,Co
Three of us arrived at the lake on the evening of the 6th and fished the back of Bullfrog and surrounding areas till tuesday the 9th. We caught about 100 fish in the three days mostly smallmouth but about a 10 walleyes, the stripers were scattered around and with the exception of a few times trolling for them was slow. The smb were caught on jigs, pumpkin color, just like Wayne told us. We trolled around the gravel islands with very little success. On tuesday a hot no wind day we could not find stripers anywhere. Another technique was to troll the mudline when the wind causes one. Hope to get back soon.

Date Received: May 15, 2000 Marty Peterson
Just after dark on the 11th near Moki Wall, I landed a nice 33" Striper. Guessing around 15lbs. maybe a little more. It was very windy so all I could do in my little boat was troll and then stop when I saw fish on the graph and drop anchovies. It worked.

On the 12th I fished Moki and caught a few Stripers trolling until the crowds sent me to Knowles. Just outside Knowles a shad rap also worked trolling. Caught about 20 of which several were fat and over 24". They fought very well and seemed to be slightly darker in color. Of course I had to plastic jig a few rock piles for SMB, all small.

Saturday morning trolling didn't work so I caught some LMB and went home. (Hopefully picture to follow later.)

Date Received: May 15, 2000 Tom Pettengill
My wife and I fished the Bullfrog area this last weekend. We spent most of our time in Bullfrog Bay but Saturday morning we trolled from the mouth of Hall's to Slick Rock and only caught two stripers. We fished the sloping points after that with 4" curly tailed grubs (white/silver sparkle and water melon/pepper) and caught several smallmouth bass.

We trolled mid-day in Halls and caught a couple more stripers. We were seeing scattered fish from 24 - 36 feet deep.

In Bullfrog Bay we trolled from the sandstone dome near the House Boat Mooring area back to the gravel islands. We averaged 10 stripers/hr and caught over 80 stripers in this area. The fish seemed to be biting whether it was morning, afternoon or evening. During most of the day the fish were showing up from 24 - 36 feet deep. Friday and Saturday evenings from about 2 hours before sunset until sunset the fish seemed to come up to between 12 and 24 feet. When the fish were deeper we fished deep diving Thunderstick Jr's. and the new Berkley Frenzy minnow 150 - 165 feet out. When they came up shallower we fished our lures 80 - 100 feet back. We used planer boards to get the lures away from the boat. The new blue color in the Thunderstick Jr. worked the best. We also caught lots of fish on the Frenzy Minnow in the bass and rainbow trout colors. The key seemed to be going at least 4 mph. If we dropped below 4 mph our catch rate really feel off. I'm not sure you can fish too fast for stripers but you can definitely go too slow. Most boats that saw us catching fish and tried the same area were trolling too slow. They would fish a little while and leave. We had one quad (fish on four rods at the same time), a couple of triples and lots of doubles. One time I caught two fish on the same lure at the same time. Two other times we both thought we saw two fish on the same lure but when we got it to the boat there was only one fish. It was great fishing. I also caught one walleye in open water trolling 4 mph.

Saturday evening just after we beached the boat a female Pintail duck swam up to the boat begging for a handout. She had obviously been around people before. We gave her some cookie. She hung around the area until dark. We only saw her the one time even though we were there for two nights. We were camped in Hall's.

Date Received: May 23, 2000 Marty Peterson
Ray Schelble and I fished Knowles Canyon on Fri 5/19. He started with a nice Walleye, then some SMB all on jigs just inside canyon mouth. Nothing up canyon. Then we trolled up several Stripers on the north mouth wall. Frenzy and Rapalas all trip.

Saturday we found a few nice Stripers along Tapestry Wall. But not as many as we would have thought. Also trolled up SMB and Walleyes. Big time crowd of boat traffic. Not as many people fishing though.

Sunday Moki Wall with the crowd. Less than a dozen Striper, and one each of nice LMB and Walleye, off the wall. Then we trolled with the "fishing fleet" near the top of Bullfrog Bay. Ray picked up 3 smaller Striper. At sundown several Striper out of Stanton.

Of note, the latest fishing report was very accurate. There are lots of small SMB all over. The Stripers seem to be moving a lot. Stained water all the way down to Forgotten Canyon, in the main channel.

Date Received: May 25, 2000 David Spainhower
We just returned from Bullfrog on the 24th. The fishing was tough. Threw alot of tube lures. Even tried catchings stripers on bait, but on monday night we found the stripers. What a blast. They were just south of the two gravel islands up Bullfrog bay in the WILLOWS! We were throwing top water mostly poppers and what a blast. Most were small with a few over 3 LBS. We caught a few smallies. The fishing was good from 7:00 pm to dark then in the mornings it was fantastic until the sun came up then it was over . Just wished We would have found out sooner. I think it will get better every day.

Date Received: June 6, 2000 Chiknhawker
OUR RECENT TRIP TO THE LAKE STARTED REAL SLOW WITH ONLY A COUPLE WALLEYE AND OF COURSE THE SMALL MOUTH BASS TO SHOW. ON THURSDAY, JUNE 1 OUR PERSISTENCE BEGAN TO SHOW. WE FOUND STRIPERS IN CEDAR SPRINGS ABOUT 2 P.M. CHUMMING AND JIGGING WITH ANCHOVIES BROUGHT THE SCHOOL WITHIN RANGE. MANAGED TO HOOK A DOZEN BEFORE THE SLACKED OFF. AFTER RETURNING TO OUR HOUSEBOAT TO REPLENISH SUPPLIES AND PICKUP MY FISHING PARTNER, WE RETURNED TO THE SAME SPOT AND WITHIN 5 MINUTES BEGAN TO CATCH AGAIN. MANY TIMES WE HAD 2-3 FISH ON AT THE SAME TIME. ENJOYED OUR STAY AT LAKE POWELL IMMENSELY.

Date Received: June 19, 2000 Bob Smith, Paonia, Colorado
Just made the final trip of the summer, hope to try the fall fishing this year.We fished on June 13 -14 -15 from Moqi to Hansen caught 21 the first day 70 the second and 19 the last day. During the period of the day we traveled from point to point chumming each time and waiting to see what would happen. Its alot of frustrating time doing this but when you hit the right point and the fish want to feed you can have some exciting action. The mixture of the heat, boat traffic and wave runners is sometimes tough to deal with when you are trying to fish but I guess you take the good with the bad and just enjoy it. Between fishing the points we done alot of swimming which makes the hot days a little bit more bareable. Best fishing times seemed to be between 10 a.m. and noon and from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. but fish were caught at all times of the day.

Date Received: June 23, anon
my buddie who works at halls hit the stripers at lake canyon south west wall near a spire..... said he could see the boats in the main channel. boated 20 in an hour up to 4 lb

Date Received: June 26, 2000 Cody Comer
Fished Lake Powell June 11-16. Had a great time, parked the houseboat in Knowles Canyon and made daily excursions in the fishing boat. Our best success came with the smallmouth and largemouth on topwater. Fished early morning and late evenings using Zara Spooks and Spit N' Images. Tried other topwater lures, but the fish seemed to prefer the "walking-the-dog" action that those lures offered. Fished brushy bays and points in Knowles using this technique. Also picked up three stripers late in the evening on topwater.

Tried locating schools of stripers and jigging without success. However, we caught 2-3 fish per hour trolling medium to deep diving crankbaits in the blue and silver color, trolled at 4 mph. Had good success trolling deep in Knowles Canyon and also main channel walls and points. Caught 10 fish in two hours trolling the mud lines at the mouths of Forgotten Canyon and Crystal Spring Canyon.

Had moderate success jigging. Caught smallmouth sporadically jigging with smoke-colored curly tails and crawdad jigs. It was difficult to find the right type of jigging water in Knowles, due to the amount of vertical walls and steep drop-offs. Caught three Walleyes while trolling for stripers and two while vertical jigging with a smoke-colored grub in 50 feet of water.

This was our first trip to Powell and we had a great time. The warm water and moderate temperatures made for a great vacation! All the info from this site really helped in quickly determining fish locations and patterns. Thanks Wayne for the great site.

Date Received: June 27, 2000 Steve, Parachute, Co
Fished Stanton Creek this weekend. Small boils occurred every morning in the back of the east bay next to camp. Hula Poppers and floating Rapalas were the ticket since the shad were in under 1ft of water. Caught several LMB, SMB and Striper each morning from shore. The shad were pushed up to shore until sunshine. There was a blue heron munching daily and is a good locater. On a side note a fellow learned the hard way that driving to fast at night is not good as his cabin cruiser beached 25ft on shore one night. Also, trolling Stanton towards main channel produced Walleye, LMB, SMB and of course Striper just before dark in 25 - 35ft.

Date Received: June 30, 2000 Bill Hane
Just returned from our annual houseboat trip June 24. Fishing for bass, bluegill, catfish and stripers was great!! Caught catfish of the beaches opposite Bullfrog marina in the evening on worms and bass and big bluegill off the rocks and submerged ledges in Llewellyn Gulch in the evening on small dark plastic grubs. Best was the striper fishing in Moki Canyon June 23 with anchovies in the heat of the day. Found a water cave off the main channel with about 60-80 feet of shaded water. We chummed the water with anchovies as you have previosuly mentioned and then jigged anchovies off the bottom in 60-70 ft of water. Action was quick. Landed six 3-5# stripers in about 45 minutes while in the shade of the water cave. This was our first attempt at striper fishing at Lake Powell for me and my two adult sons, but won't be our last. Thanks for all the fishing tips. I read the reports on a year round basis.

Date Received: July 3, Valerie & Rob Simpson
We're not big fishers, but thanks to the fish report caught 2 fish in 2 canyons within 10 casts. A 3# striper past the rock fall dam in Iceberg on a chartreuse jig and a small, small mouth on a Shad Rap in Moki. Thanks for the fun Wayne. Long live the Zebco 33!!

Date Received: July 12, David Block
My Fishing Party and I arrived on June 29th and left on July 5th. We caught stripers BIG STRIPERS! every day it was the best trip we had in a long time. The first morning I woke up at 5:00 am and fished solo the rest of my party slept in. So I took it upon myself to find boils, and I found boils. There must of been a hundred yards of boils. Everything I threw at them, the stripers hit with passion, floating rapalas etc.. The rest of trip we all caught fish on anchovies some times chuming but most of the time we found them on the sonar. We camped at coyote cove and fished at moki canyon were we found the stripers along the wall in 30 to 60 feet . The boils I found the first morning were at the Halls crossing ferry launch cove. We also caught a lot of catfish at camp. As the fishing was great so are the people we met. We camped next to some of the best folks, I ever had the pleasure to camp with, and as for the people at halls crossing marina you are all the GREATEST!

Date Received: July 25, 2000 David Spainhower
We just returned from Lake Powell the 25th of July. We were down at the end of Bullfrog bay left side last camp. Every morning we would get up before sunrise and catch the morning boil that started by the last gravel island and the ended by a little cove just at the end on the right side of the island thats where the stripers surrounded them. If you go inside the cove there is a hidden cove to the right inside. Someone is usually camped there. Anyway there were some other boats but they were too far out. I went out and told them to come in closer and then they started to catch some. We used spooks, baby spooks and regular size. Clear, red and white, blue it didn't matter. I broke almost all of them hitting against the slick rock because thats where the shad and stripers were. The last day on the 24th it was cloudy in the morning and it was fantastic. The boils just kept coming.. Anyway FISH ON!!!!

Date Received: July 29, Ken Farnam, Colorodao Springs
This was our first trip to Lake Powell, Myself, my wife, son and my brother. We arrived on July 21, we walked down to the cove west of Bullfrog Marina and caught some nice small mouth bass and large mouth bass on purple worms, then in the evening my brother put a fluke on and started catching some stripers. I put on a 1 oz rattle trap and got in to them and so did my wife. The next morning we drove down to Bullfrog Marina and the stripers were boiling in the east cove so we put on large Zara Spook and we smoked them, any where from 1 to 2 lb's. Those 2 coves always produced nice large mouth bass, small mouth bass and stripers. On Wednesday July 25, we took a drive over to Hite marina, stopped at the overlook and this cove just started boiling with about 3 to 4 schools of stripers. We grabbed our poles, ran down the rocks and it was great. We couldn't get our Zara spooks in fast enough!! It seemed like they boiled forever! We smoked them! The boils lasted anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. They were all 2 to 3 lb's. We never took the large Zara Spook off the whole time we were their. We caught nice large mouth bass, small mouth bass and stripers between the two marinas. I caught a nice walleye on a 1 oz rattle trap. It was a great vacation, we loved it and are planning a trip for next year. Thanks Kenny and family

Date Received: September 12, Al Javadi
Just got back from five days of heaven on lake Powell. Launched from Wahweap and boated all the way to Hite and back on our Triton SF21. Did most of our fishing around Halls crossing and Bullfrog since we were staying in that area. Bait fishing in 50 feet of water around Bullfrog paid off for 15+ stripers and plenty of Catfish. Only saw single feeding fish on surface around both marinas which turned out no catch.

Day three of our trip we left Halls at 6:00 am headed for White Canyon. Made it there right at sunrise and no more than 10 minutes later a decent size boil erupted NEXT to our boat. Landed 8 fish from it and there were no more to be had on the surface. Moved to deeper water and got another 20+ on bait and Kastmasters. It was one of those "being at the right place at the right time" moments. It was impossible to get the smiles off our faces.

The total count of Small Mouths must have been over 20 to 30. Who can keep track of those little feisty guys. They were going for anything thrown at them. We also ended up with one Walleye that bit a large white spinner. That was our first Walleye ever and boy what a magnificent fish.

Over our 350 mile trek I got to learn the lake very well and appreciate its size and majesty more than ever. It is without a doubt one of the most beautiful places on earth and I have large gas bill to prove it.

Date Received: September 19, Mike Coca, Bremerton, WA
Just to let you know how i did on lake powell during the week 8/9-8/17. fished willow gulch on the escalante. started off with a couple of crappies and 4 catfish 3 weighed 1.5 to 2 lbs, the 4th 2 to 3 lbs. caught at night using worms and anchovies with bobber. started trolling the walls with a shad thin fin and hot N tot, caught smallmouths. alot were really small but some nice keepers. I switched to a split shot setup with gary yamatota smoke/pepper and chartrouse/pepper. on this setup i caught stripers and large mouth bass 1-3lbs. i also started getting bigger smallmouths. my largest largemouth was caught at the small boat entrance to bullfrog basin were the no wake zones begins and right on the edge for the big large rock sticking out of the water.

Date Received: September 25, Rod Stucker
Thanks to your fishing report, I just got back from a two day fishing trip at Lake Powell and filled the boat on small mouth bass and stripers by slow trolling in a light chop at sunrise with lures resembling the Zera Spooks which I got from the BullFrog Marina store. I caught 19 stripers in the 2-4 pound size and 6 small mouth bass all 2 pounds in size in a two hour period. The next morning we had to jig the trolling lures since there was no chop. Unlike the first morning, there were boils everywhere and we filled the boat with stripers again waiting for our guide to show up. We only caught one small mouth bass the second morning.

Date Received: November 28, V.B. Wilson, Salt Lake

Just returned from a fun filled Thanksgiving spent on the lake. The weather was delightful and we were able to stir up some striper interest. They were pretty much cookie-cutter look alike around 19-20 inches. We had to use controlled depth fishing to do any serious catching. We used chartreuse colored crank bait. Just for fun we tried to do some jigging and had moderate success. The best for us was controlled depth with the down riggers. We used very light tackle so even the smallest among them was fun to land. We stayed in Bull Frog Bay. We kept our lures at 6-8 feet off the bottom. The larger ones seemed to be on the very bottom with the smaller ones more at 60 feet. In 3 days we boated 60 fish.

WON bass held their second tournament of the year out of Bullfrog Marina on the third of March. The fishing was slow, as has been for the entire year. Water temperatures ranged between 46 in the morning hours to 50 degrees during the afternoons.

Out of 51 teams participating in the combined WON Bass/ Utah BASS federation Tournament, 21 teams failed to weigh a single fish. Only two teams were able to post limits. Jim and Jackie Bishop continued their rampage and were able to boat six bass, culling one, for first place honors. They reported catching their fish on jigs and tubes in clear water in Halls and Bullfrog Bay. The team of Jim Bishop Jr. and Rick Harris weighed a little over 7lbs for the second limit posted that day. They reported that they fished from warm Creek north to catch an unbelievable 15 fish during the day.

The rest of the teams didn't have such luck. Third place and fourth place weighed in 3 and four fish respectively and after that is was just one to two fish per team. Most all fish were caught pitching jigs and tubes to shallow cover in the back of cuts.

Fished out of Bullfrog March 23-24. Main Lake water temp early at 54, up to 60 in protected spots in the afternoon. Great weather, very little wind.

Started off slow on Friday, spent most of the day sightseeing and goofing off with the kids. Only caught 1-23" Striper on a spinnerbait & 1 nice Bluegill on a jig in Lake canyon. Saturday was better, went to Moki Canyon, lots of boats in the very back so fished rock slides 2/3 of the way back. I think the boat traffic helped by stirring op the mud. Caught 1-22" Striper, 4 nice Largemouth, and 2 Nice Smallmouth on Jigs in aprox. 10-20 feet of clear water. Went over to Hansen and had the whole back of the canyon to myself. Caught 1- 9" smallmouth on a jig, 2 nice Largemouth (2-3 lbs.) on spinnerbaits, and 2 more on soft jerkbaits all in the shallow murky water (60 degrees). Went back to camp in Halls Bay and my 9 year old son wanted to cast while I got dinner ready. He caught 3 11-14" Smallmouth in 3 casts on soft jerkbaits so I said dinner could wait and went over and we caught 4 more 10-13" by dark. Did not fish Sunday. Slept in, had a nice breakfast and headed for home. It wasn't my best fishing ever & I'm sure the guys in the tournament killed em but it was a great trip for us. Spent some real quality time with my kids, saw some incredible sunrises & sunsets and caught a few fish as a bonus. It just doesn't get any better than that!

Wayne, last weekend I went out on the boat at both Hite and Bullfrog. At Hite, fishing was fair at the wall next to the Colorado river we saw a nice large mouth someone caught there. South of Hite at buoy 136 on the east side. The fishermen there caught about one striper per hour trolling with anchovies at 60 feet.

In Farleys shore fishermen were catching a few stripers they were caught on anchovies off the bottom.

In White Cyn 1 nice Walleye caught with a white jig.

Both Bullfrog bay and Moqui wall were producing a few stripers not many fishermen though. The guy at the wall was jigging with anchovies.

Didn't see any smallmouth caught except for one at the Bullfrog ramp. It was caught on a smoke colored jig. I also heard that champagne colored Yamomoto has been working.

My wife and I spent the weekend of March 23rd (my birthday) down at Lake Powell. On Saturday I had several good bites, but had trouble getting the fish in the boat. The only fish landed was a 13inch crappie that was in the very back of Good Hope Bay. Sunday was a better catching day. I caught two smallmouths at the ramp at Bullfrog while loading the boat using a grey Texas rigged tube jig. While heading north up lake we stopped at several rock piles. We spotted many carp and an occasional striper in the shallows. We also saw two walleye sitting in about 8 feet of water on two of these rock piles. We got a few bites, but no fish were landed. Further uplake in the Good Hope Bay area I landed two more smallmouths and four large mouths on tubes, jigs and a Caralina rigged worm. We saw fish basking in the clear shallows as mentioned in your last report, and carefully casted past them to catch the few that I caught. I can't wait to get back down and do it again!

The tournament fishermen may not have reported their secrets from last weekend, but I will. The bass fishing in the stained water was good with some 3-4lb. largemouth and 16" small mouth. Smaller smallmouth can be caught in clear water along walls in 15-20' of water. The bonus over the weekend was the walleye are staging to spawn. We caught 10 in an hour, all ripe males in the 2 lbs class. A couple of females showed up in the 3+lb range. Walleye were especially active just before dark, but some showed in the early morning. Try crankbaits off gravel points in stained water. Stained water was 60 deg. clear water as low as 54. We also caught 30 or so crappie in the 11/2 to 2lb range fishing for bass and walleye. They all went back. Good fishing, Fred

Fished out of Bullfrog again March 30th & 31st. Weather was fantastic again. Very little wind. Water temps found were 53 at the lowest and 65 the highest. Fishing was noticeably better than the previous weekend, in fact I would call it excellent.

I forgot the catch template to record my info so I probably won't post my catch in the database since I don't have the accurate length info.

Started out Friday in Bullfrog Bay in stained water. Caught 2 Smallmouth and 3 Largemouth on Senko's, and Hula Grubs, and a 4lb Largemouth on a spinnerbait. Went to Moki canyon for the rest of the day. Caught 1 Smallmouth on a spinnerbait and several Smallmouth and another nice Largemouth with Hula Grubs on rock slides 2/3 of the way back in the canyon 10 to 20 feet deep. By mid afternoon we fished the shady rockslides with senko's and just killed them until dark. We lost track of the numbers. Most were 9 to 12 inch Smallmouth with the occasional 12 to 14 inch Largemouth. Also got a 14 inch Crappie on a senko.

We camped in Hansen canyon and fished there Saturday morning. Caught 2 Largemouth and 4 Smallmouth there on senko's then went up to Knowles canyon where we got skunked. Did better in Cedar Canyon. Caught a couple of 10 to 12 inch Smallmouth on hulagrubs in the clear water from rockslides then went in the back of the canyon and caught several Largemouth on senko's.

Had to have the boat on the trailer by 5:00 pm so we left and fished some main channel rockslides on the way back to Bullfrog. We caught another bunch of average 9 to 12 Smallmouth, and I caught my personal best Smallmouth on a Hula Grub with a 1/4 oz head aprox. 15 feet deep. It was 17.5 inches long and fat as can be. My buddy took a picture with my digital camera but when I got back and tried to get the picture it wasn't there, he had done something wrong and I was sick.

Didn't catch any Stripers. Did see a couple caught off the back of a houseboat in Moki. Another great trip to Powell.

Hite was good for stripers in the main channel. In Farleys they were jigging with anchovies at 20 feet. A few crappies taken with bait at the upper end of White Canyon. At the mouth of Red Canyon smallmouth were caught with green-brown Yamamoto soft plastic. Off and on action reported for small mouth.

At Bullfrog only a few fishermen. Some action jigging with anchovies at Moqui wall. Maybe a fish per hour. Lake canyon fishermen had a few stripers on anchovies from shore.

Fished LP April 12th -15th April 12th Fished out of Farley canyon ,Water temp 52,weather very cloudy w/some rain. Fishing was slow for all species . Caught 10 SMB, 2LMB, and 5 stripers. Black Bass were caught in 2mile,and White. Trolled the mud line on the Colorado and caught 1 striper per hour on a crawfish frenzy. Bass were caught on grubs and a 4in purple craw.

April 13th. Went to Blue Notch, Red canyon, Water was Very cold and clear 51. Fishing was very slow caught 1 LMB, and 3 SMB, Looked for stripers to no avail. Went back to the Colorado and caught 1 striper per hour along the mud line.

April 14th . Moved down to Bullfrog, Fished Bullfrog and Halls Creek bays, Fishing was excellent for both LMB and SMB, I caught 5 LMB in one cove in the back of Bullfrog Bay water temp was 57 in the back of some shallow bays. The biggest LMB was 4lbs *8oz. The others were between 1.5 and 3 lbs. LMB were caught in shallow water 4 to 10 ft. Deep. Most were caught on smoke silver sparkle grubs. SMB were caught off points in 15 to 20 ft of water. Caught 30 SMB on crankbaits and grubs.

April 15th Went and fished the Rincon Caught 15 SMB along various Rocky slopes. Noticed small schools of stripers in 15 to 35 ft of water. Water temp 58 , Caught 26 stripers (about every 5 to 10 min.) trolling the Rincon on size # 9 shad raps. Called it a day.

Three of us fished April 21st out of Bullfrog in the blowing wind and cold weather casting grubs, jigs, finesse, and spinner baits with very little success on SMB and LMB. The weather made the fishing tough. We did manage to pick-up 4 smallies and miss a few other light bites. Striper fishing was spotty at moki wall and we managed to pick-up four in about three hours. We ate our catch (smallies were about 10-11") and fished again on the 22nd. Fishing was about the same. All the fish were in predictable spots sunning themselves on submerged rocks. The best weather day was the worst fishing day on the 23rd producing only a couple of smallmouth and one largemouth about 10am - noon. We had an awesome time and we will be back in three weeks.

We slid the houseboat up on the beach in the back of Slickrock Canyon at about 12:30. After getting everything settled me and a buddy headed out in the bass boat. It took awhile to get back into Powell mode, but once we did fishing was excellent. Slickrock has plenty of steep rocky slopes, perfect for smallies which is what I was targeting in general. The first fish I caught was a Walleye. Got him on a Texas rigged Power Crawler, green with purple speckles. It worked so well I went with it for the rest of the day. We picked up several more smallies, but I was mainly exploring and getting used to the area. The Texas Rigged worm worked well but I think the most successful bait was a double tailed grub, in a smoke with red speckle pattern. At first I was fishing them too fast, but when I slowed 'em down to a crawl on the bottom I started catching more fish. Best bites where in small coves protected from the wind. I found when we were in water of about 65 to 67 degrees we had the most action. We had no luck finding Stripers. I think I marked one school in the center of the channel in Slickrock but it was too busy and we couldn't find them again. Catfishing was good in the back of the canyon as well. I didn't find any Crappie or Bluegill. There were plenty of trees and brush, but the visibility was poor. All our catches I posted on the report your catch page. Thanks to everyone on the board for info, which I'm going over now because I have a million more questions.

I fished Lake Powell from April 28 to May 1. My wife Heather and I met up with another couple (Matt and Kathy Riddle) and headed to the Knowles Canyon on Saturday. Since I was the only one interested in fishing not much fishing was done, but I did get manage to get some fishing in. In the third bay bay on the right as you are going into the canyon is where we camped. I pumped up my float tube and grabbed my underwater camera and scouted out the bay. There had been several tournament anglers (Bullfrog Open) in and out of the bay while I was getting set up. All said that the fishing was slow. The Aquaview underwater camera showed very little in the way of fish. A couple of hours before dark Me and my friend Matt took one of the boats out into to bay and fished several rocky points. We caught several smallmouths on brown spider jigs. Most were about 10'' or less, but two were 12".

Sunday morning I got up and headed back out to the same spots with the same results, but a little slower action. Sunday afternoon we headed back to Bullfrog so that the our wives could return home. Sunday evening I fished the marina area and caught 1 largemouth, 2 crappie and 2 bluegills in about two hours.

Monday morning I fished the marina again and caught 3 largemouths, 2 crappie, and 1 bluegill in about the same amount of time. That afternoon Me and Matt headed down to my secret striper fishing spot near Dangling Rope in hopes of catching another tagged striper.(I caught the third tagged fish last year). We set up camp and I started fishing just before dark and boated about 25 stripers.

Tuesday morning I got up at first light and landed another 32 stripers.(none with tags ) We went to Dangling Rope Marina and got fuel and something to eat and headed back uplake. On the way I managed to catch 7 more stripers, still none with tags.

I really wanted and needed that Nitro bass-boat for catching the first tagged striper. Oh well maybe next year! I may return to try for the Million Dollar Fish next weekend.

Hey Wayne! First of all, I would like to thank you for all the helpful info on your website. I was able apply a lot of it for a decent result. Now, April 3 my friend Chris and I took a trip to Bullfrog marina. Spent most of our time fishing the Stanton Creek area. Great striper action early morning and mid day. Average striper size 24". Had best luck on anchovies and they also seamed to really like a fast moving back and tan Rapalla huskies and jerks. A couple of small mouths were caught and unfortunately I hooked, but failed to land a brilliantly bronzed sm that was approx 22". We also unfortunately bothered by 5 unwanted catfish, one of which was about 12" short, unusually fat and had a very bright yellow and green coloring!?!? What is that all about?? My understanding is that striper boils do not happen that early in the season, but on the night of April 5, approx 1 a.m. our attention was drawn to the opposite side of the bay were we heard a loud constant shredding of water. This sound that lasted 4-5 min had move from the outer edge of this bay all the way to the inside which was a good 300-400 meters. My only logical explanation in the "BOIL".

WAYNE'S NOTE: Yellow catfish was a yellow bullhead.

Boils do happen but infrequently in the springtime.

Quick report. Four of us fished Bullfrog area 4/30-5/4. Caught about 150 stripers, 50 other fish. 90% of the stripers had good fillets. Shortest 14" longest 24". 3.5 lbs. heaviest striper. 2.5 heaviest smb. Found no stripers in upper Bullfrog Bay, or Stanton Creek. Lots of stripers Moki Wall but they wanted finesse in the presentation of anchovies. We used light (4 lb) leaders and small jig heads or sliding sinkers and bobbers. Needed to retie after any deep hookings. Found a few stripers in Knowles. Lots of smb and a few walleye. Mostly skinny there but hit anything.

Used underwater camera and found that every time we chummed with anchovies carp would arrive and eat pieces on the bottom. We intentionally caught 2. Unintentionally while fishing Moki we caught 3 and also 3 catfish. Cats around 20" and 3 lbs. Carp 24-30" 4 to 7 lbs.

When we arrived at Moki Wall 6am 5/1 there was 1 other boat there. At noon there were 16 in the canyon and four main channel. Everywhere we caught fish of course we also attracted boats. But found fish elsewhere each time we moved. Something we noticed was that with motors running fishing slowed. We did find the active and inactive feeding times to apply.

The wind and weather made it tough to fish as much as we would have liked. Also noticed that the water temp went down around 5 degrees afternoon of the 1st and stayed down through the 4th.

Fishing Trip to Lake Powell April 28-30, 2001

I appreciate your fishing report for Lake Powell. I checked it out before our trip and it wasn't looking good. I know it is too early in the season to have good fishing for striped bass......BUT........we pretty much slayed em. We caught approximately 180 fish in 3 days........We didn't have to start fishing for striper until 11:00am and quit at 2:00pm.....then we would do an evening fishing excursion from 5:00pm-8:00pm. We had two boats with 6 fisherman. Each boat would catch around 30 fish per day in Moki Canyon by Bullfrog. Just simple fishing with 1/2 of an anchovy and a hook with a lead jig. Monday night was the best.....fishing was very very slow when we got there and just before dark it seemed like a frenzy. We couldn't bait the hooks fast enough......it was great. One of the best fishing trips I ever had with lots of excitement. All the fish were 21-23" long.

Wayne, just thought I would give you a report on fishing Bullfrog and Halls creek last weekend 5/11-5/12. We were down to fish the UBF buddy tournament on Saturday. We started fishing in the back of Halls Creek bay Friday morning and caught nothing but small SMB, we looked around Halls until around 10 AM and then started fishing some of the main lake points and vertical shaded walls, and caught more of the same with an occasional LMB mixed in, all fish were caught on shad imitating plastics, spinnerbaits, and grubs.

On Saturday, we fished in some of the cuts in the back of Bullfrog, and found the fish early on the vertical walls in muddy water, we caught mostly LMB between 13"-17.5", and only 2 SMB, all on the walls, and we even caught 10 walleye, 1 BIG crappie, and a 30" 7lb+ HEALTHY striper, all in the muddy water, and ALL fish were released! All while fishing for LMB. Not so good when your fishing a bass tournament, but hey, who's complaining? We then fished some other main lake points, in Bullfrog, and filled up our limit for the tournament. Total take for the day saturday, 12 LMB, (all over 13") only 3 SMB, 10 walleye, 2 stripers, and 1 crappie. ALL fish on saturday were taken on shad imitating plastics. By the way, our 5 fish limit of LMB weighed in at 8.94lbs, good enough for 3rd place in the tournament. Thanks again for the great site Wayne, keep it up.... Rob

Well, I hesitated to write this report because I was a little embarassed after reading about all the Stripers everyone was catching and the number I produced. Non the less I feel someone may benefit from it by not making the mistakes I made, and maybe some could help me out. My wife, two kids and myself arrived at Bullfrog North on Thursday the 10th, set up camp and started fishing about 3:00pm. We first headed to the cliffs just South of Hall's Crossing marina. We graphed tons of fish at 100' or more and decided to try it (should have paid more attention to Wayn's tips). We ended up getting a couple in two and half hours. On the way back we picked up a couple trolling halfway back to camp. Friday spent a lot more time looking for shallower Stripers but never found any. Went back to the same place with similar results. Saturday we tried the Southern portion on Moqui Wall with similar results. Looking back I think I should have chummed more, fished later and searched harder. Oh well, it was still great, even after the hurricane hit us Saturday night.

Just got back from Bullfrog this weekend. Stripers were selective in the times they bit but when they did watch out. Fished around the Moki wall and above it. Fished Moki canyon for bass and cats, did well for both in the very back of the canyon. Caught bluegill,catfish,lmb and smb. Went to Forgotten did fair. Caught striper, walleye, smb. Fished around Stanton creek area, caught a few smb.

There seemed to be several people doing well on stripers at the 2 rocks sticking out of the water in the bay between Bullfrog boat ramp and Stanton creek and at the mouth of Halls creek.

Here are a couple of pictures of our April fishing trip. These bass were caught in Lake Canyon and were released after the photos. If your memory serves you well you might remember the picture of my wife kissing her 1st big bass a couple of yrs ago. Well in standing tradition my 2 boys did the same.

The Annual Southwest Walleye Anglers Powell Trip came off well. The group concentrated mostly on going upstream from Halls Crossing, but did revisit some spots from last year down stream. The group of 14 men and women caught 268 Walleyes during the 7 days. Most were in the 1.5 lb range.

The red sandstone that is very crumbly seemed to be the key. When that rubble was detectable in the water, a small 1/4 jig dressed with various plastic bodies and tipped with a half or full night crawler was effective. My effective plastic was a Gary Yamamoto 5" S/T H-grub Pumpkin w/lg black (Fishermen's Choice numbers). This has many small tentacles on the front end and one or two twister tails on the back.

John Vosika and John Neisen found that color effective in the morning and a clear/silvery color for the afternoon was more effective. (Crawdads in the morning and shad in the afternoon??? Your guess is as good as anyone else's.)

Trolling fast at 3.2 mph, I caught a walleye and a smallie on the edge of a shelf in 25-40ft water where John & John were jigging. I was using 5lb/1lb mono diameter spiderwire, so the 4" plug was down a respectable distance. Dave Cunningham and Dave Daneck showed us all up with trolling their worm harnesses the first few days in the waters to the south. Almost everyone else was doing the jig trick with 1/4, 3/8 or 1/2 oz lead. Some used flashy colors, some did not. Everyone caught Walleyes. Depth of the Walleyes was usually 25 to 45 feet in up to 75 feet water. When the classic shelf was present at 12 to 20 feet along the shore and then a drop off to 40-300 feet, it was dinner time. Pitching the bait on the shallow and then very slowly jigging it back over the shelf was effective. Especially into an unfished new area.

Almost all of the Walleyes were males 1.2-1.5lbs and 18inches long. Only 3 were larger females. The official size was 2lb, but a reported 4 lb 'er was dressed without the official weigh-in. A lot of smallies (smallmouth bass), a few catfish and blue gills were also caught. Stripers were few and skinny. A 20-25" striper might only weigh one pound. No meat. With a good supply of tools, a lot of problems were solved. This trip was run out of two trailers at Halls Crossing, so electricity, freezer, and plumbing problems were eliminated. We had too much food and a great time.

Launched from Hall's late afternoon on Thursday, 5/24, headed up lake and found a camp site in Cedar and set up camp. We did not fish Thursday evening.

Friday morning we first headed back into Cedar where I expected to fill 2 limits of SMB within an hour but found it surprisingly slow. We headed for the main channel islands and coves across from Knowles and started picking up SMB and a few greenies immediately. It took more than an hour but we each had a limit of SMB under 12" before 11:30 as well as numerous dinks and a good number of SMB 12" and over, all of which were released. Most fish were caught on BPS 4" single tail grubs in smoke w/purple flake, green with green flake, and amber with green flake. The smoke w/purple flake was the most productive. The grubs were rigged on 1/4 oz. lead heads. Some fish were caught on BPS green tender tubes rigged with a 1/4 oz. lead head inserted into the tube. It was interesting to watch numerous catfish following spawning carp in the clear water coves in this area. I assume, but don't really know, that the catfish were eating the carp roe. I graphed stripers in this area but trolling deep diving cranks produced no fish. Later that afternoon we headed for the islands just north of and across the channel from Cedar. We again caught numerous SMB, some greenies, and one nice LMB, on grubs and tubes. Since we had already caught our 6 fish limit of SMB we released all fish. That night we had a great fish fry of small SMB fillets and green sunfish fillets.

Saturday morning we headed for Warm Spring and found great SMB fishing in the shaded rock rubble slides and shelves. Since the canyon is narrow and steep sided the shade remained until late morning as did the bite. We easily had another limit each of SMB under 12' while catching numerous dinks and some quality SMB. Same baits as Friday except that we occasionally switched to a BPS magnum tube rigged with a 3/8 oz. lead head inserted into the tube to get them deeper when the bite waned. I fished a green pumpkin w/ copper flake magnum tube and Gloria opted for a bright chartreuse yellow w/ red flake magnum tube. On Sunday morning this big yellow tube was Gloria's "go to" bait as it would account for all of her fish Sunday morning. Saturday evening we went back to the same island structure we had fished the evening before and with the wind blowing and stirring things up the fishing was fast and furious for SMB on any windy side of structure - many, many SMB were caught quickly on tube and grubs in any color.

Sunday morning we went back into Warm Spring with a repeat of the fishing we had encountered on Saturday morning. Gloria caught her first walleye and her first striper on the yellow magnum tube. I also caught a striper on a grub immediately following her catch. These two stripers were very healthy - meaty fish. On both Sat. and Sun. I had graphed stripers in Warm Spring but spooning produced no fish. Since we had a limit of under 12' SMB on ice at camp we kept only the stripers and the walleye. Sunday afternoon and evening were spent lounging in the shade, swimming and visiting with friends whom had joined us Friday evening.

We broke camp early Monday morning without fishing, did some sightseeing, and headed home. Another great lake Powell experience.

Note: we found the small SMB fillets to be very good eating (get them filleted and on ice to retain the eating quality) and as long as Wayne wants SMB under 12" kept we plan on having a camp site fish fry more often.

We fished out of the Hall's Marina June 7, 8, and 9. Although we had planned to head up to the secret fishing holes up around mile 111, we found there was absolutely no reason to venture farther than about a mile from the launch ramp. By trolling goofy-looking 1-ounce dayglo jig heads with little plastic fish and sonar, we came across several large schools of smaller stripers that proved cooperative, mostly on chovie chunks at about 20 feet. Mornings and late-mornings were more productive than later in the day, possibly because of the outstanding full moon.

We found large piles of stripers on practically every wall on the east side of the channel, starting across from the entrance to Halls Bay down through the long wall before Lake Canyon. They were pretty much bunched together. We might go 300-500 yards or so without seeing anything on the scope, and then run into a glob of them.

By far and away, it is way way better to have a scope and sort of know what patterns to look for than not have one. We of course spotted globs of stripers with the scope that did not cooperate with the goofy jig-trolling technique. On the other hand, every single time we got stripers trolling, there were many other fish in the immediate neighborhood. As usual, they move sometimes, or sometimes we'd drift off of them, perhaps only by 20 yards or so, and suddenly the scope would be completely empty. Then we'd move back a bit and there they were.

June 9-14

Fished the first night on the island near the ferry crossing, and James, Elijah, and I caught 2 stripers, 2 smb, and a 4 lb cat. Beautiful sunset and great to be back on the lake. Caught 6 stripers in the dark on anchovies the second night. Spent the third night in Iceberg Canyon and caught a wide variety of fish, bluegill, greenies, smb, and cats, but no stripers. Fourth day caught some more cats and greenies. On last morning caught 5 pre-spawn cats, all 2-3 lbs, and all on anchovies. Overall fishing was good but disappointing as we couldn't locate the stripers. Catfishing was red hot! I still say Powell is the best fishing experience in the U.S.!

Just returned home from a trip June 10-16 on Powell. Started at Halls Marina. We headed North to Crystal Springs Canyon the first night. We fished out of the back of the houseboat with anchovies about ½ of the way up the canyon. We anchored on a large rock rubble slide. We caught stripers so fast that we could not keep up to the kids & wives poles. Fished from about 8:30 to 10:30 pm. Filled the cooler and called it a night. The next night we fished the same spot. Nothing but a few small stripers and a few catfish.

Moved to Forgotten Canyon. Fished in the day out of a small boat across the main channel on the large rubble slide on the high wall. Caught about 8 nice striper in a couple of hours (2-4 pm). Later, we moved the houseboat to the spot for the night action. We caught about 30 striper from 8:00 to 10:00 pm until the storm front made the fishing too rough.

The next day (Wednesday June 13) we headed up to Ticaboo Canyon to see some new country. We graphed striper schools, but they weren't very cooperative. We caught a walleye and a couple of small mouth. About 7:00 pm I noticed a funny sound across the canyon. I watched and saw a pack of surface feeding fish. My 15 year old niece, father-in-law, and myself jumped in the little boat and approached as carefully as possible. It was a striper boil! They both casted lures and missed the center of the action. I cast out and nailed a 3 lb. striper. They got a couple more casts in, but the boil ended. We had a few pop-up fish, but that was the end of the action.

We ended the day with about 15 striper off of the houseboat on anchovies. My niece caught a huge catfish (5+lbs)! We threw it back with several smaller cats. Thursday we headed up toward Hite to refuel, etc. We spent the night near the mouth of White Canyon. No fish! We caught nothing. I trolled little macs, rattletraps, etc. Nothing. Nothing on anchovies. We figured that the water was too turbid.

Headed south to meet some family at Bullfrog. Saturday night we anchored directly across the bay from Bullfrog Marina, on the rubble slide on the wall of the island. That night we caught 50+ striper on anchovies from 9:00 pm to 1:30 am.

My wife and I left on Saturday, but my in-laws fished the last night near Halls Marina on the main channel. Caught 30 striper. All in all a great trip! We never believed how successful we could be! A couple of years ago we would catch nothing on our annual trips. It pays to listen to Wayne and all of the other gurus of Lake Powell.

One more tip, we were using a submersible neon (green) light that I bought from Cabella's magazine. We would sink it about 10 feet of the back of the houseboat. I think it really helped, also, it made the landing of the fish much easier since the water was illuminated. Well worth $25.00. Hope to return in the fall! Thanks for all of the pre-trip info! We will be having striper dinners for the rest of the year.

We fished June 21-24 up just north of Seven Mile, and at least then, reports about any slowing down of striper fishing were greatly exaggerated. Again, it was a matter of trolling for a while and watching the sonar. When we found them, they were the best they've been this year, although still mostly on the small side. In two locations, it was a maximum of 6 seconds between fish on chovies, and when we ran out of chovy chunks, it was not much longer between bites on rubber fish hooked on eighth ounce jigs. No boils, but the same kind of intensity. The slowest it got in other locations was perhaps 45 seconds or so once we found them. The schools seem to be moving, as they would not be where they had been the previous day. We found them on both the west and east banks, mostly in the shade, but that was probably more of function of where we were willing to hang out at different times of day. Some were off cliffs, some off points, and some next to rubbly shores. They were hitting at 1 to 15 feet. My guess is they are concentrating in big schools, with lots of fishless water in between. At least that is what Mr. Sonar seems to be saying.

Wayne, Here are the results of my latest fishing trips from my journal. I hope they are helpful; if they need embellishing, let me know.

May 25 afternoon caught 36 fish- 1 walleye, 2 stripers, 1 largemouth, 6 bluegills, 26 smallmouth 6 of which were 11 -14" and the rest 8-11"

May 26 fished all day caught 60 fish most in the afternoon ( 2-7 PM) 14 stripers (20-24" and healthy), 11 largemouth ( 7 12-15", 4 10-12"), 1 walleye ( 16" ), 10 bluegills, 24 smallmouth ( 8 12-15", 10 10-12", 7 7-10")

May 27 Fished all day caught 106 fish (10AM-8PM) 30 largemouth ( 12 12-15", 17 10-12", 1 16"), 5 walleye 14-18",20 stripers 18-24", 15 bluegill, 36 smallmouth ( 2 15", 16 12-14", 10 10-12", 8 7-10")

May 28 fished 2 hours AM caught 6 smallmouth 8-12"

June 8 fished 12-8PM caught 60 fish with a partner 26 stripers 18-24", 4 largemouth 10-12", 9 bluegill, 1 walleye 14", 20 smallmouth ( 7 12-14", 5 10-12", 8 7-10")

June 9 fished 10-9PM caught 162 fish with a partner and it was so good that I did not write down very accurately the catch, but the percentages were similar to the day before

June 10 fished 2 hours on the way home caught 20 fish, 7 largemouth 10-12", 1 largemouth 14" , 4 stripers 20", 7 smallmouth 12-14", 1 bluegill

June 29- July 1 Family trip so I coached my 7 year old daughter and in 6 hours of total fishing we caught about 50 fish. 2 stripers ( 1-10", 1 18" ), 2 walleye 15", 2 largemouth 10-12", 4 bluegill, and the rest smallmouth with 10 10-12" and the rest smaller than in earlier trips, the nursery size fish

I have learned over the years not to tell anybody where I fish, so please suffice it to say that the first two trips were midlake and the most recent was upper lake. My experience is that there are still some nice smallmouth in the same areas that I have found them for the past 6 years when they started to appear in greater numbers. I have caught more stripers this year already than all of last year and they have all been healthy except for a few thin ones. Walleye seem to be consistent. I fish for largemouth and smallmouth, so any stripers and walleye that I catch are incidental. The guys I talk to who fish for stripers with anchovies all tell me they are having a great year. There also seem to be plenty of shad because lots of fish are regurgitating them, and more times than usual I have lucked into areas where the fish have just finished or are in the process of a shad massacre as evidenced by the pieces of shad floating in the water. My 20 year record tells me that 3675 level is a good level for fishing. I hope all this rambling is of some use. Now if we could just get rid of the jetskis.

Waynes Note: I suspect that this is a first. Jay we appreciate the report and your willingness to give us information if not the exact spots. That's fine! Just do what you can. Smallmouth are abundant but as in Ed's report above the first guy fishing every few days catches more fish. Stripers, on the other hand, need to be harvested and telling exact detail is essential to improving fishing for anglers and health of fish.

Fishing Report for July 8th through the 12th

Parked my camper at Hall's Crossing and rented a 16' Lund at the Marina. Day one and two we only caught a few fish but on day three caught 20 stripers, 2 cats and a walleye in less than 2 hours. We fished around MP 102 in a little cove with anchovies. Overall we came home with 49 fish and had a great time. I believe the fishing was slower that week because of the heavy thunderstorms in the evening and the fronts passing through. I did cast an Shad Image topwater lure at the Moki wall but broke my line with the cast. The lure easily sailed 120 to 150 feet. Before we could get to the lure it was gulped down by we assume a hungry striper. If anyone catches a fish with a lure it's yours.

We took our fourth annual trip to Lake Powell on the above dates. Our party of eight [4 kids, 4 adults] spent a week on the lake on our part ownership houseboat. Fishing was great as usual. We seem to do better each year thanks to the tips and info on your web site.

We anchored in Iceberg Canyon and fished primarily for stripers. We found them along the main channel on the Northwest side. Using anchovies, we caught 85 stripers over 4 days of fishing between 9 am and noon. We caught 28 fish on our best day with multiple double fish on and several triples. The fish ranged between 17" and 23" and were all healthy fish and great fighters. We did not need to use your chumming technique, although the bite turned on and off, it never really stopped. We caught fish on whole and part anchovies. When we were running out of anchovies the last morning one of us caught 3 fish on the sane head half of an anchovy. I caught one on a "banjo" minnow smeared with anchovy scented Smelly Jelly and am convinced I could have caught many more if I had had time as I got many strikes but only hooked up when I used a standard 3/8 oz lead head jig with the plastic minnow instead of the jig that came with the Banjo Minnow kit.

I also caught 3 nice 17" channel catfish while fishing for stripers with anchovies [much to my surprise]. They fought every bit as well as the stripers. Also caught catfish easily with nightcrawlers fished on the bottom.

The bass fishing didn't seem as good as in previous years but I will have to admit with the striper fishing so good I did not have the motivation to get up early or go out late for the bass. We kept and cleaned every striper and brought them back home frozen for future meals. We also had our usual on the lake fish fry. We were happy to do our part to keep the Lake Powell striper fishing population healthy.

The weather was great as were the water sports. The one thunderstorm revealed all the spectacular waterfalls. Great fishing, beautiful scenery, swimming, boating, jet skiing, tubing, and family fun. What more could one ask for?

We were just at the lake from the 15th to the 22nd. Our group did fairly well at the corner of Moki wall where it enters Moki Canyon. It was very important to be within 50 to 60 yards of the corner. We were drifting anchovies about 50 feet down. Most of us used a 3/8 jighead and a 1.5 ounce snap weight 10 feet away. We had hits on every pass. Sometimes we'd have two or three fish on at once. It was exciting. One major problem though. The fish were so stressed from the depth or temp change many of them died. I am usually a strong advocate of catch and release and killing these fish didn't sit well with me. We fished the corner on Sunday and Monday but that was all. I didn't want to keep anymore. After that we just chased the little smallmouth. ( I have two young sons, as long as there is fish, they are happy) We caught most of them around the islands across from Moki Wall. We also caught fish in Hansen Creek, Forgotten, Cedar, Moki, and Lake Canyons. We used primarily 3 and 4 inch Yamamoto's on 3/16 or 1/4 ounce Gamakatsu jigheads. Watermelon and Smoke were the best.

My family and I spent 7/21-7/28 at the west end of Halls Creek Bay. Small stripers boiled every AM & PM. Bigger stripers( 18-20") were in the 40-50' water and easy to catch drifting anchovies. The small stripers did just like Wayne said they would, on top for a short time. Catfish could be caught off the back of the houseboat at almost any time. Some of the cats were in the 4-5 lb. range. We kept and filleted every striper and cat we caught.

We had a fish fry for 18 people and still had plenty of fillets to bring home. If you are looking for shad, they are at the west end of Halls Bay, and I mean lots of them.

Just returned from a trip to Bullfrog where my family and I spend July 30-August 4 camping out and fishing every day. Most of our fishing took place at Mookie Wall where we (the five of us) caught in excess of thirty stripers during this period. The largest striper we caught was 4.5lbs with the smallest weighing in at 1.4lbs. We killed three for dinner and returned the rest to the lake for someone else to enjoy. The best fishing at this wall was in cloudy, early morning weather and again in late afternoon.

Three weeks ago, we got a bunch of stripers near the Colorado-San Juan Confluence, but they were all extremely snakey. In fact, they were the snakiest stripers I've ever seen ... all of them. They seemed to be on walls near gravel beaches, mostly. Then we tried the upper Escalante, but found very few biting up there, and the few we caught were also skinny.

This weekend, we found a pretty good pile of stripers just about a mile downriver from Halls along a cliff. For some reason, they all seemed to be in about a 30-yard stretch, and nowhere else. Then, we headed upriver, trolled for miles and miles watching the sonar, and finally managed to find a dandy pile up near Forgotten Canyon. In fact, they were the healthiest, biggest, most lively fish we've found in probably two years. Once again, they were just in a particular spot, perhaps 30 yards long, and when the boat drifted off, the sonar would just go blank. All were caught on anchovy chunks on 1/8th or 1/4th ounce leadheads at about 25 feet.

Over the Labor Day weekend we were able to catch 50+ stripers in the west end of Halls. About 300 yards south of the large butte we got into a boil on Friday morning, 8/31 that lasted until almost 11 am.

Then on Tuesday, 9/4 we had a boil all around our houseboat in the cove just south of the large butte on the west side that has a lot of trees in the right arm of the Y in this cove.

This boil ended after we had caught 3 or 4 and as the sun hit the water, but we were able to graph a huge school of stripers in the area of the first boil that were down 25-40 ft. We caught a nice bunch of stripers (17) for breakfast and quit fishing when we ran out of what few anchovies we had on the last day of our trip.

Good luck and good fishing.

Five of us were camping by mile marker 68 from aug 28 - sept 4, although we read every bit of advice you had on your site, even printed it out and brought it along we didn't catch one Striper or even see one. My chick made the comment one night: "You guys have been had, I bet Striper's don't even exist here, nor does Wayne" Needless to say she slept outside of the tent that night.

We tried chumming in the Escalante around 7am with Anchovies fishing from 50 - 100 ' and got nothing, 3 mornings we tried the same approach a mile or two up the San Juan around the same hour and got nothing. The best session was a mid day session on the way to dangling rope, I forget where this rocky cove was but my gal and I both got 14 inch large mouth's which were the best fish of the week (the other guys were so jealous.)

We caught a few dozen 6-8" small mouth's by camp and other coves in the area but we let them go. Even though the fish we caught were small, by far the the best bait was a blue/smoked sparkle Yamamoto 4" double tail jig with the fringe on the head end. We nicked named it the alien.

Wish I was there now away from reality, prayers and thoughts with all the families.

Waynes Note: Thanks for reporting. There are probably more anglers that experience poor fishing than the ones that report great success. That is why I keep trying to pass on enough info in a timely manner so you can get togehter with a group of cooperative stripers. We have had no recent reports from the area you fished so we were of no help. Stripers are schooling fish and if you are not in the school it seems there is not a fish in the lake. We will keep trying if you will. Don't give up. Next time I hope we have a report that will be close to where you are fishing complete with a successful technique that you can duplicate.

After a 17 month delay, the four of us returned to fish together and found Bullfrog Bay to still be one of the best fishing areas in the USA. We fished Sept. 20 thru 23. Scott, Shubert, Tom and myself (Jim) trolled lures such as Rat-L-Trap or similar but most stripers were caught using Hopkins "Shorty" which is a stainless steel lure and jigging in the very early hours or the two hours before dark. The group caught two walleyes trolling near submerged rocks. As always, we had a great time and brought back filets from over 50 stripers. ....

We finally made our first trip to Powell on UEA weekend. We went to Bullfrog and joined the rest of Utah and Colorado in spending a few days on the pond. To say there were a lot of people would be a gross understatement. We were mostly there for the kids to play in the water but I did take the oppourtunity to fish Friday morning. We were lucky enough to spot a boat catching fish of the rocky point just south of the south Bulfrog campground. When we pulled up they were very friendly and told us what they were catching and what to use. We were able to catch a few stipers with Zara spooks, then we felt guilty and went back to take the kids skiing.

That evening we went back to the same spot with four poles and four fisherkids and chumed with some anchovies like we were taught on the board. It did not take long until we were hooked up to four fish at a time until I got worried about not finding my way back to camp in the dark. It seemed liked we could have fished all night and kept catching fish. When our little cooler was full we left. Probably had 25 stipers in less than 1 hour. Same ratio you mentioned was 60% healthy 40% skinny. The larger ones were the skinny ones. Went back the next morning and did the same thing with the same results. Total count for both short trips was approximately 60 stripers, 2 catfish, 6 smallies.

We houseboated powell from 9-24 to 10-5. Started hitting cats and smallies immediately off back of houseboat and directly off the bank in the back of HALL'S bay with worms on chartruese jigs. Got quite a large stringer there. Moved down to the RINCON and got a good number of SMB out of my canoe on worm jigs, later fished till wee hours off back of houseboat and got bunches of stripers and cats on anchovie chunks and worms. Moved down to mouth of Escalante and got skunked, no fishes there. Moved down to RIBBON and the SMB were fantastic, nailed a bunch out by large sentinal rock at mouth of RIBBON. All were in the 8 to 10" range, best fishin I've ever done out of a canoe and yes WAYNE, I did my duty as recomended in your reports,and ate em all.

I preferred to just gut those smallies and fry em whole, seemed to get more meat out them as opposed to fillet.

All in all it was a great fishin trip again, us folks from the pointy lands sure enjoy going down for that last blast of summer before the snow flies up here. Powell ROCKS!!!!

Thanks so much for your assistance, before I went out to lake Powell. We didn't catch the huge #s of fish you speak of sometimes, but still had a blast!

To start out, there were two of us (5 fishermen one day) ages 27 thru 40, including on 11 yr old...who caught her first big fish at Powell. We are all Powell virgins, (except one, who invited us) and now addicted. We are all from the Denver, CO area.

We were at Lake Powell from Sept 25 thru Oct 2, with a group of non-fishermen. This limited our access to the boat (darn people wanted to water-ski sometimes....they just don't understand). We had a houseboat, and spent our first night in Lake Canyon. We woke up to the splashing of a boil right in the middle of the canyon. We watched (mostly in awe) this, assuming it would occur another day (bad assumption). The boat wasn't unpacked yet, and so we were helpless to fish this boil. We headed out, and went into the Escalante River to anchor for a few days. We immediately unpacked the boat and went out looking for fishing spots. We headed to the main channel, and went to the shallows. We fished misc. lures, and jigs, and landed quite a few smallmouth (approx. 10). This was not my goal though. We went out the next morning, with anchovies, and brought back our first 3 stripers, caught right at the entrance to the Escalante River, along the cliffs. We were in 100-200' water, but the fish were hanging at about 60-120'. The next morning we went back out, drifting this same spot for another 9 stripers. That night, in a short trip, we caught another 5. We were then outvoted by the rest of the crew, and were forced to move. We headed back, and ended up in a small cove in the area of the Rincon. We fished that evening....no luck. The next morning, with only about 45 min before moving, we made our last attempt...taking 3 more stripers.

Hopefully this was not too drawn out for you. I had the time of my life, and look forward to coming back each year. I now know how to fish for these fighters, and am excited to try my luck again. Anchovy's were the ticket for us, fished on 8lb line, with anchovy hooks, and treble hooks when all the anchovy hooks broke (we did have a few fish shear the anchovy hooks we bought at dangling rope.) My advice to other anglers...bring a big cooler...full of ice (we started out with 30 lbs of dry ice, on blocks, to keep the anchovies frozen (they sure smell when at room temp!) We weren't optimistic of our chances, but we soon turned this to our striper cooler, and didn't have enough room!

Thanks for your advice Wayne...you have hooked me on Powell for life! I can't believe some people want to drain this "wonder of the world"

October 6th three of us arrived at Bullfrog late in the day. We tried some smallmouth fishing and found the bite to be slow in the bullfrog and main channel area north. Next morning we went to Good Hope Bay to chase stripers. I cannot remember who had been there and posted it but the stripers were in the mouth of Red Canyon just inside the islands that block the entrance. We floated through the school with jigging spooons(wallylures). We caught about 10 stripers then they stopped biting. We searched the area outside of Blue Notch for stripers and shad since there were so many grebes there. We didn't graph them and headed south. There is a "new" rockslide around the corner heading south, just past the rockslide to the left we located another school of stripers. They were cooperative for a while and we landed another 20 stripers until they also stopped biting. We did not have any chum so we left them there and continued down lake looking for smallmouth. We had a first time Powell visitor so we did some touring.

We fished the Moki Wall on evening of 10/14. W caught 2 thin stripers on piece of anchovy on 1/8 oz jig head, and several 8-12 inch stripers. Went up to mouth of Knowles Canyon on 10/15 and found a large school of small stripers just south of mouth on east wall by rock slides. This school graphed everywhere between 10 and 80 feet deep. Nearly every cast produced hits. They were good at getting the anchovy off the hook. We tried several methods, and all worked about the same. One fish hooked for several missed. The little ones only wanted bait. They did not hit spoons, but would chase them. We caught a few other fish casting to the wall. We found smallmouth in Cedar and Seven Mile and another smaller school of small stripers in main channel. This was my first experience with so many small stripers. We trolled the Tapestry Wall with no success.

Went to Lake Powell 10/20-10/30 on a houseboat. I had not been there since 1978 and was surprised at the small mouth numbers. When I was last there it was all large mouth. No stripers or small mouth. As a youth growing up in price ut. we fished Powell regularly and always caught large mouth in the 2-5lb size.

So on this trip I read all reports and tips so my kids and I could get into some stripers.The first 4 or 5 days we used anchovies.and grub jigs & spoons.We caught many small mouth and a few large mouth and a dozen or so stripers, but not what I had hoped for.We fished alot of hours in many canyons from dangling rope to near halls crossing.

Then at the sugestion of my 8yr. old son after fishing several hours in Lake canyon, we put on a white and black fishy (countdown Repala) and trolled back to the house boat. We could barely get the boat moving before we would have 1 or 2 stripers.So for the next 2 days we repeated the troll up and down the canyon catching fish at all times,and more than I could count.We had a great time until we had to return the house boat.

I would also like to say thanks to the rangers and managers at bullfrog who helped as best they could when my 14yr old son fell and broke up his arm and had to be air lifted to price.

And if anyone wants advice on fishing lake powell E-mail me at bowrider691@cs.com and I will ask my 8yr old what you should use.(He seems to be our expert now!)

My brother and I were at lake powell from Oct 29-Nov 4. We camped at the north primitive camp site of bullfrog basin. Fishing was pretty slow, some small stripers off of Moki wall caught on anchovies and even a spinner with a mister twister on it. We fished for smallmouth in one of the side canyons of moki canyon, but even though we saw some very nice fish they weren't interested in any lures I had. Also tried slickrock canyon, and again saw some terrific large fish but only caught one small smallmouth on a spinner and purple fake worm.

The last two mornings things picked up as the stripers moved into the campground area at sunrise. Nov 4 I caught 10 from shore on a floating rapala, I coudn't take them off the hook fast enough to catch more. Then they moved out into deeper water and we already had the boat out of the water and packed. Nothing very large and a couple very skinny fish. But the rest filleted out nicely.

We beat the water a while on February 9, but never even saw a fish blip on our sonar around Halls Bay. This weekend (Feb 23), we looked harder still, but only found perhaps a dozen fish blips and maybe four or five fish rings on the surface. We did find water up in the low 50s, at least toward the surface, but for now, the elusive little buggers are somewhere else. It must be crowded wherever that is.

Just returned from 3 days of fishing Halls Creek. We found that trolling Shad Raps and Rock Walkers would fill a cooler in short order. Just trying to help out the shad population, we kept about 70 nice fat stripers. Not a skinny one in the bunch. They all ran about 2-3 pounds and made some nice thick fillets. Also a couple of healthy largemouth and two crappie (which were released).

If you troll from the main group of trees out to the main portion of Halls Creek, hang on and enjoy the catch! Blue worked for two days, then switched to shad color the third. We were flat line trolling. The water depth started at 13' and where we ended the run it was 27'. Sometimes I could feel the lure touching bottom at the 13' depth, but when we got into deeper water, I let out a little more line.

We arrived late the 3rd and fished the back of Bullfrog Bay till dark. We found a school of stripers and landed a few till they shut off.

The morning of the 4th headed to Red Canyon and found fish toward the back of the canyon in 60ft of water. Dropped wallylures and did very well for about an hour. The fish turned off and we went looking for other schools-fish were scattered and we would catch one here and there. Left Red heading south to another canyon and found a school that was good for a few more stripers and walleye. Used wallylures and wallydivers and one rod with chovies for those fish. A terrible thing happened in that canyon- We lost three wallylures in just a few minutes -( We cried)

Went to the back of Bullfrog Bay to look up the stripers from the day before-they did not cooperate. In the morning of the 5th went to the back of Bullfrog again-(no fish) went to that other canyon and caught just one striper.

Went to Red midday and looked for our big school. Could not find it so went farther back almost to the end. Chet picked up a striper on a wallydiver while we trolled. That was the start we needed and the fish turned on. I threw chovies in the water and we drifted that school with wallylures and chovies, caught a bunch of them. We went through that school many times and got fish each time-20ft deep and fish from bottom to 10ft. Totals for the trip 64 stripers(4 skinny ones) 4 smallmouth and 2 walleye. We had 2 triples back to back in Red Canyon and One of us had two fish at once-one on chovies and the other on wallylure.

After much trolling on Saturday, without success, we finally located a gigantic school of stripers near the back of Lake Canyon. It's a 10 mile run from Bullfrog marina. We fished near the first set of submerged trees, now sticking up, near the back of the canyon. Water was semi-clear, temp unknown. We jigged anchovies from 12 to 24 feet deep. Seems like the larger fish were 3 cranks up from the bottom, if you could get through the school on the drop. The bite was strong from 3pm until sunset. The healthiest fish were 16 to 18 inches. Anything longer than that was terribly skinny. All eggs observed were golden brown. Catch rate was about 10 per hour per person. (Bite rate was 50/hr., lots of bait stealers). Chumming reactivated the school whenever the bite slowed. Then we'd catch 5 more. We landed 75 stripers from that school. The graph was always full. Weather was breezy and it was partly sunny Saturday, sunny on Sunday.

Well, my fish'n partners and I hit the lake about 0800 on Sunday 4/28 to set up camp at Hansen Creek. With the water so low, it was more difficult to find just the right camp spot. Got to fishing that afternoon in Spring Creek Canyon (I think), the canyon across Hansen. Did okay. Caught several SMB up to 12" and kept all from 9-12 as suggested. Another boat went into Forgotten Canyon and had about the same luck. Sunday the bait of choice we found was a tube bait in a green color, but we seemed to catch SMB on about any color. We concentrated on the rock rubble that we could find. Caught most in about 10 to 15 feet of water but we did catch a few right at shoreline. Monday, went back to the same canyon with about the same success, the days color was a smoke w/ red flake tube. Also caught some on green tubes and a smoke w/ red flake jig. The other boat went into Cedar Canyon and Warm Springs Canyon. While fishing the rubble again, we also caught 3 walleye and and three stripers that day. Caught a few catfish that night at camp also.

Tuesday, we went into Forgotten and concentrated on the rubble in there. Caught more SMB, no big ones, just "keeper sizes". We got blown off the lake about noon or so.

Wednesday, we heard the weather was also calling for more wind so we packed up camp and headed into Hall's and got us a trailer. Went out that afternoon and caught more SMB on the same color of tubes fishing the rubble areas again. Had a great fish fry that evening also. Thursday, The front must have moved through as the lake was calm. This was our best day of catching, we landed a few 14 to 16 inch SMB and several in the 9-12 keeper size in Hall's Bay and also on the main channel. Peaked into Bullfrog Bay but not much success toward the mouth end.

Friday, we headed back home with fond memories. All in all, we caught 3 walleye, 3 stripers, 3 catfish, and a bunch of SMB using mainly tubes and 3" jigs. Sorry for not recording my catch but I was unable to download the data sheet on my PC. We'll be back!

Trolled a few hours around the back of halls creek and caught stripers, a walleye and a crappie. Speed was about 4 mph and almost all the fish were caught on a white hot-n-tot, the crappie was taken on a med-small white spoon plug. Most fish were caught using a led core line setup at about 25-35 feet down.

I recently Rented a House Boat at Bullfrog Marina and headed north. We stayed a few days at Smith Fork canyon. The 8th was probably the coldest, a cold front had just come through, but it warmed up quickly. By the 9th the water was great. Me & the kids went swimming, exploring, and even a bit of fishing off the back of the house boat. We caught quite a few Channel cats and stripers using anchovies. I'm sending a picture of my youngest and the Channel Cat he caught. We all had a ball & wished we could have stayed longer. Fishing was best in early morning and late evening. Fished off the bottom in the bay in approx. 20' to 30' of water

Just returned from Bullfrog. We fished the Mokai wall 3 mornings, no luck. We found the stripers in the middle of Bullfrog Bay. We headed toward the back of the bay and started fishing when the left bank was all sand, in 60' of water drifting anchovies down 20 to 30 ft. I caught several walleyes with crank baits suspended at 35' in 60 foot deep water. The camp ground at Bullfrog is closed until June 1st.

We spent 6 days (May 9-15) working waters between Tapestry Wall and Good Hope. Initially the water was about 62 degrees, but it warmed to 68 or higher by the end of the trip. Got a few walleye and zillions of smallmouths. Those little guys were hitting virtually every cast on tube worms, and even on missed strikes, they'd hit again and again until hooked. They were everywhere in the rocks, in the shadows, next to the shore and down to about 15 feet. We scoped really hard for stripers everywhere, along channel cliffs, at points, in the backs of canyons, along rockslides, under overhangs, checking all of our old secret spots, but only found two piles of them, yielding about 25 fish. All were healthy, save one skinny little guy. Our guess is that they haven't come back to this area yet from wherever they hide during the winter, but another week or two of warm weather should fix that situation.

May 6 - May 13th

We beached our houseboat in the west fork of Moki Canyon for 3 days. We fished Moki Wall and main channel around the islands. On the second day we finally got the wall to payoff with stripers on anchovies. All stripers were healthy and 2-3 lbs. One 5 lb catfish had to be happy we stopped it from eating... it was stuffed with anchovy’s... biggest belly I ever saw. We caught mostly feisty little smallmouth in the stickups at the end of the west fork. There was a lot of fish being caught at the entrance to Hall’s Creek Bay on the west wall right next to the main channel. They seemed to be smaller than Moki.

The wind blew hard for about 36 hours (30-40 kts max) which made sleeping and fishing kind of difficult, even though we had 5 anchors out.

On the 10th we cruised all the way to Ribbon Canyon. We caught mostly smallmouth in the canyon. Fished the west wall of the Escalante River, right at the mouth of the river. There was a huge school of stripers there. When the sun hit the wall we went to the very end of Indian Creek Canyon and found a school of willing striper. I am sure that I caught the biggest one, but I will never know for sure as my knot tying ability was not equal to the task.

Then the wind came back. It seemed to be 90 degrees to the houseboat (that seems to be the way it always is) with gusts close to 50 knots. We again had 5 anchors out (3 on the upwind side) and one slipped right under a huge boulder. We played lots of dominos and cards and I managed to get to know my daughter’s long haired boyfriend. The wind finally died down for a day and we put one of the upwind anchors on the bow. That night the wind kicked up out of the other direction and a thunderstorm went over us. I slept through it, Dave didn't.

We used 3/16th or 1/4 oz lead head jigs with about an inch of frozen anchovy and chummed with 1/4 to 1 inch anchovy chunks. Many thanks to the person who suggested the cut in the stripers gills to bleed the fish. That made for a nice clean filet.

Wayne this is the results of an afternoon at the mouth of the Escalante and Indian Creek Canyon. Caught on anchovys. Biggest was 2 lbs 12 oz. Your website is great. It taught a Speckled Trout / Redfish maniac how to catch striper. Many thanks.

My 10 year old son and I spent 4 fantastic days in the upper San Juan over the weekend. I usually avoid the holiday weekends due to the crowds but I finally have a boat with the range to get me to the San Juan and back.

Drove through SNOW up Spanish Fork canyon Thursday night on the way down. Launched from Bullfrog at 5:00 am Friday. Believe it or not, we did not see even one other boat underway for 80 miles from Bullfrog to Zahn Bay. That run alone made the whole trip worthwhile. The water was like glass for 2+ hours. Weather was great. Water temp 62-64 in the main channel and up to near 70 in protected coves in the afternoons. Stained water starts just south of Zahn Bay.

Friday: SMB are everywhere along the main channel with a few LMB. Caught around 30 smb and 10lmb mostly on senko's and grubs. Decided to troll crankbaits in Zahn bay and hit the motherload. Many times had 2 on at a time. Most stripers were very healthy around 20 inches with a few smaller around 12-14". Also caught 4 nice walleye. Deep Thunderstick, Wallydivers, and Shad Raps all worked flat line with no extra weight.

Saturday: SMB and LMB again in the am in the main channel. Caught one nice 17" smb on a topwater Sammy. Best LMB only 16", most on senko's and 4" grubs on 1/8 oz. heads. Largemouth were very predictable on cracks in the steep cliff walls. You could throw an unweighted senko to nearly every good crack and get a fish. Most were 10-14", with a few nicer ones. Went back to troll in Zahn bay in the afternoon. The stripers were still there, especially on the north shore just south of Donkey Island where the depth was around 25 to 35 feet and there was a pretty good algae bloom. We caught 5 more nice walleye and a huge crappie also on the same crankbaits.

Saturday afternoon the two Wildlife officers from Bullfrog stopped to check us. I must say they were true gentlemen. I know better but I had left my wallet with my license in the tent when I had changed clothes and they let me go back and get it instead of giving me a ticket on the spot. I could not have asked to be treated any better, They were very professional and respectful and I can not begin to tell you how much I appreciate it.

Sunday: Same as Saturday. Main channel in the morning and evening for smb and lmb. Trolling for stripers and walleye mid day.

Monday: Didn't fish.Got up early, packed up, went to Dangling Rope and Rainbow Bridge with the crowds and headed back to Bullfrog and home.

I didn't keep track of the numbers but I'm sure we caught at least 100 smb, maybe 50 lmb, 20 walleye, 1 crappie, 20 bluegill, and 100+ stripers in three days of fishing. Kept a limit of walleye and a limit of smb, no stripers, no room in the coolers and not enough ice.

Hite

Smallmouth action excellent. Walleye being caught north of Good Hope in Main channel trolling early mornings. Stripers in White Canyon with lots being caught around Island just into right fork. Also the sand bars and Island near Castle Butte north of Red Canyon

Bullfrog

Stripers being caught at the mouth of Lake Canyon and just across the bay from the Bullfrog ramp. Smallmouth fishing excellent.

Launched out of Bullfrog Saturday afternoon and headed up lake to Good Hope area. Found smallmouths on main lake points and inside turns. Most of them were less than 11 inches. Caught them on smoke pepper tube and Foxee jig. Wind pick up late in the afternoon, so I fished the windy side of the points for walleye. Caught 3 average size walleyes on the Foxee jig tipped with a piece of worm. Also caught a nice size catfish while walleye fishing. I tried night fishing for stripers, but the action was very slow. Sunday morning I found stripers and smallmouths herding shad up and down the bank. Rigged with a Zara Puppy I managed to catch 4 stripers and 3 smallies. Stripers were 18-19 inches and healthy. After that action died I resumed my search for walleyes. Sticking with main lake points and inside turns I landed 5 more walleyes. I also stumbled across sunfish preparing beds. I caught 3 and kept 2 for eating. All other fish were released with the exception of 4 walleyes and 2 stripers.

We spent six days up around Tapestry Wall, fishing everywhere from Knowles Canyon up to Red Canyon. Having fished up in that area for many years, usually catching loads of stripers, I was surprised to find practically no stripers anywhere in that region. We had two boats, both with tried and trusty sonars, and worked probably 40 secret spots plus most everything in between. We hit points, flats, backs of canyons, coves, cliffs on the main channel, rockslides, and everything else, in both mornings and evenings. In all, we could only find three little bunches. This is the second time in the last few weeks this has happened in that area. Since we pretty much have the hang of striper slaying, I'm sure wondering where those rascals are. For some reason, it looks like they have not returned to the mid-lake region in the numbers we've seen in the past. In fact, it looks like maybe they haven't returned at all. I'm curious if you have any theory about this. Or, maybe it was just us. I can understanding maybe not catching them, but I can't figure out why we couldn't even find them.

Beyond that, we caught and released several hundred smallmouths, none of which exceeded 10 inches. Those little buggers seemed to be absolutely everywhere. I'm wondering if they somehow might be affecting the striper situation.

Just got back from the Hall's area. Striper fishing remained slow for us there, but we did find a couple of small piles, more or less across from Hansen against the walls. On Sunday morning, in the fingers just before Moki, there was actually an adult-sized boil for about an hour, well out into the lake probably 200 yards or more offshore. That was the first good one I have seen in that neighborhood in years. Aside from that, we scoped all kinds of likely and unlikely places but rarely got even a single return. The area we checked was from Tapestry down to Lake Canyon. There seemed to be more north of Halls, but not anything like it has been in previous years. Unlike previous years, we have yet to hook a snaky-striper. The ones we are getting are plump and healthy. We did catch and release lots of channel csmallmouth, no largemouth.

We just got back from Halls Crossing, and two of our friends caught a few stripers at night at the Halls marina breakwater. We also had pretty good luck at the point and canyon right across the lake from Moki. We also saw a few small boils in the same location. Trolling later in the evening a smaller Olive Green plug produced 8 really nice stripers all in the same location along the North canyon wall across from Moki. We let out about 150’ of line and no weight, just the diving action of the plugs.

Thanks to you we had an OK trip. Keep up the good work, and thanks.

Hello Wayne, here is my post for Angler's Corner. This is the first time I have contributed so I hope I am doing it right.

Waynes note: Not bad for a first report.

We arrived at Bullfrog about noon Sunday 7/28 and stayed until Thursday afternoon 8/1. This was our yearly 'family trip' to LP, so the first priority was family fun (swimming, tubing, snorkeling, etc.) and fishing was right behind that. I make several trips a year without them on serious fishing missions so I can live with those priorities once a year. Although my family likes to fish, they aren't obsessed with it like I am.

We stayed at the Defiance House Lodge, as we always do. It's a nice place, a little pricey for me, but it's the only game in town at Bullfrog so take it or leave it. My family are city folks, they need creature comforts like air conditioning, TV, restaurant, shower, etc. so it's the best way to go for us. It was a great trip as always, if you have already seen my posts on the bulletin board you know about the striper fishing. I will try to describe the patterns I found to be effective in the Bullfrog area. I don't keep track of how many fish I catch, I work with numbers a lot with my job so I don't take that out in the boat with me. I have three fish tally measurements: skunked, a fish every now and then, or lots of fish. The area I frequent is from Bullfrog, down to Lake Canyon, up to Forgotten Canyon, and everything in between. I can usually find what I'm looking for somewhere in there.

Stripers: I didn't see any boils anywhere in the area until the morning of Tuesday 7/30, but we'll get to that in a minute. I graphed many fish along the shaded main channel walls, fish were 45 - 90 feet deep with the bottom depth at 100 - 200+ feet. They were mildly interested in anchovies, very close to the shady walls with lots of chumming produced fish now and then but it was hard to get them really fired up. The first morning, I was fishing anchovies on the wall just north of the Moqui canyon entrance, and a funny thing happened. I would hear an occasional slap on the water, and a slurping, kissing sound. But I looked all around and could see no disturbance on the water. It was dead calm so I should have been able to see them, I thought. It was driving me nuts. I heard it again several times, and finally I saw the situation: stripers were cramming shad up against the wall and eating them right off the wall, like carp eating moss. It is very subtle, you would drive right by it and never see it. You have to just stop and listen for it. I tossed a super spook jr. at them and they would boil under it but wouldn't take it as well as they should. I then tried a 3 inch sassy shad on a silver jighead and they hit that just fine. Just use the trolling motor to follow them up and down the wall, pitch the jig against the wall, and hang on. I called these guys 'wallbangers'. This lasted from sunup until 10:00 am or so. Caught LOTS of fish doing this. It was really fun fishing because it was new to me.

Then, on Wednesday and Thursday morning, I hit the striper jackpot. Starting at mile marker buoy 95A, all the way up to marker 99, all along the Moqui wall stretch, it was solid striper boils from one side of the lake to the other. I would arrive at marker 95A at 5:30, just light enough to see, and there would be single fish working the surface here and there in the little coves. Throw a spook jr. at the most recent boil and it was good for a fish. Then after 6:00 or so, the whole main channel just exploded as far as I could see uplake to mile marker 99. I used super spook jr's, with the hook barbs mashed down so I could get them unhooked and back out quickly. Usually I could just wiggle the lure around without even landing the fish and it would pop out. A 3-inch sassy shad with a silver jighead worked very well also, if you don't like casting plugs with treble hooks. This lasted until 9:00 am or whenever boat traffic got excessive. But hang around a while if they quit, they might start back up again. I have no idea how many we caught on the boils, probably would have swamped the boat if we kept them all.

Smallmouth: My favorite smallmouth places are all on dry land now so I had to start over on that. Found some good structure here and there and caught smallmouth readily on smoke/black flake Kalin grubs with silver jigheads. I first tried watermelon/black flake Yamamoto grubs which usually are the hot ticket for me but didn't get many fish. Little guys kept eating the tails off them so I went to the sturdier Kalin smoke color grubs after seeing a lot of shad and that worked well. Found a very consistent pattern which isn't easy to find because it isn't that common: look for rockpiles along the vertical main channel walls where a large section of solid rock broke off and fell into a pile of broken rocks. Add a little shade, east-facing walls in the evening and west-facing walls in the mornings, and you have great smallmouth fishing and beat the heat at the same time. These rockpiles aren't very common so when you find one it is usually loaded up with a lot of bass. Work the rockpile all the way from shallow to 30 feet deep or so and you can milk it for a couple of hours. Green Sunfish like these spots too, clear them out first and then you will get into the bass. One of these rockpiles can be found about a mile or two south of Halls Creek Bay on the east-facing main channel wall. It's pretty obvious. Once you get the picture you can find more channel rockpiles and they all had fish on them.

Catfish: we spend the heat of the day swimming, tubing, snorkeling, playing with the dog in the water, etc. The key here is to stay wet and cool. I just motor around looking for a little sand beach with some rocks around it so we have something interesting to look at besides just a sandy bottom. Many of these spots back in Halls Creek bay. Whenever we take a break from swimming, we usually see catfish prowling around for anything we might have stirred up on the bottom. Our bait might make you laugh but it really works. Just break out some Oscar Meyer hot dogs, pinch off a little piece, and toss it out on a slip sinker rig. If the catfish are aggressively feeding they will be on it like white on rice. We had a lot of fun with them, and caught lots of them even in the heat of the day IF we were on a beach that sloped off quickly into deep water. We like those beaches because we jump off the end of the pontoon boat into the water for fun. For night time cats the gentle sloping beaches are better. But go swimming just before you fish, and stir the bottom silt up real good, that seems to fire up the cats.

I hope this helps others find the fishing they like, and I thank Wayne and all the Wayne's Words regulars for all the great information on this website. I wouldn't be half the Lake Powell fisherman that I am without the information he and the visitors to the site provided over the years.

Arrived August 9th at Bullfrog and motored up to 4 Mile canyon and set camp just on shore from a huge striper school that was being fished heavily with anchovies and spoons to great success, it was on the left(as entering) of the island, we fished that night with my new Hydroglow, it attracted many shad(we drifted) and produced a 1/2 dozen stripers. My friend Ken was with me and he used his 6 weight fly rod off of the bow for smallmouth and it was a successful trip for him. Gary Foell was with me and had three other fisherman in his boat.

I searched for boils throughout Striper City that evening and never saw one(missed the one in the mouth of Farley by about a 1/4 mile). Total for Friday 14 stripers, 5 smallmouth. Saturday the 10th fished smb and lmb first 2-3 hrs and searched for boils to no avail. School in fourmile still being fished.

At noon we went to the biggest gathering of a SHAD RALLY that I was fortunate enough to attend, it was great to meet some new Lake Powell friends and see some old ones. At one point I counted 26 people there and know there were others. Continued to search for boils and went back and fished school in fourmile. Total 20 smb 5 bluegill 2 lmb 15 stripers.

Sunday fished for smb first 3-4 hrs and had a blast. Packed up headed back to Bullfrog area, camped across from Moki and proceeded to search for stripers between mm95 and mm99 to no avail, many historic striper boiling and school areas were barren. Early evening Total 30 smb 5 bluegill.

Monday on water at daylight searching and topwater for smb no success, went to Halls Crossing marina, at 9:30 A.M. on the way back up lake I spotted a small boil and managed to get one out of it, while there a small boil started in the buoy field. The boils were very boat shy and I tried a couple of different ways with coasting as far as you can with no engine noise producing the best results. As the day grew on so did the stripers boils, they kept getting bigger and moving more. At one time the water around our boat erupted. Total 4 smb 1 bluegill 16 stripers. The boils lasted in the area of 1-2 minutes, hard to reach and grew in size and intensity as the day grew, the last and biggest of the day occured around 2:30 P.M., sorry we had to leave.

Bullfrog,

Stripers boiling in the following locations: Hay Stacks near Stanton Creek

The buoy field at Halls just across from Stanton

The mouth of Lake Canyon

Bullfrog marina just inside tires early morning

Crappie cove large boils consistent in the morning until nine

We just returned from a trip to Hite and Bullfrog. Got to Hite late Sunday evening around 9:30 P. M. Caught 17 catfish from our campsite before going to bed at 11:30. Up early Monday morning could not find the stipers boiling anywhere. Caught 1 striper 1 smallie and 1 largemouth all in four mile canyon. Did not graph any large numbers of fish in Farley - White - Trachyte or around striper city (now that I know where it is). Did find lots of fish on the graph in the back of Two Mile and to the east and south of the island in Four Mile, from forty to sixty feet. Chummed and jigged till our arms hurt, no fish? That night chased small boils around the island in Four Mile canyon - caught 13 stripers - and a few small mouth. The stripers were taking the same baits as last time. My youngest son was catching his on a 4 inch pearl fliptail with black pepper flakes attached to a 3/8 ounce jig head. My oldest son was using his Yozuri 5" banana shaped flourescent white lure with the bright orange head. He has caught close to a hundred fish on this single lure in the last three trips, and I can not find another one exactly like it? I prefer a skitter pop or popping image in a shad shade with a tint of red. I don't catch as many, but they sure are fun to watch hit the top water baits.

Tuesday morning checked out all the spots heading down the lake ended up in Four mile again - caught 30 stripers - 7 smallies - 3 largemouth. All in and under boils. The fish were rising for brief boils and moving around quickly. It was hard to predict were they would move to next, and hard to keep up with. We would watch the birds and look for shad movement near the bank. Once we were sitting there wondering which way to move when the ravens that were circling landed on the bank within casting distance of us. Shortly afterwards the shad started erupting and jumping onto the bank, and right on que here came the stripers with a vengence. Tuesday morning was the best outing we had. Went back that evening to Four mile again, hit one small boil in the very end of what water you can get to. Caught a few off the boil and the rest casting jigs to the bank they had surfaced on, 13 stripers - a couple smallies. In the back of Four mile the canyon necks down to only about four feet wide and about one and a half feet deep and then widens back out and goes on for about another mile. Where it necks down it actually has a current that is flowing back into the canyon?

Wednesday morning looked everywhere again - ended back up in Four mile. Caught 13 stripers - 3 nice largemouth - 7 smallies. My oldest son had a 3 - 4 pound largemouth right at the boat when it jumped and flipped off. We released all the largemouth. After the morning topwater activity stopped we chummed and jigged again on the south side of the island after two hours of jigging I snagged a three pound cat that had about a pound of chum in him, and caught the trolling motor once. The trolling motor put up the better fight of the two, till it cut my line. I am going to have to go with someone sometime that is up on this jigging. On the way back to camp we stopped and fished in a shady wall south of the islands. I hooked onto a 12 pound carp that put up a heck of a fight, on my lightweight smallie rig using a small jig and 6 pound test line. That afternoon it was too windy to go out, so we fished for cats out of the back of the beached boat. It was so windy that you could barely get a line tossed out even with 1 ounce wieghts. I used the red meat that I cut out of the stripers fillets as bait. I do not no if this is legal or not, but it makes for great catfish bait. We caught over thirty in around two hours. Kept 17 - had 4 that would go three to four pounds each - all were over a pound. For some reason we were catching much larger cats than the average you catch from the bank? That evening when we were loading in the boat my oldest son hit his knee on a rod holder and poked a substantial hole in his knee that ended up requiring 11 stitches at the Bullfrog clinic. We decided to move to Bullfrog for our last night of camping and day of fishing.

Took a sight seeing tour into Lost Eden canyon. It was well worth the trip. There are some really spectacular alcoves and water caves at this water level. One must be over 200 feet back in. While cleaning the days catch I noticed that the largest striper which was 24 inches and around 4 1/2 pounds had 3 large crawfish - 3 small shad - and one shad that was 6 1/2 inches long. My son was amazed that the fish could eat another fish that size. I was amazed at the size of the shad. It was partially digested so I could not tell about colors or fins, but it was a big shad. Had a great time as always. Thanks for all the information.

Just got back from a weeklong houseboat trip. Smallmouth bass all over the place mostly caught on single tail grubs but caught a number on topwater stuff early in the morning. Found stripers in Reflection Canyon. Smaller ones on Zara Spooks, larger ones deeper on chovies. Top water action only lasted a half hour or so very early each morning.

Bullfrog

Stripers boiling just outside marina and in Crappie cove early morning. The back of Lake Canyon boils until afternoon. All of the boils seen were small with only a few fish caught, stripers on the move. Fish holding at the back of Lake canyon at 60 feet. Slow fishing with anchovies but they work.

San Juan

Boils at the back of San Juan before Spencer Camp. Boils and fish holding at the mouth of Neskani Wash. Smallmouth being caught at the tail end of boils with some to three pounds.

We (two boats, four fishermen and a nine-year-old girl)fished out of Bullfrog.

On the afternoon of 9/9 (5 stripers trolling in front of Haystacks, 38 catfish, 5 SMB, and 3 stripers on anchovies on back side of second haystack (headed south from Bullfrog boat ramp), 5 stripers in evening using anchovies and Walley Lures from large school located about 1/2 mile north of covered houseboat storage on the opposite (west) side of Bullfrog Bay.

9/10 started trolling the upper end of Bullfrog Bay north of the northern-most houseboat buoy field. Found lots of stripers and shad, but only a few takers until 9:00, then WHAM we hooked up all three rods in our boat on stripers. As we stopped the boat to retrieve our fish, a boil started all around us, but it stopped by the time we were able to reel in our fish and switch to topwaters. Our friends caught 2 stripers on topwaters during the boil, then it ended as abruptly as it had started.

We spent the rest of the day with little success finding or catching anything, even the catfish had gone dead. At 4:00, our boats separated and the others ended up catching 16 good sized stripers trolling in about 30 feet of water in front of the haystacks.

At 6:00, our boat went back to the site of the morning boil and by 6:10 we and 3 other boats (unfortunately not our friends) were in the middle of a monster, moveable boil that lasted about an hour, and continued even as the water got rough and thunder and lightning and rain threatened. the three of us in my boat caught 43 stripers (from 2-6 pounds with the average running 3+).

This was my first "real" boil and without a doubt it was the second most exciting thing I have ever experienced, and the first was on my wedding night!!

The stripers were very healthy and fought like they were hopped up on meth or speed or steroids. What a blast!!

9/11 the fishing was lousy (1 striper trolling, no sign of any boils) with threatening weather, so we bagged it about 11:00 and headed home. Total for the trip was 46 catfish, 5 smb, 1 lmb, and 78 stripers.

None of the other fishermen we talked to had any striper success anywhere except Bullfrog Bay. Sorry I can't contribute any information up or down lake from Bullfrog.

Thanks so much to all on the Wayne's Words BB for your advice and location pointers. Thanks to Dave Wallace for his Walley Lures--they really work and have a short learning curve. Thanks to Wayne for his suggestion to try Bullfrog over Hite, and for his tip to try a Lucky Craft Sammy (it really works well and is easier to walk than a Zara Spook).

We set up the 9-year old with a closed face reel, a 6-foot graphite pistol grip rod, 10# line and a new "Wildeye" jig by Storm in "Blue Shad" color. She caught 8 stripers by herself during the boil with this setup. but the soft bodied jig was totally trashed--small price to pay for a happy 9-year old. She is my friend's youngest and I think she is hooked for life. She also caught 8 catfish and a striper on her 9th birthday which was 9/9. What a way to become a striper fisher "person"?

Sorry for being so wordy, but I am still on a boiling striper high!!

My partner and I fished the 13th and 14th out of Bullfrog. Friday (13th) started slow, we hadn't been down since June and some of our spots for LMB were out of the water. We headed back towards the green water near the launch ramp and as we stopped to check a few spots on the west side of the houseboats a boil stared. We managed to catch 4 stripers on Sammy's and spinnerbaits before the boil quickly ended. The whole thing only lasted about 3 minutes but even though we have been to the lake over a dozen times this was our first boil. A totally unforgettable experience!!

The SMB and LMB fishing however was slow, the lake had a ton of stained water from the rains and we just had trouble getting bit in the off-colored water. Saturday we ran to Moki and fished some trees in the back where we've seen LMB before. There were shad seen near the banks and despite over an hour of working Sammy's, spinnerbaits, and poppers, we couldn't get a bite. We made the long run up to Good Hope and found more of the same: a few shad, some fish breaking the surface but I only had one little SMB hit my Sammy without getting hooked. We moved further up Good Hope to Red Canyon, my partner hooked a striper on a spinner bait and as we unhooked it the cove around up started to boil and swirl. We were treated to another, longer boil. This time we managed 20-30 fish before it subsided.

We decided to fish around the edges of the small bay as you enter Red Canyon and started catching a few SMB. It seemed they were a little more active after the boil and any shad imitating jerkbait or soft plastic would produce the occasional SMB. I did catch a 15" Smallie, which is one the better SMB I've caught this year at Powell. Overall we had a blast fishing the boils and can't wait until the 24th when we are headed back.

Arrived Fri the 18th to mudslides that filled parking lots(Utah t.v. stations reported 1.15" in 30 min, at Bullfrog)and deposited more trash and logs and cactus and etc. into the lake then I have ever seen since 1988 when I first started going to the lake. Did catch a smallmouth on topwater right off the back of the houseboat in small canyon directly across from sevenmile, the lake was as crowded as we have ever seen in September. Did not fish till Sunday morning and it took me an hour to find the stripers in Sevenmile just into the first canyon to the right as you enter, from the point back to about 50' of water. Most were holding in 80' but moved frequently, went back and got my late sleeping daughter, roused Gary and returned to fishing. We pulled out about 15 that morning. That evening we witnessed a boil and pulled out about another ten in the same place. Next day marked some more stripers in the back of Warm Springs while eating lunch between wakeboarding,skiing and kneeboarding. went back and drifted through school for a couple.

Tuesday we managed to get into the stripers for a while in sevenmile and had a small sunrise boil around the boat. The last morning I took my son,his friend and my daughter and went back to sevenmile and pulled out another 15. Total for trip on my boat 54 stripers, 8 smallmouth and one sunfish. The debris was tremendous so be careful boating or pulling someone behind your boat. Jigs used were wallylures and a special jig from Howard. Topwater success was on a rebel pop'r. Thanks again for the tip on the sevenmile area.

Arrived at Bullfrog and launched at about 4:00 PM. on the 17th. Wind started picking up and no boils seen in the upper portion of BF Bay. Winds increased and T-Storms hit around Dusk and continued well into the night. Next morning I headed up lake to Red Canyon. Winds picked up again. Set up camp in a cove on the north shore at the mouth of Red Canyon. This was my first time fishing in this area, and I spent most of the afternoon exploring the area and graphing for shad and Stripers. Winds and clouds continued off and on for the rest of the day, no boils spotted. Wed. morning wind still up and Cloudy. No boils observed in Red, Blue Notch or Ticaboo. Fished from 7:00am till 11:00am without success.

Wed. afternoon around 4:00 pm. I saw what appeared to be 2 stripers jump in the cove where I was camped. I caught 2 on a Sammy, and then all top water action ended. While I was reeling in the second striper and it was about 6 feet from the boat, another striper came up next to it and hooked itself on the front hook. I had both on for a few seconds then one twisted itself off. I switched to Wally lures and caught 12 more. At 5:30 the wind got worse and I quit for the day.

Weather finally started improving Thurs. morning. At 6:50 am. I spotted scattered fish jumping but no organized boils. I caught 23 Stripers on Wally lures and 4 SMB on a modified Spook. Fishing was slow but steady. The bite finally shut down at about 11:00am. That evening still no boils to be found. I caught 9 Stripers on Wally lures but the fishing was very slow.

The next morning, I brought in 5 more Stripers, but again it was very slow fishing and no boils. The moon was full now and the water temp. Varied from a high of 73.2 to a low of 70.9. Fri. afternoon was the nicest weather so far this week, the wind and clouds were gone and the sky was finally clear. I caught 4 more Stripers and then left for Bullfrog.

All the Stripers were caught in the same area. As you enter Red Canyon, there is an island in the middle of the channel that runs perpendicular to the entrance. It vaguely looks like a smaller version of Battleship rock in White Canyon. The Island does not appear on the Lake map found in Lake Powell Magazine because it is completely underwater at full pool. The stripers were all caught in an area between what would be the bow of the ship shaped Island and the cove that the bow points to.

In all the total was 55 Stripers and 4 SMB. I think the combination of the bad weather and full moon made for the slow fishing.

Halls Creek 10/3-7

My partner and I left Farmington early Thursday morning for Hite to head off for a 5 day camp and fish in Red Canyon trip. We had been working on this trip for about 7 months, planning, asking questions on the BB, gathering info, getting vacation time, etc. Well, after fighting the white stuff coming out of the sky, we made it to Hite about 11:00. It was raining off and on, we got to looking at the mud, the clouds, etc., we decided to head to Halls to see what the weather might be like a little farther south. We had flurries from about Fry Canyon over to the county road turnoff into Red Canyon and the weather started breaking. Being the true die hards we are, we got a trailer rental that night at Halls.

Thursday pm we fished in Halls and the mouth of Bullfrog and found us a good camp site. We caught 2 LMB and 6 SMB that afternoon. Both LMB and 3 of the 6 SMB were about 14". The other 3 SMB were about 10" and we kept them for a future fish fry. We used 4" tubes, smoke, white, puke, were the most successful.

Friday we were off early to set up camp. Checked a few places around Halls and Bullfrog but no luck in the morning. About 2 in the afternoon, we got tired of fighting the chop in the main channel from the boating traffic and headed for the shoreline south of the houseboats at Halls. Fishing got good for about 3 hours. We caught the largest bass of the trip that day and ended up catching 4 LMB and 18 SMB. It was hard but we turned back all the bass over 12 inches. We only kept 4 SMB that were 9-11 size class. Again we used tubes, same colors as before. We caught about a 1/3rd right next to the bank, but the rest we caught as we dragged them behind the boat as we reeled in slowly. This was deeper water and held more bass.

Saturday was fish early morning and go check out new country. Went into Iceberg Canyon. Caught 4 small SMB for the frying pan dragging tubes, this time in watermelon with red/green flake. Saturday night dinner was interrupted by catfish. We ended up with 6 during dinner. Sunday we caught 2 LMB and 9 SMB. It was slower fishing for us that day. We did not come across any striper boils, did see some shad boils but only caught a couple of bass from them. From the fish we cleaned and those we could tell that we released, it looks like they we all eating crawdads pretty heavy. Green in color with a little orange. The crawdads were small also, maybe about 2 inches in size. Maybe next year we'll make Red Canyon. Weather was great Friday to Sunday. I think the storm that came through on Thursday slowed 'em down for a few days.

I just returned from four days on the lake. Figured Knowles would be great with a lot of stupid fish after being closed so I tried first but found it extremely slow, lots of algae streaks in the water.

Moved to Forgotten and saw a lot of shad schools but no boils. Middle of the day was non-productive. On warm mornings we caught a lot of smallies on rapala's top water, some to 13". Topwater action quit at 9-9:30. Found Smallies and Stripers at dusk by trolling mid canyon especially off smooth deep points. Hardly caught a fish on broken rock banks or points? No fish caught in the back canyons where water turned green. Largest Striper about 5 pounds. Plenty of three-four pounders. These were the healthiest Stripers I've seen in years. Strong and fat with bellies like a largemouth. Shad Raps worked well, but a deep diving Bagley that got a little deeper seemed to be the trick. We had four fish on at once, lost one and ended up landing a triple header of smallies. Needless to say my guests from Indiana and Virginia had a great time.

This was a last-minute low-budget trip, work has been tough lately and I haven't been able to get away for any length of time. Then on Friday morning 10/18, the planets all lined up right and suddenly I had a few days free to go fishing. I called my buddies but no one could get away on that short notice, so I decided to go by myself. I was so stressed out I just wanted to get out of the big city and enjoy what was forecast to be some great weather. So I gathered up basic camping stuff, hitched up the boat and blew out of Denver at 2:00 pm 10/18. On the way, I reconciled that the full moon probably would not help the fishing any but I would not let that deter me. This was going to be primarily a smallmouth mission, I have had a great 2002 season with stripers at LP, and wipers/white bass at other lakes. I have fished the 'boil of a lifetime' at least a dozen times this year. If stripers were boiling I would certainly fish them, but I wasn't going to spend too much time looking for them with only three full fishing days.

Saturday 10/19

Got up late by my standards, tired from the haul out from Denver the night before. Launched at 7:45 and took off uplake from Bullfrog to my favorite bass/striper area, from mile 95a to mile 99, across the lake from the Moqui wall in the little coves which are full of submerged rock structures. This has been a very good area this year. Didn't see any boils, so I tied on a 3 1/2 " watermelon/black flake grub with a 1/4 oz. black jighead and started working bass structure. Immediately got bit, then another, and thought I was in good with the bass. I got broken off on a rock, so I pitched a super spook jr. that I already had rigged and caught two bass in consecutive casts. Then, about 11:00 am, the bass slowed way down when the breeze died. Tried different jig colors, and started getting bit again on shad colors, smoke and white/silver flake. A few of the bass coughed up shad next to the boat so that made sense. These fish were all in structure adjacent to the main lake channel. Averaged about 4 or 5 bass an hour until around 5:00 pm. Then the action heated up and stayed hot until dark. Had a great day with lots of sun, little wind and moderate temps.

Sunday 10/20

Up at 5:00, had coffee and breakfast in the last of the moonlight and launched at 6:30. Today I planned to target stripers early. Ran uplake to time it right so I was in the canyons at sunrise looking for boils. Saw none, but chilly sunrise was great anyway with a steaming cup of coffee. Started working with the sonar to look for deep shad and stripers, and ran into a perplexing problem. Carp were everywhere. They were gathered up on the surface in large groups, sucking something off the surface. As I motored slowly along they would spook and dive under the boat. This made the sonar basically useless, of course it was graphing tons of fish everywhere. But it isn't equipped with a 'carp filter' so I didn't know what to do. Tried several areas but the carp were prolific. Gave up the hunt and went after smallmouth. Opposite pattern as the day before. Slow fishing until about 11:00 and then they lit up in shallow water, less than 20'. Shad imitating lures worked best, and several fish coughed up shad to confirm why. They slowed down about 2:00 pm so I went in the back of Bullfrog Bay to look for boils and fish bass cover there. Saw no boils but found several hot bass holes. These fish wanted small crawfish imitating grubs. Caught 6 bass on 6 casts to the same spot. It's funny, this spot looked no different from any other rock formation structure but it was loaded with bass. Other places that looked fishier had no (feeding) fish at all. This was the basic story of the trip. Had to just fish everything that looked good from shallow to deep and find the hot spots. After catching all the feeding bass in one hot spot, you could come back a couple of hours later (or the next day) and do it again.

Monday 10/21

More of the same, beautiful weather, no boils but even better bass fishing than the previous days. Throughout this trip, when the water was dead calm fishing was much tougher, then a little breeze would ripple the surface and the bass would quickly respond, head for the shallows and hit jigs readily. During the slow periods, I used side planer boards to target the few aggressive fish left and it worked well. I set out two planer boards on the starboard side of the boat, one out about 75' and the other out 50' from the boat. I trolled with the electric motor, following the contours of the shoreline structure so that one planer board was working the shallow drop-off near the structure, and the other was working the deeper drop-off. I ran the lures about 40' behind the boards. The shallow board I rigged with the usual 1/4 oz. jig and grub, the deeper board I used deep-diving crawdad or shad crankbaits. This combination covers a lot of water in a short amount of time compared to casting. I came up with this idea originally to troll the rip-rap along dams that walleye like so much during spawning without getting my boat up where the fish were in shallow rocks. I use inexpensive planer boards made by Luhr-Jensen, they cost about 7 bucks at Sportsmen's Warehouse and work great. They have a snap release so when a fish hits, it releases the board so the line will slide through and all you feel is the fish. You can spend a lot of money on planer boards if you want to, but these work just fine. If you use your imagination they can be quite useful to troll in places your boat shouldn't go and don't spook fish like a boat in shallow water does. Finished the day in classic LP style, caught a BIG largemouth bass, biggest ever at LP, sat there and took in the moment for a minute, wished I'd brought a camera, then loaded the boat and drove home with a great feeling of peace and content. I did try to keep count of the fish I caught this day so I could report it here like the other guys, but I lost count at 27 about 2:00 pm and never thought about it until later that night while enjoying a cold one. Or two or three, I lost count of that too.

All in all, another great time at Lake Powell. The Bullfrog facilities are fine, boat ramp is OK but the ferry is using half of it now. Boat traffic was minimal except for Saturday morning. No floating debris seen anywhere, water was as clear as I have ever seen it. Only saw 7 PWC's the whole trip. One thing I gotta say, regardless of what we think about the moon and fishing, Lake Powell at night with a full moon is breathtaking, worth seeing at least once.

Went to Hall's on Friday, the 28th. Didn't fish Friday, the wind was too high. Wind was down Sat. morning, and the lake was beautiful. Ran up to Red Canyon, caught one striper. We moved over to Good Hope Bay, and got one more. That was it for Sat. Sunday morning, went to Iceberg. and, nothing. Then ran to Escalente and up to the river and got one. Fish were so thick on the graph, you could walk on them. Ran out of gas going back to Hall's. Got within sight of the ramp and a nice gentleman towed us in. Monday, went to Red Canyon, nothing. Then up to Hite and what a mess. River was solid mud. Fished in front of White Canyon, and got one nice 5 lb. Wall-eye. Then down to Red Canyon again. We got 5 nice fat stripers. They were sitting over a bar and hit an orange Rapalla. every time we went over. Not great, but a lot of fun. And, by the way, there was a float plane, and he kept landing and taking off in front of us all the way back to Hall's.

I spent four days at Powell fishing the federation quailfier. I landed 22 fish during those four days. 1 striper, 1 catfish, 1 largemouth, and 19 smallmouth. 17 of which were over 13 inches. The smallmouth in the back portion of Bullfrog by far had the thickest girth. Some of them looked like little footballs. I assume since I observed so much shad activity it probably contributed to their size. However the only fish that was spit up in the livewell was a 2 inch catfish. I didn't take the time to weigh each fish, but, I only caught 2 fish smaller than 13 inches and even they were fat.

The other smallmouth I saw at the weigh in were very thin. I spoke with an angler who fished the San Juan and caught five largemouth. His five largemouth weighed one ounce more than my five smallmouth [pretty sad]. The largemouth I saw don't look like they are in very good shape [big head w/narrow bodies]. I don't know if this information will help with your study but I thought I would let you know.

Here is the report for our trip to Bullfrog April 9-14.

Camped at Stanton Canyon (details on BB). Started out trolling around Stanton Wed. afternoon with no luck. Marked a few in Stanton but no bites. Threw a few jigs and grubs for black bass, no luck. Did mark a large school in a little bay just around the corner upstream from Stanton on the left hand side. couldn't get them to bite. I suspect if I would have tried later in the day it may have been a different story (see Saturday details). Shad Rallyers make sure you check it out!! Tried jigging them with Wallylures, no luck.

Thursday we headed to Hansen Creek, Forgotten & Smith Fork. Went to the back of all, checking for Stripers. Didn't mark any in numbers. Temperatures in the back of the canyons was around 60 in the greenish shallow water. Didn't mark any shad schools. Saw lots of Bass fishermen from the tournament. Did some trolling in these canyons with no luck.

Friday we headed down to Lake Canyon. Stopped by Lost Eden to look at the "cave" as the kids call them (pics on BB). Worked the turquoise shelves along the channel for black bass and picked up a couple on root beer tube jigs. Once in the back of Lake Canyon I picked up a nice Crappie (12-13") while waiting for the kids to play. Trolled out, but didn't mark or pick up any Stripers.

Saturday was the day! I usually check Bullfrog Bay first when fishing, but for some reason this time it took me until Saturday. What a mistake. We headed straight to the very back of Bullfrog Bay to take some pictures of Bullfrog North and South camping areas (details on BB). We trolled back out towards the marina. Water depth was gradually increasing until we hit 30'. The depth went from 30' to 50' in a matter of yards and the fish finder went black with Stripers. At this time it was about 12:30. I threw out a marker and we started working the school with silver Rapalas to no avail. Very frustrating. At about 2:00 we switched to some silver and green Rattletraps and they started hitting. I don't think it was the actual pattern change, but more the time and temperature factor. We were catching at a rate of about one every 10 minutes. Catch rate could have been much faster, but you all know how busy it gets trying to steer the boat, reel in lines, remove hooks, keep kids happy etc. After 10 (of which the wife caught 9) I looked at a live well full of very healthy fat Stripers and decided that was enough of a filleting job for one night. We headed to camp very happy. There was one other boat working the school with similar results. Items to note were: We were letting a lot of line out to get the lures down as deep as possible. The wife's better catch rate could have been related to distance she was letting out which was much farther than me. I did admit she just plain outfished me. Another thing to note was the fact that I did not catch any until I removed the swivel from my line and tied directly to the lure. We were scheduled to come back Sunday but the previous days events convinced me to stay another day. We started working the area around 11:00 and had no luck for an hour or so. This is what leads me to believe that the water temp triggers them to feed. We had to head back to load the boat and get ready for a Monday departure. I did meet a nice gentlemen from Green River, Wyoming that said he traveled 700 miles and hadn't caught a fish in three days. I gave him our Rattletraps (which he insisted on paying for), directions and GPS coordinates to the Stripers and wished him luck. I will call him this week and see if he found the school. It felt like we pretty much had the lake to ourselves most of the time. Great trip!!

Note: Thanks to Wayne the Stripers are nice and big and healthy. Like Wayne says, get ready they will give you a workout. Our Stripers were all between 3 and 5 pounds.

Details:

Location of Stripers: 2.5 miles up Bullfrog bay going around buoy field. 50' of water toward the West center of the bay. Coordinates: UTM 12S 0520809 : 4154673. Elevation 3638'.

April 10 - 13, 2003

Thursday, April 10.

Arrived at the lake about 1:00 PM, launched at Hite and spent some time around the marina. Water temp was between 59 and 63 degrees. Ran to 4 Mile and fished our way back to the marina, recovered by 6:00 PM. Found fish in the back of 4 Mile, 2 Mile, and Trachyte. Spinner baits, Tubes, and Worms produced. Did not catch anything big, mostly 8-10 inches, some green fish, mostly SMB.

Friday, April 11

Prefished with partner who took me on a boat ride to the back of the San Juan, and I do mean the BACK. ( like 18" of very muddy water.) Water temp ranged anywhere between 56 - 63 degrees. Partner was throwing a jig/craw combo. Again, most of the fish were 8-10 inchers, with a few "keepers" ( 12+ ). 5 walleye and one striper were also taken. Witnessed a major rock fall on the main channel, just north of the Rincon on the way home.

Saturday, April 12

Day 1 of the Tournament. Fishing as a no boater, my partner for the day took me south. He was fishing in timber in the back of a major canyon about 20 minutes south of Bullfrog. Again, no big fish, lots of small ( 8-10 inchers). It was a strong reaction bite, using a spinner bait with a grub as a follow up. Water temp was cooler than what I had fished the two previous days, highest was only 57 degrees. At about noon, we ran north towards Bullfrog, stopping to fish several other spots on the way up, with little success. Ran into Halls where we spent some time in the cuts on the West and two other spots on the East side. Located a small school of SMB that were staging, again, no big fish. At the weigh in, there were lots of 5 fish limits, but most were very small. Some limits barely went over 4 lbs.

Sunday, April 13

Day 2. Partner took me north, starting in the back of White. Same old story, reaction bite, no size, nothing consistant. Covered water from White, to Hite Marina, to Trachyte, to 2 & 4 Mile, to the Horn, 7 Mile, to Stanton Creek. Met another boat in Stanton Creek that had arrived about an hour before us, who reported that they had been beating up on the fish. Again a good reaction bite, spinner baits, jerk baits, even some topwater. At weigh in the results were similar to Saturday, small limits, but there were several that had gotten into bigger fish.

Overall the result of the event was the smaller males were up, staging for the spawn. Water temps were in the high 50's to low 60's, depending on wind direction, amount of sun, color of the water. Some bigger fish were taken, but not that many. You had to catch 15-20 smaller fish for every keeper. We were several days prior to the full moon, so the bigger females were not up in great numbers. Shad were everywhere, with nothing chasing them. We graphed shad everywhere we went all 4 days. Large balls were found in 15-25 feet deep, but no bigger fish around.

For the full results of the Tournament, go to the Utah BASS Federation Web site ( utahbassfed.org )

Went to Bullfrog the 16th. Trolled just West of Stanton Creek in the early AM two mornings. Took stripers fairly steadily trolling the old standby Little Macs 3.5 mph. Water temperature on my uncalibrated sonar was 57-58 degrees F. Went up to the head of Bullfrog bay Friday afternoon for a couple of hours. Lots of targets on the screen which I interpreted as fish but never got a bite.

Chet Garling and Gary Foell fished Bullfrog Bay April 25th,26th 27th. Weather was mid 70's with a 10-20 mph steady wind out of SW. Water temp around 60. Total for 3 days 41 stripers.

Day one , noon-4, 5-7 ,10 stripers in 30' of water, Day two 8-noon, 3-7, 25 stripers in 30-40' of water, last morning 9-noon, 15 stripers in 30-40' of water.

We began trolling at the first large rock formation in the back of Bullfrog past the buoy fields and continued back until about 25' of water. We trolled wallydivers (6-10'divers) they trolled at 14', in blue and chrome, black and silver, and a purple with white. We trolled noticeably faster than most others probably 4-5 mph, just slow enough to keep the lures down any faster and they would pop up. We also had a lot of line out, 150'? We noticed on the last day that boat traffic pushed the stripers around and verified that by running back once just west of where we were trolling and saw many more fish on our next run.

Comments on the SHAD rally to be posted on the bullentin board. Powerboaters please when you see fisherman please slow down, we had a wakeboarder actually jump our fish marker while we were next to it!!!!

My friends (8-10 of us) and I have made an annual trip to Lake Powell for 22 years. Most years we always went the last week of April when the rental rate used to be lower. (This year: 26 April to 2 May) Over the years we have had very good fishing to very poor. The past 3-4 years have been just so-so, because of cooler weather. We always catch a little of everything and sometimes catch boils of strippers that have filled the back of the houseboat. After we get the houseboat in Wahweap, we head for Llewellyn and Cottonwood canyons. We and have caught a bit of everything from walleye to bluegill in these canyons.

Some of our most enjoyable fishing adventures has been in Iceberg canyon behind the natural dam. Funny that you have to hike to get to such a productive lake when there are so many miles of lake to fish from the boat. However, it is worth it. Last year we caught fish all day long on bobbers and worms. Lots of Crappie, bluegill, catfish, walleye, stripers and even largemouth... on bobbers and worms. It all started when one of the guys got tired of loosing lures on the brush and trees so he went to this method. He started to catch everything in the lake, so naturally, we all jumped to this method. There is not much shore line to fish from and the first time we went there (about 4 years ago) the water was up and weeds and trees made it difficult to fish from shore. That year, one guys used a float tube and he caught crappie one after the other. Last year, just as it got dark and we were about to leave, I caught an 18 pound catfish.

This year, we spent two days up there and with the water level so low, it was quite a hike over the natural dam. We were surprised to see that the water level at the little lake had not dropped that much. We actually expected it to be gone. Trees that were 20-30' high and were under water on the lake side last year were fully above water level. (Found a few fishing poles up in the trees too.) Although fishing was much slower than previous years, we still caught more there than in the rest of the lake. Mostly crappie, one large mouth bass, some bluegill and several 10-14" cats. No smallmouth however. Only bad part up there this year was the very cold wind that blew across the lake directly at us. It was hot on the other side so we did not lug heavy coats over the hill and most of us were in shorts. It was cold last year, but not as cold.

On the last day we stayed in Gunsight as far back as you could get. Stripers started to come in, but did not last long. As usual, it was a super trip even with the water level at the lowest we've ever seen.

We were at Lake Powell last week. 4/16/03 -4/21/03.

The weather was fine a little cooler than previous years. Very little fish to be caught really. I did catch a few Crappie one 2/12 lb on little water dogs at Zahn, and quite a few small Smallmouth Bass.

Very enjoyable trip.

Just wanted to let you know I caught striper at 6 inches - to 4 pounds. That smallest fish was as big as my wallydiver. Several males were releasing milt and females had greenish white eggs. I told Chet several times on Friday that we should pull the boat and go to Hite-Sure glad we stayed in Bullfrog. The first fish caught on Friday was after 1:00 pm-it didn't look very promising but it sure did change. Saturday it was very obvious that the lures needed to be as far away from the boat as possible. I have a deep spool on the old Mitchell 300 and was running out line till I could see the last few wraps-left enough on the spool to stop the boat and start reeling-we had a few very close calls of being spooled by the monster stripers before the boat stopped. Had a blast!!!! Good luck at the South Rally

I spent the evening of the first and the day of the second at Bullfrog bay. The evening was not so hot. The next morning and day were much better we hooked up with alot of smallmouth and some crappie. It was my first fishing trip to lake Powell, and I would like to thank all the people that write in and give up their secrets. I went through a lot of grubs, tubes, and swimbodies in my box. The Strike King 7.5 ribbon tail worms in black neon on a texas rig was the ticket for me. Once I tried this the action was fast, a couple of times I caught one after another in the same crack in the cliff. I fished mostly in the back of Bullfrog Bay in the side bays were the water was calm and sheltered.

Fished Bullfrog Bay Tuesday afternoon 5/13. Got on the water around 4pm. Around 4:30 another boat pulled up to us and asked how the fishing was. After we told him "just started", they stated that the afternoon before they picked up a few Stripers trolling an anchovy. They had caught nothing yet Tuesday. Moments later they caught their first of the day and then went on to catch a few more throughout the evening. They were fishing a 3 ounce weight several feet in front of the anchovy and going as slow as the kicker (small gas trolling motor) would allow. In around 45 to 50 feet deep. We caught only one all evening. Trolling an anchovy. But, we night fished. Set up in around 40 feet of water. The clouds masked the moon. Had a light in the water and one out. Water was fairly clear. Attracted lots of shad. Caught 20 Stripers between 3 of us 10pm to 11:30 when the fish stopped biting. One 12 inch, one 13 inch, rest around 17-18 inches and 2 lbs. None with eggs.

Wednesday 5/14 started at Moki Wall area. Caught one Striper about 2 lbs. on an anchovy. Decided to go back and troll. Suddenly saw a small boil just off the bay in a cove. This was around maybe 10 am. Small boils continued till just after noon. We would spot the fish, move closer, throw out any lure and catch 2 or 3. Topwater, crank, spoon all worked. 20 more Stripers later we went and did some filleting, lunch and nap. These fish were every one between 3 and 4 lbs. 20 to 22 inches. Many had eggs. These fish all fought very well, some we missed because of breaking lures or line. Went back late afternoon to the same cove. More short boils right near the shore this time. Picked up 5 more Stripers and this time 6 Smallmouth on the crankbait. Largest Smallmouth though around 2 lbs. The boils stopped by 7pm or so. So we set up for more night fishing. Clouds were much more dense than the night before. We thought so much the better. Nothing. Not a bite and fished much harder.

Thursday 5/15, there was rain from the storm that rolled in during the night. We still left early and fished the cove area hoping for boils. None. A few Smallmouth on the crankbait. Trolled anchovies later. Caught one Striper around 3.5 lbs. Later we found that the eggs in this Striper were much more developed than from the ones the day before. Night fished again under clear cooler skies and a full Lunar eclipse. The water was much less clear, we think from the rain and winds. Hardly any shad came in this time. And when they did come in they did not stay and circle the light. A few large smallmouth came in but none did more than chase our baits.

Friday morning 5/16, we spent trolling in Bullfrog Bay. We had been told that the fishing was very good using the 3 ounce method on Thursday afternoon including a reported 8 pounder. Fishing in 40-50 foot deep water. So we tried it but boated no fish. Did have a few hit but fight well enough to get away. Tried to avoid traffic on ramp by getting off Lake around 10:00 am. Mistake. Waited in line about 30 minutes. Would have been longer but the Park service had a Ranger directing the ramp traffic fortunately. By 11 am. though there was no longer a wait to launch or retrieve even with houseboats going in and one rig stalled at an angle across the bottom of the ramp.

A summary: fast trolling didn't work for us regardless of lure. Jigs did not work at all though crankbaits did. Night fishing only worked one out of three nights. But it sure was fun when it did. Stubborn Stripers could be trolled up with an anchovy trolled deep at slower speed. Boiling Stripers would take anything but topwater is most exciting for me. I like to watch the hits and misses. But when there is a strike near the boat watch out! Not much room for errors when the fish are this healthy. Also in talking to others fishing the area it became apparent that casual fishing or an inability to adapt to changing conditions produced few or no fish. If we had been too focused on a single place or method our success may have been different. The storm seemed to effect the fishing, at least the ways we tried.

Three of us fished on May 18th, 19th and 20th. We launched at Halls Xing, had a houseboat and our bass boat. We camped in Moki. The weather was cool with overcast on Sun. The water was 66 in the morning and got up to about 68 by noon. We ran up to Good Hope and began using 4" grubs and crankbaits along the rocky points and in coves. Fishing was slow, catching a few smallies here and there. We were pleasantly surprised to pick up some Walleye and then some stripers about 11:00 am in shallow points. Chartruse Shad Raps with white bellys were producing the best. We ended up with about six stripers and four Walleyes at 1:00 p.m. when the wind came up and the fish quit.

Monday we were at Good Hope by 8:00. Nobody was around and the Bay was glassy. Water had picked up a couple of degrees. We were in a cove when the shad started boiling out of the water along the rocks ahead of us. We had a fire drill for about 20 minutes cranking in the Stripers. We ended up with the eight that are in the photo. The largest was about 5 lbs. All were fat, females had eggs.

Back at Moki about 2:00 pm, there were shad cruising the shoreline and under the houseboat. We caught some catfish and a 2.5 lb smallie on anchovies slung off of the deck from the houseboat that evening.

The day we had to leave, there were shad jumping for their lives in the cove where we camped. I cruised over with the trolling motor and caught four nice Stripers and three smallies on a blue back and orange bellied rapala jerk bait (I ruined one Shad Rap with the pliers during the "fire drill" and broke the only other one I had trying to lift a Stiper into the boat cause I kept getting the hooks caught in the net and thought I would speed things up) before we had to leave for home. The shad schools were huge, the shad were about 2.5" long. It seems like about any cove in the morning will have some Striper activity between daylight and until the sun hits the shoreline. Walleyes were hit and miss, usually caught where there was a small sandy beach between small rock slides along the shore. The shad didn't seem to be doing much in the evenings compared to the am--so get up early, get ready, fish like hell in the coves between daylight and 9:00 am, then fish the walls in the evening for smallies and largemouth.

Went to Bullfrog June 1 to June 5th. Camped at Stanton Creek. Launched Sunday 7:30AM out at 10:30AM Thur. No lines at all on the ramp!! Caught lots of stripers trolling from Moki Canyon north along the wall as the lake turns left. 3mph trolling a walleye diver type lure, 5" long black and silver. Right along the wall in the shade AM and PM. Had good luck straight across Bullfrog bay from the ramp along that wall. Walleye and stripers. So hot I couldn't keep the ac and the generator running!! Water turned murky Thursday, slowed fishing down. Very few houseboats and fisherman on the lake!!

I fished Powell for the first time this weekend. A teacher from Durango High School and her husband invited me up to experience their new houseboat and two days on the lake.

They were anchored at the 102/103 mile marker just above Halls Crossing. I brought only my flat bottom fishing boat and some rods. They assured me everything else would be waiting for me.

Bill had a 21 foot center console boat that was certainly more suited for the rough water in the middle of the day. My own 18 foot aluminum did well if I didn't try to go too fast.

Bill, the husband, and three other men had fished Thursday and Friday with good success for stripers. Reports shared from several sources said to focus on the usual anchovies and shad shaped hard baits. They had trolled almost the whole time.

Wayne, one of their group, joined me in my boat Saturday morning. He had indicated he was not as good a fisher as the rest of their party. I found him to be very able.

Saturday morning we followed Bill and his group to a line of bluffs. We concentrated on the shady side of the lake. We scattered out a bit and immediately had stripers in the livewell.

We quit by 10 and met the other boat to compare notes. Wayne and I had almost doubled their catch with 17 stripers and 3 walleye.

Saturday afternoon we moved to the west side of the lake to get out of the sun. Wayne tied on a shad colored Rebel Deep Diver and had seven fish in the boat before I caught one. We caught a total of 17 stripers and one good walleye that afternoon. There was a loss, a nicer striper broke Wayne's line as he tried to lift it into the boat. It was the only lure like it in Wayne's box and I thought he was going to cry!

The other boat had fished another area so we didn't know where or how they fished. Wayne and I doubled the number of fish they had caught.

Sunday morning everyone but Wayne and I slept in. He and I were well after daylight getting to the area we fished Saturday morning. The first three hits on fish resulted in three doubles! By 8:30, we had boated 26 keepers, with several others spitting the hook before we could get a net on them.

There was no single bait of choice except for Saturday. Wayne's deep diver definitely scored the most. Saturday morning he reverted to a shad colored Rattle Trap. I used a bright green tube bait on a 1/8 oz jighead trailed by another jig tipped with a black and purple plastic Twister Tail.

The three other guys in our party only caught 5 fish. Wayne had and used the opportunity to get even on some jabs from them. When he opened the livewell, even they were surprised. Pictures were taken and apologies made.

In summary, trolling the shade of bluffs, rocky points and unusual structure changes, bright green and purple twister tailed jigs, a shad colored Rebel Deep Diver, and a 3 inch plastic minnow body were what produced for us.

Bullfrog Memorial Day Weekend Report

It was great!!!! Not crowded at all, longest I had to wait on the ramp was maybe 15 minutes Saturday afternoon at 5:00 pm, which I would have expected to be much worse. It was hotter than a 2 dollar pistol, both the weather and the fishing. Water temps were fine for swimming, mid-to-upper 70's, especially if you float on the top layer of warm water. Then dive down for a refreshing jolt. It felt soooo good when it was about 100 degrees out.

This was a 'family' trip so I couldn't fish as much as I would normally, so I only tried two lures the whole trip. It was enough. Like the other fellow said last week, you could probably fish topwaters all day.

Now the fishing...all I used was a super spook jr. in the mornings and evenings. If you know how to 'walk the dog' you will have a blast, literally. Just find good-looking smallmouth habitat and throw that thing. The stripers will probably be there too. You don't have to see big organized 'boils' to expect to catch surface stripers. Sometimes I would only see one fish bust the surface, but he was the giveaway there were many more underneath. It seemed like the stripers were just about anywhere you wanted them to be. All the fish are 'looking up', you don't have to fish deep at all. We trolled plastic shad baits on a 1/4 oz. jighead about 4 mph during the middle of the day and caught stripers like crazy. Those only run about 3 ft. deep. My personal favorite is a 'Walleye Assasin', it has a nifty wobble to it when you troll it. Everything with stripes on it's sides loves 'em. But sassy shad, etc. would work just fine too.

I spent most of my fishing time around Halls Marina, there is a lot of good shoreline structure, points, coves, and rocky islands from the boat ramp uplake to where the Moqui Wall starts. Much of it is protected within a no-wake area where the houseboats are being anchored right now, which makes it a quiet sanctuary when the lake is busy. I am giving away a secret here in case you didn't notice!

It doesn't get much better than this trip. Boils here and there...both SMB and stripers mixing together in easy-to-find rock rubble structure like points and shoals. Good action all day. Hot sunny weather. Good swimming. What else could you ask for?

Bullfrog Report 5/30 - 6/1

Had another great trip to Bullfrog, basically the same as last week's report but with some differences.

- Bullfrog ramp is usable to it's entire width now, although the slope is still a little shallow it's getting better every day. They do still have a small courtesy dock in the middle of the ramp that uses up some space, hopefully they will get that out of the way and the big docks set up on the sides soon. No waits on the ramp at all, even during peak times.

- Saw very little surface activity, no boils, but topwater lures still work well anyway.

- if you are driving at night bring a scrubber and cleaner to clean your windshield as the moths are like a blizzard in the headlights.

- It's HOT out there. Swimming is a requirement to keep your cool. Bring a lot of bottled water, I drank at least a half-dozen bottles a day.

- Bass are hitting crawfish color grubs well now.

- the Lake is rising so islands are becoming reefs, things are changing quickly. Watch carefully for new shallow areas that are now invisible until you get on them. Also that's where the stripers are too.

Report: rolled the moth-mobile into Bullfrog late Thursday night, camped out of the boat in the parking lot. Got up early Friday and headed over behind the houseboats at Halls just to git bit. Fished topwaters around islands, reefs and points and caught plenty of bass and a few stripers. Then started trolling plastic shad w/ 1/4 oz. jigheads and immediately started tearing up the stripers, same spots. Troll 3-4 mph. Tried casting at them but couldn't get them to hit very often, fast trolling was the key. They guy I brought with me had never been to Lake Powell so we went exploring uplake. Found stripers all day in various places on the lake, trolling shallow running shad imitating lures over the types of structure mentioned before. We fished Friday until the wind came up strong in the late afternoon and called it a day. It was an incredible day, caught too many bass to count and 58 stripers.

One thing about the fishing, it isn't about specifc places. It's about a pattern. The stripers are relating to points, islands, reefs, etc. in main lake and canyons. Find those spots and you will likely find stripers anywhere. Bass are everywhere they should be, and hitting anything so they are easy game. Plastics are working well now, Root Beer, Watermelon/pepper, Chartruese/pepper are good colors now.

Got up at 4:30 Saturday morning but a bass tournament was in the process of launching their boats so we let them finish that. As others have said before, they get done quick so it's not a big deal. We fished the main lake points uplake from Stanton to mile 99 on the opposite side from Moqui Wall and did real well with stripers and bass on topwaters and trolling until about 10, then went exploring. Then trolled the afternoon and evening and caught stripers in the coves by where the ferry docks on the Halls side again on plastic shad. NO boils seen and fished until dark, but you could cast topwaters where you catch them trolling and get a hit anyway. Again put up good numbers and was cleaning fish into the late hours that night. A very long day but lots of fun.

Sunday was a repeat although not as fast fishing as other mornings, not sure why, maybe we were just too tired and not giving it our all. Headed back to Denver beat but happy.

Bullfrog Report 6/6 - 6/8

OK, move me back to the 'beginners' square on the striper game board. They humbled me this weekend. Here's a quick version of the weekend:

Headed out Friday morning expecting to duplicate previous weeks success but as I went past the haystacks into the main lake channel I saw something odd: muddy water and debris. The Colorado's runoff made it all the way down. As I headed uplake into the mile 96-99 region it became muddier with logs floating around, etc. Looked more like Lake Texoma than Powell. This blew out my whole game plan, as visibility was a key, seeing the reefs and points to troll over. Tried previous weeks' hotspots and lures but they had gone cold. Didn't want to spend too much time at it because the young man (cousin Andrew) I was fishing with needed action, so I dropped back and punted. Fished the still-clear waters in canyons and Bullfrog Bay and the smallmouth bass fishing was excellent, topwaters in the morning/evening and yammies all day. Sure we caught lots of little ones but it was just what was needed, lots of action. We both enjoyed it thouroughly. We did catch 6 stripers here and there and looked for boils but didn't see any while out on the lake. All stripers were caught trolling Shad Raps.

Then, Sunday morning we were packing up in the parking lot at the top of the boat ramp by the bathroom overlooking the marina and saw a nice boil going right by all the boat docks at Bullfrog Marina, of all places. Too bad we weren't there. So I guess it's about being at the right place at the right time. If you hunt boils you will probably find them, but I didn't have too much time to spend on that.

Something that was working well for SMB was shady rockpiles in the shadows of towering canyon walls in deep canyons like Moqui or Crystal Springs. It was a cool way to fish, in both meanings of the word. Smaller more isolated rockpiles were best. Most are busy with bass and you can catch out the little guys then get into the nicer fish. Watermelon/pepper yammies worked great. Just ignore the boats/PWC running up and down the canyons, doesn't bother the bass any.

The muddy water situation should be very temporary, I noticed on the way home Sunday the Colorado and tribs have all dropped and cleared considerably so the runnof appears to have peaked. I don't bring that as good news from a lake level standpoint but the water should be clear soon.

So here's the big news: lots of boils in Bullfrog Bay. I took a whole roll of nothing but boil pics, will send some along soon. Got on the water Friday morning around 6:30 am, headed back into Bullfrog Bay towards the houseboats, saw my fist boil immediately, and they stayed up until I left at 10:30. Cleaned 23 stripers for the fish fry, released many more. That's just one person dong it all, could have caught 100 easy in those four hours with another fisherman in the boat.

The boil fishing Friday morning was crazy in a fun way, boats, PWC's running around everywhere around me and the stripers just kept on boiling. I even drove over them taking pictures and they would just pop right back up in a few seconds. One school I was working was about 1/2 mile straight out from the Bullfrog boat ramp about 9:00 am. Can you picture that, with the whole Bullfrog fleet mobilizing for the day? It was wild.

Headed to Hite Friday around lunchtime, ran into Kurt Jensen, we talked and both ended up at Bullfrog chasing boils Friday evening. It was superb, last boil seen at 8:50 pm.

Hite was a little too messy for me for fishing and I don't have a fast enough boat to run downlake to get into better conditions so I didn't fish there.

Saturday we cleaned up the camping messes at Hite. That's another subject, it was a rewarding experience and as usual Top Cat put on a super fish fry to end the day. I was very dissapointed, even angry, at what I saw and tried to clean up. But like I said that's another story.

Met other wordlings, all fine folks in person just as they are here on the board. Wayne you have a great thing going on here.

Went back to Bullfrog after the fish fry, fished Sunday morning but the boils were spotty, at least until I left at 9:00 am. Gary Foell was still out there, maybe he ran into some after I left. I attributed the slowdown in boils that morning to heavy winds that blew all night Saturday, and especially hard from 2-4 am.

Wayne, about the boils. The stripers were in tight schools, swimming shoulder-to-shoulder, at the surface, moving along at a good clip, about 5 mph, with their mouths open. I saw no shad in the water. Very different than the boils I saw Memorial day. Not the explosive type boils, and I saw no shad jumping out of the water. Were they chasing larval shad? Sure looked like it but it seems too soon. You could follow the same school around for a long time. I was in such a hurry cleaning fish for the fish fry I neglected to look at their stomach contents to confirm what they were eating.

That's all for now, it was great meeting all you folks, Howard, JD, Kurt, Gary, Tony, TC, and your families.

Summary, Bullfrog boils start at sunup, last for quite a while, and start again about 6:30 pm. Can be anywhere in the bay, but most were seen from the boat ramp all the way back behind the houseboats. Boils will appear to be a dark shadow on the surface, or a small gust of wind. I never got out of Bullfrog Bay but I would imagine boils are going on elsewhere too, like in Halls. One tip, DON'T drive up on a boil at full throttle. Sneak up on them slowly, they aren't going anywhere. They don't spook too easily but seem to be keen on a boat closing in rapidly and they don't like that. Ease up on them at 6 mph or so, then cut your motor when in casting distance. Then they will hang around, even turn around and come straight at you!

Go get 'em!

We fished the Bullfrog area Mon. - Sat. (June 21st - June 26th). Only one engine on our houseboat was working so we didn't go far from the Bullfrog area. On Monday and Tuesday nights we parked the houseboat on a sandy beach 2 miles west of Bullfrog Marina. On Wednesday we moved the houseboat to Moki Canyon and stayed there through Saturday.

Monday and Tuesday were very windy and we fished the boils in 2 - 3 foot whitecaps. During the first part of the week we found most of the boils between 7:30am - 7pm even though we were fishing before the sun came up and after it went down (I think the strong winds may have had something to do with the lack of morning and evening boils). Latter in the week we found just as many boils during the afternoon as the low light hours. The best boil fishing we had was Friday from 5:30 - 7:30 at times I could see a half a dozen boils, with 2 or 3 always in sight. We saw a couple of boils in Moki Canyon and a few out in front of Halls Marina but 95% of the boils we saw were within 2 miles of Bullfrog Marina. I believe the area in front of Bullfrog was one of the better places because we searched for boils from the back of Bullfrog Bay to Forgotten Canyon. Some of the boils were in the middle of the bay and some of them were next to a sandy beach in less than 10 feet of water. All of the stripers I cleaned didn't have anything but 1" shad in there stomach. Most of the stripers we caught in the boils were 20" -21" long. The smallest striper we caught in a boil was 17" and we caught several in boils that were 24" long. One thing that surprised me is that we didn't catch any smallmouths or largemouths out of any of the boils like we have in the past. In all of the boils the stripers were just slurping with very little splashing and darting (Richard Sutterfield's June 27, 2003 Anglers Corner report has some good pictures of what the slurping boils look like). I'm glad that I brought my nice hunting binoculars because they helped me spot these subtle boils from a mile or more away.

The smaller topwater baits with a walking-the-dog action and 6lb line worked best for me. My dad caught just as many as I did on a plastic shad on a jig head with 10lb line. I also caught a few on my ultra light rode with 4lb line but my dad and brothers didn't like waiting for me to land the fish as the boil moved away. I had to retie after every fish with lighter line so I preferred to use my baitcasting rod with a Zara Spook and 17lb line when the stripers would take it. We also caught a few stripers on fly rod but it was hard to get within 20 yards of most of the boils. It was important to position the boat right and cast far because most of the stripers were boat shy. Debarbing your hooks when fishing boils is a good idea because it makes it quicker to unhook the stripers, it helps the hooks last longer and makes it much easier (and less painful) to pull the hook out of your hand.

The $20 crappie light we bought on the way down brought in thousands of 1" shad to the back of the houseboat. We were too tired to fish at night much and only caught one 24" striper under the crappie light but we did catch four large crappie (14.5" -15.5"), a 15" walleye, numerous catfish and a few carp.

We didn't catch as many smallmouth as other trips but the average size was 12" - 13" with the largest at 15.75" and the smallest at about 8". I caught most of my smallmouths on topwater baits and crankbaits. I fished 3" and 4" senkos and 4" grubs in shad and crawfish colors with less success than I have had in past trips. I think that the smallmouths were stuffed full of shad, which made them less aggressive than they normally are.

We fished the bull frog area from July 2 through 6. Fishing was a little tough due to the boat traffic and wind. Conditions were just as was reported in the fish report. Boils everywhere in bull frog bay. Ran up to the bottom of good hope the morning of the 4th. looking for boils that we could fish by ourselves. Did not see any boils past Moki canyon. The water started getting a light greener tint on up the lake. Did not go up far enough to get into any of the brown water. We did well real early and real late in the day. Also had some bright spots around midday. Had two boils that lasted over twenty minutes that we did not have to move the boat. One was Late Saturday night around 8:45, - 11 fish, and the other was early Sunday Morning about 5:40 - 15 fish. Both time we were straight across from the ramp about 400 yards from the now famous butt cracks, and both times the fish were scattered around us randomly hitting here and there, not like the boils were they were swimming side by side. You could throw about anywere with any top water and get a hook up. All the rest of the time you had to out quess not only the fish but the other boats. Lots of boaters who ski who got fishing poles for Christmas were trying to catch stripers. We got cut off lots of times. If you could get another boat to work with you and parallel the fish you could both do good. Typical baits worked O K. We had the best luck using a storm wild eye lure in a 2" length and pearl color. I used them in tandem with a 2" pearl colored sassy shad and a plain #1 bait hold hook. Caught two at a time once. These fish are larger and healthier than last year, and if you try to horse them, you will loose a lot of lures. We had better luck with 6 pound line. You could throw it further. A couple of hints on casting. You need a rig you can throw at least 40 yards and preferably 60. If you threw into the middle of them about half the time they would spook and go down. Figure out which way they are heading and cast in front of them. Reel slowly to them and very slowly through them. Once you clear the school reel as fast as you can. Got a few reaction strikes doing this. Be patient, get out early and stay late.

Fish report for: June 29 thru July 6, 2003.

Bullfrog:

After a week at Powell I'm sure I will forget some events and details so I'll just start typing and hope I don't miss anything. I will type events as I remember them so they will not necessarily be in chronological order unless it has to do with fishing success. This is an experience report, so there will be details not necessarily about fishing also.

Arrived Sunday around noon at Stanton Creek. Unhooked the boat in the parking lot and headed down to find a spot. We thought there would be plenty of prime spots after seeing all of the traffic leaving. We headed down the East side of Stanton first, but found no good spots for boat, kids etc. Went around the West side and found a good spot with the only drawback of being directly exposed to the wind coming across Bullfrog bay. Set up camp and headed out for an evening cruise. Took some newbies over to Lost Eden Grotto to start them out with a bang. No fishing Sunday night.

Slept on the boat so we could get an early start Monday. It worked. I was so pumped I was up at 4:30am Monday. Idled out in the dark and putted over to the "Bullfrog Buttcracks". Made some coffee and enjoyed the scenery. First boil spotted at around 6:30am. Positioned wife on front of boat, idled over to boil, casted in with Spooks and had a double hook up at 6:31. I knew it was going to be a good trip. Chased boils around for an hour or so more and stopped to fillet the ones we had and have a snack. After releasing 20 or so fish my confidence or impatience made me pay dearly. The wife had a nice Striper on and it was hooked on the dorsal fin. I don't know what came over me, but I remember saying I'll just reach down and lip this one. Well the rest is history. As soon as my fingers touched his lips he flipped and embedded the hook into my hand about half way between my thumb tip and wrist. It was a Zara Spook with the big silver trebles. The front hook was in the fish and the back one was in my thumb. I still had enough wits about me to grab the Spook with my left hand and hold on tight so another flip wouldn't make things worse. Now I am holding fish and the lure in my left hand and the hook in my right. I have my wife cut the fish off to eliminate one problem. The barb was exposed but I didn't have the strength or sharp enough pliers to cut it off. By this time my wife says I turned white and I had to sit down for a minute. After I regained my composure I managed to crimp the barb in preparation for "the removal". Anything touching the hook was extremely painful. I knew the only way I was getting the hook out was the way it went in. By now the wife was panicking so I knew I had to defuse the situation quickly. I told her to check on the kids and when she turned I proceeded with "the removal". I gave it one little tester pull to see how tight it was. MISTAKE! It was going to hurt worse than I anticipated. The second time I knew I had to get it. Gritted the teeth, gave it one mighty twist jerk and it came out with the blood right behind it. Wrapped it in a towel, disinfected it and went on our way. I look down now and two little spots are all I have to remind me of it. I'm usually pretty good at taking others advice on stuff like this, but I guess I had to find out for myself. I'll say it one more time as others have done. DO NOT PUT YOUR HANDS ANYWHERE NEAR A FISH THAT HAS A HOOK IN IT!!!! Any top water lure seemed to work. The difference in lures for us was the ones that had better "castability" worked better just because you could reach a boil faster and sooner. I had two Spooks with the ball bearings in them that would shift forward during the cast and the lure would torpedo through the air. These were the best. I had 8 new top water lures for boils and by Thursday they were all gone. By the end I was using bass colored skitter pops, but my boil chasing skills were finely honed by then and I could get closer. Make sure you re-tie every 3 or 4 fish. There are some Stripers in Bullfrog bay with some nice lures in them as a bonus for someone. Some observations I made were that the boils seemed to last longer each day, which did not jive with what the moon, was doing. The moon was getting fuller each day but the bite was getting better each day. The boils did get more skittish as the week went on, but I will attribute that to increased boat traffic. A boil to most boaters is a target to run over, not to fish. Toward the end of the week it took a boil rising two or three times to get in casting position, but they were not as predictable in direction. Earlier in the week the boil would move in generally the same direction and you could position your boat accordingly. Later they would change direction and double back on you. What I would do for the optimum situation was spot a boil and watch it to determine direction. After you watch a lot of them you can determine direction by the splashes. If you guess just right you they will come up slightly ahead and off to one side. At this point I could idle right up next to them and get 2 or 3 out of a boil. Note that they are traveling about 3.5 miles per hour and you must cast low and fast ahead of the boil so that you could get your lure moving before the boil gets to it. The folks in our group who would cast overhand, sending the lure in a large arc did not catch many because by the time the lure hit the boil was past it and they had too much slack in the line. Start reeling before the lure hits the water for best results. We had two boats working boils with radios and it worked out good. I saw boils all the way from just past the buoy field up in Bullfrog bay to Halls marina. It was easier to find boils later when the wind and waves were bigger across from the ramp and slightly North along the red rocks. These blocked the wind a little and it consistently produced boils. One other note. After hooking myself I removed the middle hook from several lures trying to cut down on potential future self-hookings. This resulted in a lot of missed strikes so I put them back on before the wife about killed me. Other stuff: First mosquito bite at Powell. A lot of bugs until about 10:00am and in the evenings, some biting, some not. Most fishermen were courteous when the boils are plentiful, but get more aggressive when you have to look for them. A few times we were just having lunch and all of the sudden you will have 3 or 4 boats around you. Later in the week we had the recreational boaters that decided to try their luck on fishing. You can tell when you see them. Even had one houseboat chasing boils at one time. I have attached three pictures of boils and one mornings catch to get the blood pumping.

Wayne's Words flag was flying, but didn't observe any others. If you need supplies I would opt for Halls marina. It is stocked better, you have to go wakeless a shorter distance, and you can get gas, empty sewage and get Ice at the same place. At Bullfrog the pump outs are by the ramp, the ice is in the small store by the rental slips, and the fuel dock is tucked away up and behind the houseboats rentals. Ramp is fine. Lots of room. Wasn't even crowded Sunday morning. Of course we did take out at 6:30am. There were a lot of people down there this weekend. Given the choice I would not have been there, but a buddy of mine came down from Orofino, ID with his boat. He was not disappointed.

One last thought. I think the park service needs to crack down on irresponsible boaters. It seems like people get it in their mind that if they are going from point A to point B, nothing will make them alter their course. If you happen to be between them you better watch out. I do not think I had one encounter where a person yielded me the right of way when it was mine. I always had to change course. I lost count of how many times a boat going full speed passed within 150 of me while fishing. Sorry for being so long.

We fished and camped in Bull Frog , fishing every moring from 6am till the boils quit, usually around 9:30am.

And again every evening from 6pm to just after dark. In 3 days we spotted and chased over 200 boils from small to large in size. Boils seemed to range from 30 fish to 200 fish.

We landed 60 in all, from 19 to 26 inches, 3 to 6 pounds, very heathy looking too. The strpiers were really sensitive to your presence this go round, they went down real quick sometimes after only one cast, but they would laways pop back up a few hundred yards away.

Most all boats this trip used very good boil etiquette, every one seemed to find their own boils to fish, with few exceptions of course. Several people chasing boils stated that they we having a bit of trouble getting a hit. The fish were a bit picky, downsizing your lures seemed to help in most cases, 3/8 to 1/2 ounce rattle traps, kast masters, and buck tails seemed to work best.

I had my best luck on a 1/2 ounce yellow buck tail and a 1/2 feathered kast master, single hook of course. Casting over the boil and leading into it was very important, a short cast into the boil would chase them down right away. The picture of the rattle trap is one after the stripers sucked the paint right off of it, it worked even after the paint was gone.

We also tried some chovies at the thermo cline with no success, and trolling also dod nothing for us, so its all boil chasing, which by the way is the most exciting way to fish em. till next time have a good one

Just got back from Powell. Spent the week of July 6th - 13th. Fishing was excellent. Camped at iceberg and caught countless stripers in the bay just south of Iceberg Canyon. Boils didn't last long but they came up over and over. Tried to sneak up on them with electric trolling motors but if they were very far away you couldn't get there in time so we decided to run and gun them. We would usually get on or two casts in before they went down and that was enough to catch fish in just about each boil. Used Pop-R top water and it seemed to work better than any shad imitations or rattle traps that we were throwing at first. Saw boils throughout the day all up and down the channel from Iceberg to Bullfrog.

We just spent the 8th -13th north of Bullfrog in the Forgotten Canyon area and had the best striper fishing we've ever had at Powell. We only fished the mornings as the kids wanted to play the rest of the time, but we caught more stripers in a few hours of morning fishing each day than we would often catch in a long day of striper fishing other years. We only fished the boils and we found them everywhere, in every canyon we fished and all along the main channel from Bullfrog to Knowles Canyon. The schools in the narrower canyons were easier to fish (versus those in the channel) because the fish wouldn't travel as far between boils and the boils seemed to last longer. The fish were very healthy, very aggressive and weighed between 2 1/2 - 5 lbs. In the canyons we could often keep up with a school for up to 30 mins with the electric motor, catching several fish a piece before their feeding frenzy would subside. We fished 4-6 different schools in different locations each morning.

We also encountered boils all day long while traveling or playing on the water. By keeping one or two rigged poles in the ski boat we could often hook several fish for those kids in the party who hadn't fished before, while out playing on the water, when we came accross the boils. That way we converted two of the non fishermen in the group who started getting up early in the morning for the fishing trips to join in on the fun. We had so much fun and success with the stripers that we didn't do any smallmouth fishing which is what we usually do most at Powell.

I don't know that the type of bait made much of a difference as we seemed to catch the feeding stripers on whatever we threw into the boils, but we primarily used silver or white spoons, shad colored plastic jerk baits, and "wild eyed shad" (Storm). We also caught fish on zara spooks and ratt'l' traps, but found that we could unhook the fish faster with the single hooked lures, and the faster the better when the boil was in full swing as we could sometimes catch 3-4 fish a piece before the school submerged. We would keep 2-3 poles rigged for each of us so if we broke or tangled a line we could switch poles immediately and not miss out on any of the action. We would then quickly re-rig the broken or frayed lines while waiting for the school to come back up. A very fast erratic retrieve produced much better than a steady fast retrieve.

All in all our best fishing trip ever to Lake Powell even though our fishing time was limited. My dad began to wonder why we are spending so much money to go to Alaska fishing later this summer when such good fishing could be found much closer to home.

July 24 -27 Bullfrog and Hite.

Went to Bullfrog on the 24 - 26th. Fishing was VERY SLOW. The Boat wakes and wind really interfered with boat control and locating boils. Smallmouth fishing in Stanton Creek was okay.

July 26 & 27th.

The family went home in the early afternoon and I drove to Hite. Got on the water by 2PM and headed down lake. Started fishing just past the Horn, around buoy 128. Plan was to drag a crawler harness in 25 - 30 ft of water while looking for boils. Caught 8 small channel cat ( 1/2 - 3/4 lb ), 2 walleye, and 3 nice sunnies, along the ledges south of the gravel islands just past the Horn. Had one boil come up on top of me, zero fish.

Realized I needed to do something different, so I moved back up on the Horn and went cruising for boils. Located and chased boils till about 7 PM. Learned that they tended to move downwind, that you really had to move to get ahead to get a cast in, and usually could only get one shot before the boil was over. Ended up with 6 stripers, 2 Walleye, and 3 sunfish.

Met Tim Kelly and Jack Herrin at the Cleaning station. They had somewhat better success, look for their report. Biggest problem here was the Cleaning station. Someone did not read the instructions and jammed it up. We got it working for a while, but had to put most of the offal in the dumpster.

July 27.

Went back to the Horn Sunday AM, but after 45 minutes, realized that the fish there were not up. Went cruising and located schools just in front of 4 mile. Spent the morning chasing schools from 4 mile to 2 mile. Jack Herrin and his crew joined me about 10:00 AM after beating up on them in front of White. Lots of boils, lots of casting, not much catching. Averaged only one fish out of every 3-4 boils. Count for the day, 12 fish.

Observations:

Haven't fished boils like this for years. My best success was on a Jumpin Minnow. Could cast it farther and it seemed to have more attraction than the spook, as far as a topwater. Caught a few on 1/2 oz Crocodile Spoon, but it sank into the boil too fast. If you are taking a set of trebles off your topwaters, remove the tail hook, they hit the middle of the plug and you will get more hookups by leaving the middle hook. I also dressed it up by taking a Clear Sparkle Spider Skirt, cutting it in the middle, and sliding it over the shank of the hook. It added a bit of attraction while the bait was sitting still in the middle of the boil. I also learned that I needed to let the boil develop a bit before making a cast. I found that if I cast as soon as I saw the first few fish breaking water, I would often be on the edge and miss the main part of the boil. PATIENCE !!

Have Fun.

Arrived at Halls Crossing 3:00 A.M. Saturday morning. The fine folks at the storage area at Halls had parked our Camper at the Camp grounds at the top of the hill for us. They had even plugged it in and started the fridge and the air conditioner. Slept in and headed out looking for fish around noon. Looked in bullfrog bay - around Moki and headed up the lake. Did not see a boil or find any one fishing until we got near Castle Butte in Good Hope Bay. Found around 50 boats fishing between Castle Butte and White canyon. Hardly anyone was catching any fish even though there were a few boils. Talked to several fishermen that had done well the day before and thought that the weather had effected the fish Saturday and that it would get better Sunday. Decided to go down the lake from Halls Sunday Morning being we had not seen that part of the lake for several years. Fished the Rincon area for small mouth. Caught two about 6 inches long, lost two around 12. Area looked good, could not find them or what they wanted. Pulled out of Halls around noon and headed for Hite. Set up camp and went out that evening. Found lots of boils around the #132 mile marker. Caught several, stopped in White on the way back about 1/2 hour before dark. Caught several more - ended up with 18 stripers for the evening. Followed the same pattern for the next day and 1/2. Ended up with 101 total for the trip. For people looking to go to Hite, here are some hints

* The ramp should be usable until the water drops below 3608 - maybe a little lower for poeple with smaller flat bottom boats.

* There is a layer of silt everywhere around the ramp and old marina site beneath the water. If your boat displaces a lot of water you may have to paddle out 50 feet or so away from the ramp.

* There is a sand/mud bar where the old marina was setting - aboat 300 feet out from the ramp - two months ago the water was 15 feet deep there when the water was at 3605. The sand bar was 2 feet high at the 3610 level. Roughly 22 feet of debree was left by the run-off.

* You may have to use you electric motor to get away from the ramp with out getting silt in your motor.

* There is nothing left of the Old Hite Marina - Nothing to tie a boat to on the water, or that you can drive a boat to and walk off to the shore on.

* The house boats are about 3/4 mile down the lake - the water there is around 40 feet deep.

* The Marina store (shore-based) is supposed to stay open reguardless of the water level.

* There are plenty of good camping places around the ramp.

* The fish cleaning station is closed - it was roped off when we left. They have a bag over the pipe for disposing of the heads and intrals - the grinder must be broke?

* Saw boils regularly from the mouth of White to Castle Butte, from Sunday afternoon until Tuesday noon. They were more frequent and more cooperative around mid morning and the last two hours of daylight. Did not have much luck real early in the morning, but talked to other people that caught a lot of fish early.

* We would go from boil to boil as slowly as the boat would run on plane around 22 MPH. Had good luck running right in on them several times. Most of the time they would go down and we would drop the trolling motor and head toward the way we thought they were going. If we quessed right we we get a double most every time.

* Caught fish on most every lure we had that would stay within 1' of the top of the water. I kept trying differrent stuff. My son Lukas (12) stayed with his Storm 3" Swim Shad in a Pearl Color and consistantly kick my butt.

* At one time around noon on Monday when the lake was calm we counted 8 separate boils around mile marker #132.

* Catching fish was easy when you could find the right bunch of fish to work. If they stayed down over two minutes or did not stay up for at least time enough to cast to them we would pull out and look for a different bunch to work. Usually you could not go half a mile with out finding another boil.

* All the boils we saw were out in the main channel or in the mouth af a canyon. We looked in the backs of several canyons, but never found any boils.

* The shad they are feeding on are 1/2" to 3/4" long.

* Most of the time there was not another boat in sight

Had lots of nice pictures, but could not get the card reader to work. Will try to send them later.

It was kind of sad to leave knowing that it will probably be a long time before we can get back in at Hite. Hats off to the crew at Hite For keeping it open as long as they did. Good Fishing.

We fished out of Bullfrog August 7-9. August 7th we headed towards moqui canyon about 7:00 am. As we approached the mouth of Moqui we spotted a decent boil just to the North of the canyon with another boat already fishing this boil. I stopped my big motor and dropped the electric troll motor and headed for the boil (about 300 yards away) when all of the sudden a boat came full speed right though the middle of the boil and hit bows with the boat already fishing the boil. I couldn't believe my eyes. Beyond that we fished boils in this area for about 3-4 hours. between two boats and eight anglers we boated about 80 fish. We went back to the same area that evening of the 7th and fished the last two hours of sun light and did not see a single boil.

The morning of August 8th we headed back to Moqui and found just a few small boils. I became impatient and headed towards Hansen. We found small boils all along the main channel, but found them hard to sneak upon. When we approached they would just sink. The boils would not last more than a minute or two. We caught about 20 fish between two boats and eight anglers. The evening of the 8th I went back to Moqui and did not see any top water action at all in the main channel.

We went out fishing the morning of the 9th. We headed back to Moqui and found some small boils going on. We then noticed in a small bowl like cove just North of the mouth of Moqui a boil going on right inside the back of the cove. We worked our way in there and started catching fish. The fun part for me was watching the shad being pushed against the wall and jumping clear out of the water two feet. We fished for about two hours and caught about 30 fish between one boat and 5 anglers.

All fish caught were 2.5-4 pounds. We had a great time.

What can I say the fishing was fantastic! I went out to Powell this past Monday (25th)and Tuesday (26th) solo. I left Bullfrog at 6:15 am Monday and not 20 minutes went by when I saw my first boil at buoy 102. I eased into the school and the action began. It was non stop for at least 50 minutes. I was using a top water lure called "Top Dog" which I purchased in Louisiana. I ended up with 28 stripers the first morning. I headed to Farley canyon to fish the afternoon but only managed to pick up a few stripers. The boils were short lived so I had to stay in one spot and hope they surfaced within casting range. That seemed to be the only way I could pick up any fish. The next morning I headed back towards Bullfrog hoping to spot more boils. As luck would have it I spotted another boil at my new favorite buoy 102. It was a repeat of the morning before, non stop action for 45 minutes, 26 stripers. I had so much fun those two days, I only wish I could have shared it with a fishing buddy. Unfortunately my friends all had to work. Im looking forward to my next trip!

How can one say "slow" lol.

Fished 6am 8/31 to noon 9/1, activity very light for the most part, worked Bullfrog bay till 10:30 am with no sign of life. headed up lake, rounded the corner at Moki to see 1 boat fishing a very large boil at the 102, plenty of room to join in since it was the biggest boil of the season for us. landed 8 all 4 to 5.5 pounders, very fat fish.

this boil lasted till other boaters arrived and ran right over it, including one running into me. from the time we spotted it top the time the others arrived it was up for 30 minutes, very furious boil!!! Lures used were, yello and white 1 ounce buck tails, 1 ounce kast masters, and blue 3/4 ounce storm swim shad. We decided that since these larger boils and larger fish were present here, we would not go to striper city this trip. Big mistake? i wont know till i hear other reports from up there i guess. We worked this area for the remainder of our trip only to not see them again. Spent the rest of the time between Halls and Forgotten canyon, We found enough smaaler boild to keep us interested , but nothing to exciting the rest of the weekend. Small boils in the AM at he mouth of Forgotten and AM at Moki too. Small mid day boils in Bullfrog. Most activity seemed to be mid day. Graphed heavy shad in the back of Bull frog with no feeders in sight. water temp was 82 there!! main channel temp 79 to 80. Tried a little jigging and chovie fishing in various areas showing fish at 60 feet or so, but no luck with either. Night tim cat fishing was very active in all areas with a sandy shore ine.Also as my habits usually are, I was able to introduce a new man to the lake and chasing, as i try to do each trip. Total striper catch for the weekend was a mere 21, but very very healthy fish, and always worth our time, next trip 9/26-9/29, cooler water should change some shad habits and improve the chase. till next time, tight lines.

My first Labor Day Powell trip! Still not sure if a mistake or not. Spent two hours on ramp at Bullfrog on Friday, when a ranger came and said since I had a bass boat I could launch at the old ferry ramp. Was on the water in 15 minutes! Weather Friday not cooperating as I made the run to Hite area. High winds and t-storms all afternoon and night. Still windy in the morning until around 9 am (sat), so no morning boils. Went down lake to pick up other members of party, and on way back ran into a big boil between Moki and Forgotten canyons. We were first boat on boil, and quickly pulled 4 fat stripers out before other boats came like flies to #$%#! Two of them actually drove through the boil before stopping. (Is there anything called boil etiquette?) This split it up into many small boils, and same boats kept plowing through them also. Finally left in disgust and headed back up stream. Stayed until Monday, and saw no boils from lower Good Hope to Four Mile, a first for me! Boils best at White Canyon and uplake a couple of miles, but very short lived. We were successful in guessing the next boil point a few times, and had a great time. I must say that Sunday was the finest day I've ver had weather-wise at Powell, absolutely beautiful! We used primarily Kastmasters, and then threw big Zara Spooks when the fish ignored the first. We also watched a small school of shad off of the cliffs by White canyon to see boats effect on them, and they didn't seem to mind, so it must be the stripers themselves who don't like the boats; but I'm not sure if it is the motor noise or the bow wake that does it.

Fishing Report Sept 4-8th 03.

Launched at Bullfrog on Thurs morning. Early by my standards but nevertheless was on the water by 9 or so. Gold Cup and I in attendance. First destination? Find someplace to unload this very overloaded bass rig that required Rich to mount the bow in order to plane. After poking into a few notches off the main channel from 100 up stream, we located a nice beach real close to 103.

Even had a Coyote and a stream! WOW that was a pleasant surprise and made for a great photo session too.

After setting up camp we headed for areas upstream of 103, intending on chasing main channel fish only. We soon connected long before Forgotten. Various boils would continue to impede our progress to the intended chasing grounds. Especially right outside of Knowles Canyon across the channel. Then we kept running into fish and boils and I must stay, it's first time that many will put on a catching clinic for TC, but Gold Cup was in the process of doing just that. Had me down 5 to 1 at one point. Though down, and I do mean down, TC was far from out. Boils that did come up and were approachable were careless and would seem to hit anything thrown at them. Spittin image and spooks mostly. Well those that Gold Cup was throwing anyway, they would not touch my offerings.

My only real high point of the early afternoon was that I was spotting and running to position. But often found my casts missing the correct area, even when I hit it, the fish ignored my Sammy in favor or the spook jr. I soon changed for sure. But not soon enough. I was getting spanked and big time by a rookie no less. Not one of my brighter moments for sure. My thoughts were drifting back to the shellacking I gave Dozer one rather warm afternoon a couple of years ago. (He recovered and collected himself and saved the day too. Yes he still got shellacked, but done fine. ) Though the day felt slow as far as the catching was concerned we were have a very good time. We got bored with that area and headed back, and of course ran into several more boils enroute. Tired we headed to camp for a nap. Amazing I know, but some sleep felt good. Though quite warm in the tents with the sun beating down upon them, the rest was needed.

We had targeted 6pm for being back on the water; it was 7 when it happened. Probably a good thing though. We ran into fish again right outside our cove. Active and again careless and this time they hit my spook, my spitin image and a second image thrown too. Three fish on three casts with different rods. Short lull was on, I needed something to now throw so I retrieved the lures from fish in the boat. One was hung up badly in some nylon mesh that used to be attached to a cooler in the boat. (note Used to be attached). I cut the hook free, and started to remove the mesh from the big treble hook. Knife was not sharp enough, (anybody remember this?), it slipped and OMG I've got a hook embedded in my finger to the bend! OUCH! big time OUCH. Worse was the boil was just coming up again, which of course added some tense to the situation. But of course the immediate priority for me anyway., was getting this danged hook outta my finger! I tried brute force in the rearward direction, to no avail. Final insult of the day, I asked Gold Cup to bring me some Light and his help. He brought the light, and some diagonals and promptly cut the hook where the three joined. I tried two more times to coax the hook from its grip within my index finger, no luck... Well the next step is head for a clinic and a $500 bill, or get a grip and push it through. The decision was not easy, oh ta hell with it, it was very easy! Besides that boil was still up and running away from us!

I grabbed the bend in the hook with the pliers, and gritting my teeth, gave a mighty push thinking it would pop out! NO WAY!!!!! All I got to look at was this bright white spot where it was trying to come through the tip of my finger. (I must say I was actually amazed at this point at how really difficult it is to get a hook through you). A second attempt proved better and the tip of the hook finally protruded the skin, I grabbed the tip of the hook and could not get enough grip on it. So it was back to pushing again, finally the barb was exposed and I was able to remove the offense from my finger. I can't advise you what to do if faced with a similar situation, but I can tell you that it's not as easy as it sounds to push a hook on through! Believe me when I tell you that the first 1/2" is like lightening, the second makes you wonder how you ever put this through a fishes mouth with the twitch of the wrist.

At this point it's well dark thirty and though we chase the boil a bit more it finally sounded for the night. I licked my wounds, filleted the fish, one and three quarters bags, and treated it well as soon as we hit camp. It's healing very well today. Fish count, 11 for the day, TC 4 Gold Cup 7.

Friday morning came and it seemed too soon. Today will be one of running and gunning. Up to Warm Springs with many stops and starts. The boils we saw were not staying up long, mere seconds. Worse, they would rarely reappear! That made it very difficult to get on them, but we seemed to improve out fast approach and quick cast techniques. Not catching as total fish for the morning was one fish. The afternoon we went to Halls Mall to get resupplied some beverages and fuel, talk about sticker shock! 34 gallons, $102! Glad it was not the cruiser! Richard S chased us down at Halls, we talked for a bit and chased around together a bit later. We wandered that end of the bay a bit, saw the Dorset's pass us and chased them down for some light conversation. It was good to see them again. Denn arrived at 6pm and we headed back to our camp. The Stripers were once again boiling right outside camp cove; Denn and Gold Cup both picked one up each. So Fri we all became "One A Day" catchers.

Saturday we woke up to sunshine parting the door of the tent. Looked out the window and saw a large black cloud, soon the sun disappeared and was replaced by the sound of rain drops upon the tent. I got up and zipped up the window, and closed the front door too. Just as it really opened up on us. Though nice, my old tent is just really not up to being rained upon. The rain was not heavy but just a good rainstorm that lasted for an hour or such. The tents seams all gave way to some seepage.

After the storm was over the landscape took on a most wonderful aroma and the visuals are so stunning when that red rock gets wet. We did not get on the water till 10:30. As we headed out we saw Richard S. and we had a good conversation. I wanted to make a run down to the Escalante and go see Cathedral in the Desert. But after talking with Richard I got out voted for the long run and sight seeing. So a fish chasing we went instead. Up and down the main channel again from Moki to Warm Springs. There were quite a few boats on the water chasing the boils on Sat. Plus the weekend traffic which was also increased from middle of the week. The fish however were not very cooperative on Sat. I finally hooked one when a boil came up within casting distance. Foul hooked it I did too, Handed the rod to Denn to fight the fish while I attempted to get another hook up going. She had a ball with the bait caster and that fish did not want to come to the boat at all. Though a valiant fight it put up, the fish lost the battle and indeed was boated. Denn told me that I now have to buy her a rod and reel like that! hahaha, It only take one good fish fight to convince you why a bait caster becomes the reel of choice over spinning gear. Though we did not know it at the time, that was to be the only striper boated on Sat.

We ran into the Dorset's again and continued our conversations and fish tales. They even came over to camp for an afternoon break thinking they would have to duck for some cover from another t-storm that was running the area. We had a great time listening to all the travel tales from their Alaskan summer adventure while sitting there waiting out the storm that never really hit us. At 6 we headed back for the evening boils. They were few and far between and very very fast when they did occur. We did allot of Striper hunting together on Sat running the channel in a parallel fashion. We were able to get to many boils, but they just would not cooperate with a hook up. The Dorset's finally headed for Halls as their boat is not able to run fast yet due to engine problems. We continued our efforts in vain, our dependable camp boil did not come back for a third night. So we went in to camp. Rich headed for bed, Denn went and laid down, I decided that it was time to save the fishing day and proceeded to rig up for some cat action. It was fast and lots of fun and the area was well loaded with the remains we had been creating. Three hours later I too finally headed for bed with a full bag of Cat filets! 17 fish. Midnight good time to sleep.

Woke up and was headed out about 8:30, the fish were boiling in the channel right outside of camp cove. We did not get there in time. Ran into Crystal Springs as Richard had told us about fish in the canyon. The fish were there, but would not eat our offerings. Right outside Hansen Creek as we were running at speed down channel the fish came up, I ran right through the middle of the boil! Pulled the throttle and went to cast behind the boat as the fish were still there. Broke off the lure on the cast, then they came up again right in front of the boat. Grabbed second rod and picked up one fish from that group. Sunday was to be a long day of chasing and little catching. We headed for camp about noon and got delayed by various boils and arrived at 12:30 to break it down. We departed our streamside campsite about an hour later looking more like a pack mule than a fishing boat. Left out four rods as I was sure we would see boils along our way back to the ramp. We did, but could not get on them in time. Ran into the Dorset's in the mouth of Moki.

They had been at it hard since noon when they launched. Had been running into boils all along Moki wall and just inside of Moki canyon too. As we were talking a boil came up right at the boats! 6 rods into action, not a single hookup. Gold Cup really had to get on the road and I was still trying to decide on whether to stay another night or not, we headed once again for the ramp. Ran into a couple of small boils marker 98 and picked up a real nice fish there. This fish was almost 5 lbs. A little further on more boils, but no hookups. Finally made the dash for the ramp, the wind was really starting to kick up the waves. Right outside the tires another boil! I got another nice fish from this one too.

Fishing was done for the time being. We unloaded most of the boat and with some reprovisioning, Denn and Rich departed, I remained behind to give it one more chance to see if I could figure out these fish. I found a suitable camp site near 97 in a large cove. Attempted to dry out from my rather forced swim at the dock. I deep sixed my cell phone when I went to untie. I know dumb mistake, but I know I'm not the first to do that. At 6 I again headed out to locate fish, the wind was kicking up pretty good and none were to be found the rest of the evening. I returned to camp and shared a pleasant conversation with a young couple camped nearby.

I was on the water at 7:30 the next morning, looking for boils in that same area around 98. Thought I saw a splash a very long way off and headed for the area. Yes it was for sure a boil. A big boil! Covered a couple hundred feet and the fish were staying up. First cast I nailed a nice fish. Figured this is going to be a fun morning for sure. That was not to be the case. These fish were acting very strange. I mean very strange. They were all over the place but were not in a frenzied feeding mass. It was like individual fish surfacing and feeding over this large area. You would see fish all around, but it became evident that it was singles or small groups all going after their morning meals. But fish all around the boat and moving about. This lasted for a full 40 minutes! But not another hookup in all that time, very frustrating for sure. Spooks, Spitin image, kastmaster, rattle trap these fish did not want such things in the mood they were in.

They finally went down for good and I moved along the wall toward Moki. Then on up to Crystal Springs hoping to maybe get skunked again by those fish in there. They were not there this fine morning. I headed for the channel and ran onto another boil there, got two good casts into it, but nothing doing with these fish either. Motored back toward moki slowly. At 102 I ran into two boils. These fish were up and staying up. But they also were doing the grazing thing across a wide expanse of water. Had one hit but could not get the hook set. So this group was still doing the slurping thing we had back in May. I was trying to catch from behind them and when I did get into proper position they sounded and did not come back up. On to Moki. Sitting in the mouth of Moki proved better, a boil came up and I was able to nail another fish from it, then a second boil came up, but could not get on it right. These two boils were of the more frenzied kind. The wind kicked up pretty good I headed for camp and a sandwich. Went back out around noonish and continued to cruise the waves and such. No more activity was noticed went back and loaded up camp onto the boat again. I found a suitable position and filleted the catch, looked at the stomach contents real close and even took some pics. There was shad of every size in them. Less than an inch to over two inches. Then another fish that actually looks like it could be black bass about an inch of so in length. Seems to help explain the strange activity I had noticed earlier in the day.

Well that completes the trip report. I recovered at 3pm and headed for home.

Launched two boats with four total persons at Bullfrog late afternoon Tuesday the 16th of September. Light crowds. Parking spots available in the closest lot. Ramp is .27 of a mile from top to water. Launched with no problem even though there was a heck of a south wind. The tire breakwater works well.

Had decided to cruise north and look for boils. Around 5:30 we were at the mouth of Moki and could see a few boats anchored out of the wind. We wanted more excitement and with the wind to our backs we cruised up the channel at slowest plane. At times the waves were whitecapped and the boil would have had to be large to see. We slowed down around Buoy 103 and watched one boat casting the area kind of at random. Continued to Knowles Canyon. Thought we would camp there. Every decent site full. Maybe 20 or so camps. Beautiful evening for going north so we continued through Good Hope and kept looking for action. Nothing. Checked out area around Scorup. Decided to camp in Four Mile. Found a great protected site. Fished off the back of the boats and caught a few SMB, Catfish and an accidental Carp that impressed us all with its drag spinning abilities. All on anchovy. Small fish and shad were attracted to a lantern held over the water.

Wednesday morning we were on the water before sunrise and cruised around. There was a lot of debris in the water. As the sun came up we could see that the water was very stained, we think from storm runoff. We looked for boils in Four Mile, Two Mile, Trachyte, White, Striper City and went up near Hite. Water temp under 70 north of White. Spent the day searching for fish. Tried some trolling, some casting. No fish found.

Wind continued to get worse but we felt that we needed to be south of the stained water. So we packed up camp and left. Fighting the waves head on was not as nice as the previous evening. But we looked for boils and stopped in and fished in each canyon for a break from the wind. Decided to set up camp in Cedar Canyon. This ended up being a mistake. Although we expected a wind shift we did not expect the swirling gusts that tore at the tents and covered everything thing we own, and every inch of the boats with sand. Rough night. We did manage a few assorted fish but no stripers, jigging along the shores in Cedar.

Morning found us boil hunting again. One boat north toward Good Hope. None found. The other boat toward Knowles. We trolled Tapestry Wall watching for boils. Saw none but the waves now out of north made it difficult to see anything not obvious. No bites. Ran into one boat that had seen a small boil that morning and had caught one good Striper. They told us that the morning before they had seen boils near Bullfrog. We also bummed a gallon of gas from them. My 115HP had used near 30 gallons of gas so far and I had told them I was getting close to not being able to chase boils now even if I saw some. Great guys. Our boat with a 150HP had used around 50 gallons so far.

By noon we decided that obligations at home were more important than living with sand and hope. So we slow cruised back to Bullfrog. Enroute we heard from another of our fishing buddies. Monday he had gone down toward Rainbow Bridge and caught nice Stripers out of the area around the mouth of the Escalante both Monday night and Tuesday morning. From boils and trolling shallow. He also caught SMB on every lure he tried as long as he let it fall deep. Some nice ones. Fishing slowed as the winds picked up and the front moved in.

Taking out at the ramp was a little delayed as people prepared boats right at waters edge. Should have been a sign to us to stay. Soon the weather was getting nicer and I am willing to bet the fishing too. Several nice boats coming in for a tournament it looked like also. Water temp in Good Hope area 73 degrees. Bullfrog 74.

Jeanne and I finally found the stripers up at Bouy 132 from 2 - 6 pm on Saturday. I logged 73 miles on Friday covering the places you had such good fishing earlier last week and never saw a striper. Saturday Jeanne and I ran from Hansen Creek (our camp site) up to Hite. Had fun catching smallmouths and a couple of stripers trolling in Farleys and the main channel. Even trolled up around the house boat bouy field at Hite. At 2 PM we finally saw stripers boiling. Most boils were only 4 - 6 fish and they were quick and moving fast. Most of the time if we got there while they were still up or just stopped boiling and we cast a surface lure (poppers, small spooks, Devil Horse's) we'd get a hit. We only saw two bigger schools and got into one of those. We ended up catching 20 nice stripers. The biggest I put on a scale was 4 pounds. All were nice fat fish. We also caught smallmouths up to 13 inches on surface lures, trolling and jigs. I caught one largemouth (small) and had one larger one up to the boat but it came off. Had a lot of fun, got away from the crowds that were everywhere near Hansen Creek and found the fish.

Lots and lots of shad. Canyons near Hansen Creek and up to Knolls all holding lots of shad. Main channel above Good Hope holding lots of shad. Smallmouths were spitting up shad from 2" - 4". Saw shad feeding and swimming on the surface in places we didn't see any predators chasing them.

Lots of driftwood in White Canyon. Water has cleared since Marty Petersen was up there 10 days ago. Above White Canyon the water was green colored but good fishing in that colored water. Didn't see any brown colored water until we got above houseboats at Hite. Water temps in the mid to upper 70's most places from Bullfrog to Hite.

Arrived at Halls 2:00pm Thursday. Water Temp 71 to 73. clarity to 20 feet. Morning air temp low 50's Daytime Highs Low 90's. Started searching for Boils in Halls house boat area, made a run up to Knowles and back, No Boils in sight till returning to Halls about 6:30pm, Saw a few short ghost boils at the south end of Halls house boats, Then a few fishable Boils in the same area, from there to the Breakwater around the Halls pump out station, We landed 8 or so for the evening all 4 to 5.5 pounders.

Started at day break the next morning, Cruised from the pumpout station to the north end on the Halls house boats, Many ghost boils at the north end this morning, then a large fishable boil began just out of casting range and as the Game and Fish pulled up to check for our license, So needless to say he kept us from fishing that one. By the time he was done it had gone down. Made one more pass to the south end and found a decent boil in the no wake house boat area, caught a double in that one, both 4-5 pounds. We then headed up lake and back without any sightings at all. Friday evening, we headed to the houseboat area again to chase boils, Picked up a few more nice ones in the same areas as both the night before and this morning, also caught some of the smallest stripers I have ever seen, there were 1 pounders mixed in with 5 pounders, even smaller as one boil led us to the rocks just before the houseboats, actually landed a few 5 oz stripers on 1/2 ounce lures, as well as a few smallies in the same boil. The pattern for saturday remained the same both in the bay and up lake to Knowles, Light action in the mornings and a little heavier in the evenings, Only difference for Saturday was fishable boils did start at about 2:00 pm but with long waits between them and also they were along the wall across from Halls ramp this time. The Halls Mall was very slow all weekend so while having an ice cream we even fished for blue gill fun on my 12 foot crappie rod and a huge carp for my brother, all released of course, just breaks the day up while enjoying the shade and ice cream.

By the way, Sunday morning was very very dead, nothing at all spotted. left by 11:00 am.

Total catch (36 stripers) (4) smallies (1) channel cat (3) blue gill (1) giant carp........

Fished Lake Powell from 9/22 through 9/26. Caught a couple of striper on anchovies but primarily fished the boils from Halls to just north of Good Hope. Our best action was at approximately buoy #127 in late afternoon. Also had good action around the Halls ferry cut early in the week. Used top water lures and Kastmaster spoons. Except for the boil around Good Hope they were not lasting very long and we had to get on the boil fast. Looking forward to coming down again in Ocober. I check your site for fishing info and appreciate the data you put out.

Fish report for: 25 Sept. through 29 Sept.

Bullfrog

Water Temp: 70 to 75

Thursday the 25th:

Arrived at Bullfrog at 5:30 pm after an uneventful drive from Herriman, UT. Have to say I was kind of shocked at the amount of vehicles in the parking lots. After prepping the boat we launched with no problems. As reported earlier the right side of the ramp looking down is the best. There are a few potholes, but it is fine. Courtesy dock seemed busy the whole time we were launching. Noticed a lot of people parked down to the left (south east) of the ramp on the beach. It looked like some were launching there also. We headed directly up to the Hansen Creek area so we would be staged for the morning. Motored up Hansen Creek at dusk to find all good beaches taken. Finally found a suitable spot to beach the boat and camp. Saw no boils or activity on the way up. Lots of people in Hansen Creek. Sorry to the folks camped in the back with boats tied to their houseboats. Didn't mean to throw a wake and disrupt the evening, but the canyon ended A LOT sooner than I anticipated. Thursday night was cold. Had to throw extra blankets on. I sleep on the deck.

Friday the 26th:

Up at O'dark thirty. Thought I would take the opportunity to see the upper part of the lake and look for boils. Motored up to Fourmile without any signs of boils. The lake is smooth & beautiful at that time of the morning. Nothing like cruising with the chilly morning air blowing on you drinking cup of coffee. Motored back down to the Hansen/Knowles area and putted around looking for boils. After a long awaited beach playtime for the kids we cruised back toward the buoy field at Halls. Ran into Jim and Rich on the East side of the houseboat field. It was really nice meeting these two guys and putting a face to a name. Rich had to take off so it was Jim and us for the rest of the weekend. We cruised the buoy field and ran into a couple of small boils later in the evening. Karen lost her first fish and the Spook attached to it on the first cast. Wonder who tied that knot? Found a nice sandy spot just up from Coyote Cove and spent the night. Someone was trolling back and forth in front of us in a jet boat until late at night. Lots of lights on the boat. Wonder how they did?

Saturday the 27th:

Met up with Jim on the East side of the buoy field, had a cup of his coffee (better than mine in my wife's words). Motored around to the West side of the field and picked up a couple of boils. One fish landed. Lots of boats that didn't understand our boil etiquette. They would charge right in coming within feet of us at times. Oh well, we moved on to find our own and didn't. Witnessed Jim land a couple. This is quite a feat considering he was solo. Boat traffic was CRAZY Saturday East of the buoy field, which is probably one of the busiest spots on the lake. We headed downstream around the corner in search of less traffic and boils. No luck on the boils. More play time, then back up to the buoy field. Managed to scrounge up one fish just outside the tire breaks by the dump station. Boils were even fewer and further between this evening. Said farewell to Jim. Hope we can meet up again someday. Very nice fellow. Camped back on our sandy spot by Coyote.

Sunday the 27th:

Decided to putt up from our camp towards Hansen Creek at daybreak hoping to find some of the massive boils reported earlier in the week. Made way at 6 miles per hour up to Hansen and back to the large bay in front of Moqui with no boils spotted. Putted down past Halls, up into Bullfrog Bay and up into Halls Creek for playtime. By Sunday afternoon all the crowds were all but gone. We positioned ourselves on the East side of the buoy field for the evening boils that were sure to come with the reduced boat traffic. We had the whole area to ourselves and saw one ghost boil and that was it. Camped at a nice spot behind the buoy field. Couldn't even muster up a Catfish.

Monday the 27th:

At the ramp at 6:30. Only two other vehicles present. Note: Do not park in front of the dumpsters when preparing for the trip home. It STINKS! Loaded and headed home.

Summary:

Over all pretty slow for fishing, but had a great time. Met some other Wordlings and enjoyed the lake and beautiful weather. Hoping for one more trip in October. Boils progressively got fewer as the week went on. Wonder where they are going. Ran into lots of folks who couldn't find the boils. Did see some other WW flags but they didn't stop to chat. One looked like a 17 or 18' Lund or Smokercraft.

One thing did disappoint me. We stopped off at a nice looking beach in Halls Creek one afternoon to let the kids play. After reaching the beach in looked like Omaha beach on D-Day after a frat party. Whiskey, beer and wine bottles, all kinds of trash, giant holes where anchors were buried and on and on. I filled two bags of trash before loading up the kids and finding a new spot. I still didn't get half of it. I was appalled that someone could leave a beach in that condition. To bad some folks just don't get it.

I got back from Hall's Crossing last night and here's the news: This report will include information from several other fishermen who were freely exchanging scouting data with one another (including J.D. Rinderle).

I arrived at Halls Sunday night and spent time visiting with three other parties who had been out already. I spoke with two fishermen who had fished the north lake on Sunday and seen no boils all the way to White Canyon. They had gone into White Canyon out of curiosity and found the following: The water ends just after the battleship, and the driftwood and debris is so thick that they had to clear the intakes on their outboard three times getting in and out. Another had spent the day trolling Good Hope without seeing any boils. Stripers had been boiling along the wall across from Halls boat ramp up to Saturday but had disappeared. No substantial boils had been spotted in the Moki area since Thursday.

With two parties going north on Monday, I decided to concentrate on Bullfrog Bay. The day produced a very small number of light boils from which I extracted six healthy fish, the largest being 4lbs. 8oz. These boils were not organized into actual "boils", but were, rather, areas of surface feeding resulting in splashes. I saw more of this type activity over the next few days down lake so I'll elaborate here with my speculations.

In the areas of these "boils" I was able to graph large schools of shad being preyed upon by stripers while underwater. It appeared that what little "boil" activity happened was actually incidental to the underwater feeding simply getting near the surface. Not the intentional herding and trapping of shad on the surface as is the normal boil behavior. The stripers also seem to have gone on the move. Monday I found HUGE shad schools in Bullfrog being exploited by stripers. Tuesday I could still find the shad schools, but no stripers in attendance. I did find the stripers strung out (by the hundreds) in the main channel of Bullfrog Bay, at 35 - 45 feet of depth, in the morning. But in the afternoon they were nowhere to be found.

The Monday reports from those who had gone north, and knowing the same fishermen were trying the north on Tuesday, sent me south scouting Tuesday afternoon. I scouted as far as the mouth of the Escalante. I found a light scattering of surface feeding in the Rincon area, but no boils I could get to in time to cast to. (By the way, that is an impressive rock slide). I saw splashes in Slickrock Canyon and investigated. I found more HUGE shad schools being preyed upon and decided to cast to them. There was almost no "boil" activity unless you count shad boiling on the surface and jumping out onto the bank to avoid the underwater predators. By casting to the "shad boils" with Spook Jrs. I picked up four more nice stripers and six SMB, all over one pound. The next day (Wednesday) I took Wayne Dorsett with me back to Slickrock and, even though the shad were still there, the stripers were gone.

We, instead, went down to the Rincon where we saw splashes to fish to. We found shad in the shallows (15 - 25 feet) that were covering the screen and large enough that they were individual "arches". (The fish I caught in Slickrock and those we caught in the Rincon were full of shad 4 - 4 1/2 inches long.) We spent a couple of hours catching two nice stripers and 11 SMB on large topwaters. The SMB were all over one pound, and two of them were near two pounds. All were full of the afore mentioned 4 -4 1/2 inch shad and very aggressive. Although we were unable to catch many of the stripers, we were able to graph their activity. They were making quick forays into the shallows from the main channel (320 feet deep) using deep (90 feet) side channels as runways. These forays were very short and the effect on the shad seemed to incite the SMB into near boil activity. This was, by the way, very similar to what I saw in Slickrock the day before.

Sorry this is so long. I think the stripers are running the main channel in schools, making short forays into canyons and bays for "lunch" and retreating quickly to deep water. Unlike falls in the past, they don't seem to be camping on trapped schools of shad (a pattern that lends itself to vertical jigging) but rather acting more like the ocean-going fish that they are and free-roaming in a forage rich environment.

The side canyons mid-lake (such as Iceberg) that were fed by the flash floods last week, are all experiencing algae blooms.

This was the best trip to Lake Powell we have ever had. The weather was perfect... no wind...no storms... none. We fished from buoy 122 down to 67. The fishing was great. Without a doubt the best lure the whole trip was a chrome Rattletrap with blue highlights. A Wordling wrote "bring your net..." I didn't and regretted it. We launched at Halls kinda late in the day and were surprised to find almost no houseboat campsites in Moki (nothing but rock). We were racing uplake looking for a campsite and I was in the scout boat that didn't see a huge boil erupt behind me... huge fish flying out of the water at 102. My FORMER friend, following in the houseboat saw it and told me about it later. He mistakenly thought it was more important to find a campsite before dark than fish a huge boil with huge fish. We squeezed slowly into Knowles late in the day and made ripples in otherwise perfectly flat water (we tried not to)... we apologize to the guy with the big camera. The next morning we tried Moki Wall with no luck, and then headed up to Ticaboo Canyon and beached there for 2 days. There we were blessed with glassy water, just a few boats, and no jetskis. We caught 12 smallies and 2 stripers off the point at 122. Caught nothing in Ticaboo Canyon and it was full of fish. We caught 4 nice stripers using anchovies in the main channel at 121. One of my new Son-in-Laws caught our biggest fish there... over 5lbs.

After 2 days of mellowing out we decided to head South. When we cranked up the houseboat one engine got hot... busted water pump... so we cruised single engine back to the slip... grumbling. But, it was a good thing... we got to fish the boils from 102 to 106. There was lots of boat traffic heading uplake and there was 11 boats trying to fish the entire width of the lake at 103. Many boats cruised right thru the middle of the fishing boats, but in their defense we were spread out across the whole channel it was impossible for them to slip by. We ended trolling up to 106, and we were by ourselves when the boil started... they were small and scattered. We only boated a few stipers but we had a blast. We ended up leaving the big engine running and we zipped from spot to spot for a quick cast. We were mainly hitting them on the head to catch them. When the sun started setting we headed back to the slip at Halls... we kept seeing boils and we had to stop and fish... eventually the sunset was incredible... we have some photos that look fake. But, alas... it was not a perfect day... we were supposed to take our wives for a sunset cruise... oops... now I am thinking of renaming my new boat "Hot Water"! The next day we head South to 67 to sightsee and thought we were leaving the good fishing behind. To our surprise we got the best of both worlds. We fished a little cove, just barely in the Escalante, morning and night for 2 days. That is where Bubba's chrome Rattletrap excelled. We lost track of the numbers of fish, and at one point the livewell was so full we had to guard the opening when we were putting another fish in. One very alive Smallmouth found a small opening in the crowded livewell and jumped completely out of the boat... nothing but water... we laughed so hard we couldn't fish. We caught about 30 Smallmouth and 20 Stripers in that spot. Later, Bubba had to explain to my wife that she needed a hook on her line to catch a fish. My son-in-law caught a tiny fish that looked just like that silver Rattletrap, except it was about an inch bigger. You have to wonder what was he thinking?

Fished Powell 9/25 thru 9/29 I have too say the fishing was awesome. I threw primarily two baits for four days. A super spook Jr and a 5" pearl white fluke. Put the little baits away until the water temp drops a bit. I fished cuts off the main lake. The cuts that went from deep to shallow seemed to be the best. I mean deep like 60-80 ft to 15 ft in a matter of 100 yards or less. The smallies and largemouth are running and gunning with the stripers. If the cuts don't have any birds [shad]: grebes, herons, and so forth dont waste your time. Don't overlook the slick rock canyon walls. Put the trolling motor on high and work a spook as fast as you can. Don't stop until you get a bit. Smallies are fat and sassy. 15" fish are close to two pounds. Don't forget the trailer hook on your fluke or the smallies will smile at you while they spit the fluke like a bull rider spits copenhagen

Let it be perfectly clear, this is a fishing report not a catching report. If you're interested in body counts keep scrolling. However, if you can put up with all the gab there are some observations leading to some interesting speculation on what's going on (or not going on)...or something like that.

Sunday Sept. 28 left Phoenix for Hall's Crossing...450 miles down the road. Two trailer tire blow-outs later, of what appeared to be tires with little wear, put a crimp in the schedule. It was bad enough trying to find anybody open, that sold replacements, in Flagstaff on a Sunday, it's really difficult to appropriately describe the pickle you're in when the town is that booming bastion of commerce...Kayenta. I thought I was going to have to skin a couple of dogs to wrap around the rim. That's the first and last time I'll use the Walmart brand incense in my pre-trip homage to the fish Gods.

Pulled into Hall's at dusk and told by incoming anglers that Waynes "hot tip," buoys 109 - 114 had worked until Thursday, but no one had caught any since and fishers had resorted to small mouth fishing and eating icecream. I'd never been to Hall's before. Got on the water at dark and wandered around until I found a cove with shallow water, think it was in Hall's Canyon, anchored and threw out a light. Was in 40' of water and before I could get comfortably situated in the boat, the graph was showing solid shad from top to bottom (two inches long) and the graph depth read 3 feet(shad so thick graph thought shad was bottom.). Accumulating that many shad that quickly is unheard of in my experience (shad are scattered after dark and not naturally in schools). Either I had mystically located the best spot for shad ever known, or there were record amounts of shad this year, and in that case the odds of my bait being striper discovered were about the same as being able to sell a bag of ice cubes to an Eskimo living on an iceberg. As feared, didn't find any takers and went to bed early, fishless and biteless.

Monday morning checked out all recommended buoys and found neither boils or shad and noticed only one other boil hunter. Headed up-lake eventually unloading boat In Red Canyon. Met two guys hanging around waiting for boils who said stripers boiled all day long In Red the day before. I waited with them. They gave up and left about 1:00 pm... no boils. About two pm houseboat arrived that I knew. The two fishers were trollers. They trolled rest of afternoon, I graphed and jigged. Everyone was skunked. I never graphed anything that I could say with confidence was for sure, stripers, evidenty the prior day stripers had been a one day in-and -out phenomena.

Set out light in back-end of Red.The light, unlike the night at Hall's, took about an hour to begin bringing in shad. After 3 hours the 64' of water had 58' of shad. Couldn't believe their size so I snagged and measured a few to verify. Though shad so thick you could probably walk on them, and it wouldn't be a miracle, they were only one inch long and there didn't appear to be any larger ones in the bunch. I have never drawn in shad that small in the fall. Caught two catfish, no stripers. Of note was that shad school stretched out from boat as far as I could see, which was only about 12'. Usually when night lite is shut off shad begin disbursing and are completely gone within 90-120 seconds. It took me about 10 minutes to get ready for bed after shutting off light. At that time I glanced at graph again and unbelievably 90% of shad still there... instead of completely disbursing within a minute or two. The only explanation I can conjure up, other than they were all cripples, is that shad school extended out much farther than I could see...maybe 40 or 50 feet and, the shad the graph was reading, could not disburse, because there was no room, until the farther out ones had left. If this was the case, there was a humongus amount of baby shad around the light....it's mind boggling to speculate what the bay held.

Next a.m. headed up lake, Met Larry Wolfington who had camped at the Horn after trolling up from Halls. Larry had been trolling up lots of smallmouth and an occasional striper. I continued on checking out all the usual canyon suspects with no striper evidence until arriving at the mouth of White. There I saw my first "boil," and as has continuously been described, so subtle it was hardly a boil at all. A good name would be a "flash" boil., as it's like being "flashed" at a Rock Concert.... where after much crowd-egging-on a young lass lifts up her top for all to see.. The frustrating part is that usually before your eyes have time to focus in and appreciate what is now exposed, down comes the top. The first three flash-boils I never reached in time, caught one out of the fourth. They flashed once more and quit. I explored White but found nothing.

Coming out of White where first flash boil occured, saw two tail flips, so I stopped and tried a couple of secret techniques that usually worked on relucant stripers. First I faced and stared intently in the opposite direction of last splashes for minute or so, then turned around real fast... that didn't work. Then I laid down and pretended to take a nap for a minute or so before suddenly popping up.....nothing. Then I tried a new one. There was a floating restroom about a hundred feet away... So I went inside to use it and burst out thirty seconds later with rod in hand. still no luck...I'm sure it was that Walmart brand of incense.

Went back to Red, caught one striper in the one and only only flash boil found. Houseboat trollers in Red had caught one walleye during the days trolling. Right before dark, ended up in Blue Notch where Larry had been trolling all afternoon and had caught several stripers and they'd boiled once but disappeared before Larry could reach them. Set out light in Blue Notch about a mile away from previous night spot. Very quickly drew in lots of 2-inch shad which was promising but shortly one-inchers arrived and ended up with about a 50/50 mix. 55' of water soon had 55' of shad ...two catfish, no stripers for the night, however, when light turned off, shad disbursed almost immediately.

Next morning met someone who said latest Wayne's Words tip was Hall's buoy field. Thirty miles later after looking over buoys 109 - 114 I was at Halls buoy field where there were no stripers, shad, or people looking. I cut the trip short and went touring places I'd never been to before on my way home.

Speculation on what's going on: Basically all successful striper catching has been in the main lake channel. This is entirely different than any other year in my memory(which doesn't say a whole lot), by now stripers are usually starting to chase shad in the canyons and bays. The animals at Powell all depend on one type of fish or another for survival. Their activities are confirming the fishing reports. Grebe flocks at mouths of certain bays are moving into the main channel at feeding time instead of into the cove or bay, as is normal. Herons are not in the backs of coves and bays at feeding times, as is typical, and instead, the few there are, are at the mouth of canyons and coves. I saw a coyote at midday walking on sloped rock in the main channel, completely atypical, but it was in the area the fish are in. The animals are confirming the main channel is where their food source is.

Why are stripers there now, which is atypical? Night light indicated probably record shad spawn and the amount of baby shad indicates a later or possibly longer shad spawn than normal. I talked to Wayne and he postulates that this spring a strong inflow stirred up existing nutrients and also deposited new sediment and nutrients and colored the water from Hite to Bullfrog This resulted in a super amount of plankton, (shad food) and a tremendous shad hatch and survival.... but only in the Hite to Bullfrog area (the inflow affected area)...r est of lake seems normal.

Past fishing logs indicate striper fishing picks up when water temperatures drop into the low 60's and best in high 50's. It's known that stripers prefer cooler water. Right now water temp is still in low 70's. Even if water temperature not ideal stripers evidently will move into shallow water for a short time if no food available in main channel. However, this year, with apparently record amounts of shad, they haven't yet eaten up all the shad in the main channel, which are in the water temperature they prefer, and as a result haven't had to leave main channel.

This may be in the process of changing as main channel success reports seem to be waning. The Canyons I explored were loaded with shad. I suspect that soon the remaining main channel shad will be either eaten or chased into the canyons and when hunger overcomes ideal water temperatures preference, the canyons should explode. This process could still take several weeks...but maybe not. then again I could be all wet.

My fishing buddy Neil, his 12 year old son and I launched from Halls on Friday afternoon, the 17th. We stayed through Sunday morning. The ramp at Halls is in great shape. We camped near buoy 103 and fished mostly main channel and canyon structure near the mouths of Forgotten, Knowles and Cedar canyons. We saw no boils. We caught no stripers. It was a tough bite in general but we did manage several SMB each that first afternoon. The SMB were in great shape and running much larger on average than previous trips this year. With little exception, we were finding SMB in the 20’ – 30’ range and were catching most of them on Yammy grubs in green, a few on Yammy tubes in green, and a few on other assorted colors. Although fishing was tough, the quality of the SMB made for a great fishing experience. In all I believe we caught approximately 23 -25 SMB, most of which were big by LP standards like the one Evan is proudly holding in the picture. Consequently, I had very few to keep and take home to Gloria for a fish fry.

We met Rich and I really can’t add any insight to his report. I didn’t find any of the kind of bird activity associated with boils and shad schools and I was constantly looking!

As mentioned by others, the weather was perfect and the water just warm enough for a swim each afternoon.

Just got back from 4 days at Halls Creek Bay. We had to work for them this time. Tried drop shotting in the deep water in the backs of the canyons to no avail. There were plenty of fish on the fish finder but they didn't want anything we had. At night we put out our new light thinking this might be the answer. Nope. Lots of shad but no big fish. Saturday we noticed a few boats trolling about mid bay and decided to give that a try. Trolled Sunday morning for a couple hours using Wally divers and Shad Raps. Picked up 6 nice small mouth and 2 stripers one about 2 pounds and one about 4 pounds. We went back out that evening for about an hour and my son and his friend caught 4 nice stripers from 4 to just under 6 pounds.

Beautiful weekend weather could'nt be better. Bullfrog ramp isn't the greatest but still nothing to worry about.

Headed out for Lake Powell on Thursday 10/16, after the usual struggle getting out of Denver at 5:00 pm. Expecting good weather and challenging fishing, I was just looking forward to pleasant camping and boat riding if nothing else. Everything was going well, then I stopped in Grand Junction for a break and did my usual vehicle/trailer check-over and found I had fried a trailer bearing. I was quite surprised by this, I had just pulled the hubs and checked them last trip. I think I lost the grease cap when I hit a big bump before GJ and it just slung out all the grease. No problem, I thought, I had a new hub and bearings all greased up and ready to go. But when I pulled the hub, I saw the worst-case scenario: the spindle was badly damaged, the races were fused to the spindle, even the nut was fused. It was 10:00 pm so my heart sank a little realizing I was going to have to hold up and wait for a trailer shop to open in the morning. But that worked out well and I was back on the road Friday around 10:00 am. Good people at The Spring Works in GJ if you have trailer problems.

Arrived at Bullfrog around 2:00 pm Friday, and was shocked at how many folks had the same idea. I was unaware of UEA weekend. When I got on the lake, I just motored uplake, and was amazed at the boat traffic. Lots of people just cruising, but also a lot of fishermen looking for boils. The area around mile 99 was very busy, fishing boats cruising by every minute or so, with anglers looking around expectantly. If a boil had happened it would have been mayhem.

So I tied on a couple of Shad Raps and started trolling the structure just north of Halls buoy field, just wanted to relax from the trip. I caught SMB doing this but no stripers. Now and then I would stop to cast but nothing doing. The lake did not quiet down until dark. I saw no boils the entire trip so let's just say that right now. But I did have some fun with topwater lures and SMB before dark. I tied up for the night in the Halls buoy field, put a lantern over the side, and within 15 minutes I had hundreds of shad under it. I jigged with spoons and plastic, snagged a couple of shad and used them for bait too, I did have a fish on but never saw it. Did that until after midnight, then crawled into the sleeping bag and called it a day. A great night for sleeping on the lake.

Saturday morning dawned another beautiful day, I was up before sunrise and took off up lake, both to look for boils and also get away from the traffic. This strategy worked, the lake was fairly peaceful up past Forgotten Canyon.

I ran into Matt Madsen on the way, we talked about the fishing and he had not seen any boils either. I ran into several canyons along the way and still no boils. Then I decided to give up on stripers and went into Cedar Canyon, caught some SMB on topwaters, ran into Dan Spitzer, they had been catching some nice SMB but all that stopped around 9:30.

I started trolling structure in the canyon and could not get bit. Went across the lake into Warm Springs canyon, same results there. Went back to trolling main lake points and reefs with Shad Raps, and that worked for SMB. Now and then I would find a good area where I could pick up more than one fish, but when I stopped to cast I couldn't make that work, regardless of what lure or technique I used.

I could get a dink to take a yammie now and then but that was it. But it was nice and peaceful up there, the boat traffic stayed mostly downlake. So I trolled all day, color did not seem to matter, I caught about the same amount of fish on Fire Tiger, Natural Shad, and Holograph Shad Raps. It was a nice day. Ended well, SMB were hitting topwaters well the last hour of the day.

All in all another fine trip, the weather was picture-perfect, catching was good enough to make it interesting. Hopefully the stripers will come back soon.

We caught these trolling coves and points off of the main channel around bouy 83 the week of October 20th. No big boils, just trolling shallow diving shad raps until we found fish.

We caught a few fish at Bullfrog last week. This picture is one mornings catch and we had similar days. Had a great time catching some catfish when the stripers would not bite. The big striper in the picture is 7 lbs. We caught all stripers on anchovies. We saw lots of shad, but no boils.

Arrived late Tuesday afternoon at Bullfrog. Easily launched my 17 foot boat. Then easily parked in the only lot with another vehicle in it. Thursday morning when we left all lots were empty. Trolled around Halls area, with no bites. Our plan was to night fish. Finder showed possible fish on the edge of the Hall's Bouy field nearest to Stanton Creek. We put out both underwater white light and green light. Within 30 minutes of dark we had shad schooling. We also had a propane lantern above water, that helps to see in the boat. Wind was light and variable. The changing wind direction added difficulty to staying in the same place with the depth deeper than a regular anchor rope. Around 250 feet. So we did move around a bit. But the shad followed. Just after 7 pm the first Striper hit. Rather small around two pounds. Then about 30 minutes apart more bit. And just about each fish caught was bigger than the previous one. Around 10 pm the five pound plus fish came in.

Richard Snow being a heck of a good Night Fisher, boated three of those, up to 5.4 pounds before the fish quit biting right at 11 pm. Richard boated eight Stripers the first night for a total weight of over thirty pounds.

Me, I am not as skilled. I try to make up for my lack of abililty by purchasing a second pole permit and fishing with two poles. Even though the best advice says to fish only one pole at night. Trying to manage the boat, help net fish, not fall asleep and fish an extra pole cost several missed hits and broken lines. I boated two Stripers the first night. Both of those swallowed the anchovy, jig head and all.

Up before dawn Wednesday, we headed up to the cove east of Stanton Creek to try to troll up some success written up from the weekend. No hits using shad raps lead line and mono. Could see a school right at the "neck" and spooned up a 5 pound Striper. On a Hopkins. But nothing else. Trolled around with no success the rest of the morning. Took a GPS reading and picture of the "neck". We had been told about some good looking structure up Forgotten Canyon. So we cruised up there. The fishing was great. Using 1/8 oz jig heads and any plastic body we caught nice SMB, LMB, Sunfish and a trolling rod. Saw what looked like Shad and Stripers on the finder. Spooned up 4 Stripers, a good LMB and a good SMB on a medium WallyLure. Missed some too. In 20 to 30 foot deep water. None on Hopkins or Kastmasters. Also picked up some Striper and SMB on anchovies. At dark we went back to the Hall's Bouy Field.

Having learned my lesson the night before, I set up two poles, double checked the drags and lines, but, decided to concentrate on one at a time. Richard was using a circle hook and small weight. So I set up one with 8 lb leader and just a large swivel for weight. My other pole had a 1/8 oz jig head on Fireline. Both worked. It did not matter which to the fish. Around 7 pm again, a small Striper hit. I caught it. Then the Stripers went wild. Our Shad school was much larger than the previous night. Maybe that makes a difference. We only had about two hours before the Stripers quit. And the Shad were gone too we noticed. But after dragging 20 Stripers most between 4 and 5 pounds through the area, maybe the Shad just plain spooked. We fished our anchovies about 25 feet deep and the Stripers hit in groups. It was a lot of fun until we had to fillet around a hundred pounds of fish back at camp.

Spent last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in the Rincon area. Weather was cold on Thursday, better Friday and Saturday. Main channel water temp 54.

Best spot I could see to launch at Bullfrog was just to the left of the courtesy dock as you are looking out at the lake. A little muddy but no problem. Didn’t even put the truck in 4wd.

Only caught 1 - 3 lb striper on Thanksgiving trolling near the mouth of Slickrock.

Friday morning caught several more stripers trolling in the area near the floating restroom in the Rincon. Three sizes, some 12 inches, some 3-4 lbs, and some 5-7 lbs all in the same areas.

Headed down to the back of Long Canyon mid-morning Friday thanks to Wayne’s report of a boil there a couple of weeks ago. I must have just missed it. There were crows and herons there, marked lots of shad approaching the back of the canyon. They weren’t boiling but they were still there. Caught a dozen or so BIG stripers, all 4-6 lbs on rattle traps and spinner baits. Moved out to where the water was 40-50 feet deep and caught a couple more on a wallylure spoon. They were all over on the depth finder but I couldn’t get them going on the spoons. Went back there 2 more times before I left Saturday afternoon but only caught 1 more small 12" striper.

At least some of the LMB and SMB are still shallow in the backs of the canyons. Didn’t catch them in all canyons, but if there were shad around, there were bass around. It wasn’t fast but I could consistently catch them most of the day on plastics.

They weren’t all shallow though. I spent some time looking around with my new aqua-vu camera. I saw lots of SMB as deep as 55 feet but didn’t try to fish for them.

The quality of the fish is the best I have seen in years. Caught many SMB in the 12 to 15 inch range and a few LMB up to 3 lbs, even 1 nice crappie, all very healthy.

Water temp: 54 - 58 degrees

Jack 'Hotweels' Herrin and I had Thanksgiving dinner with our families, then headed to Bullfrog Thanksgiving night. Friday morning, we took care of errands we needed to do, then launched the boat. I used the 'ramp' next to the courtesy dock, the incline is good and the footing firm. Then, when I was parking the truck, I see an unexpected, but familiar sight, Rich Bailey prepping his bass boat for launch. A small world indeed! We exchanged greetings and he extended an invitation to night fish on the Poco Loco which we gladly accepted.

We fished during the day with little success. Tried the same place that had been successful the previous trip but something had changed, the big schools of shad were gone from the back of the cove. But we were really just biding our time until dark anyway. Even before dark, you could feel an unusually cold night sneaking in the back door.

We boarded the Poco Loco before dark and got set up. Put out the lights, kept looking for the shad schools to show up, but they didn't. Now and then a small bunch would come into the light for a few seconds, but then they were gone. We were having confidence problems about that time, wondering if we would catch any fish. You gotta beleive. Then I felt my line go slack, and set the hook into the first striper, not to be the last. From 7:00 to 9:00 pm Jack and I had them going pretty good, even a couple of doubles. If one of us missed a strike, the other would get it. Sometimes we would all catch the same fish! Sure was great seeing Jack rassle with those bruisers. Rich B's side of the boat was slow that night. Not very nice of the fish, the host is supposed to catch the most! We did chum frequently and think it helped. Most fish were caught around 40-45' deep. We caught around 25-30 stripers, mostly real nice fish, only a few were small. Coldest weather I have ever felt at Powell, down in the 20's. But I would do it again tonight if I could.

Saturday we took care of prep for the night fishing, there was a few things we wanted to do better, like stay warm! Again day fishing was slow for us, but the days are so short now you just don't get much time to try different places and techniques.

Cranked up the lights Saturday night, and the shad disco started right away, loads of shad in the lights. But fishing was slow on our side of the boat. Rich B was doing well though. Everything evens out I guess. We did manage to snag some shad and that did draw more strikes. Also we couldn't catch anything unless we went down to 60' deep. Not as cold that night, still managed to put another 10 fish in the cooler. And a lot of these are are quality fish, 4 - 5 pounders, with very good yield in fight and filets. You don't have to catch a lot for it to be fun or fill the cooler:

A boat pulled up in the darkness, we decided to hail it as Muleymark, and to our surprise, he answered back, 'Yep that's me'. It's a small world on Lake Powell sometimes.

Sunday we fooled around close to Bullfrog before we left, did manage to catch a few LMB. Lake was very calm and quiet. Headed home tired, content, and with plenty of striper filets.

Arrived Thursday at around noon. The ramp is a mess but you can still launch to the left of the courtesy dock. I parked there too. I did graph the area and it looks like straight off the end of the ramp will be bad for along time as there is a big rock formation sticking out there. But slightly to the left they are still launching and retrieving houseboats. In that area the water has a real gradual drop going to about 6' where it drops off quicker. Launching to the left of the courtesy dock is perfect. I didnt even have to get my feet wet. I launched a 20' bassboat. Water temp 54 to 57. water level 3599.22

I was on my houseboat on the bouy. I haven't taken it off the bouy in the last 5 trips. I used anchovies. I started at around 40' caught fish down to 80', but i would say 50' was the best. If you fish the bouy field bring lots of jig heads or hooks and weight as you will get cabled as i call it. ( snagged on the cables below) Watch for wind changes that swing the boat. Pull up your lines when this happens or you WILL get cabled. Temps weren't as bad as weeks before maybe a balmy 28 at night and 45 during the day. No wind was nice too. My deck was like a ice skating rink after i flopped a few fish on it. I'm planning a return trip the first weekend of the new year. Oh yea, Chum alot.

Started fishing around 6pm and got my first fish by 6:15. The shad didn't show up to my light till 8:30. That's when the fish stopped hitting. Shad still come to the light but it took them 2-3 hrs. They are around 4 to 5 inches long. Then the shad left at 9:00 and the fish started again. I fished till 12:00. The later it got the bigger the fish got. I weighed each fish and they went from 3.8 to 5.8 lbs for a total of 62lbs. I got up at 5am and started fishing again and caught fish till 8:30 when it was time to eat. I caught those fish with no light. I did a little shad rap trolling but couldnt catch anything. Time for a nap. Then at 4:30 I started again and caught more fish without the light. Turned the light on at 6, No shad came again till 8pm. Then I fished for 2 more hours without a bite so it was bed time. 35lbs that night. I did have a big, like 3 foot long striper that wouldn't stay in the net (too long). I figure he would have weighed in at around 15 to 20 lbs. I need a bigger net. Maybe Santa will bring me one. Got up early on saturday to more fish without the light. The ferry was going by as I was catching a nice one and he blew the horn. Well I had some cleaning to do (fish and houseboat). The total weight including the morning fish was 108 lbs. Was nice to do a solo trip again. 2 more weeks till I go again. Got my 2004 fishing license too. Merry Christmas to all my new friends at the lake.

Pre Angling Report: Every January for more than 20 years, several fishermen and I have made it down to Hite for a few days (and nights) of winter fishing. We will be going this year to Bullfrog. Thought I would share a few things that may benefit anyone else thinking of doing some winter fishing there also.

The first few years we slept in tents and fished out of little aluminum boats. We managed to get cold and wet enough to determine that it is worth it to rent a housekeeping unit there. Kitchen, showers, furnace, and electricity. But more than just the comfort of home they provide a refuge to relax and recuperate when the day or night gets rough or someone doesn't feel well. So one thing we have found is have some place good to get out of the weather when it turns bad. Saves having to leave early. Because sometimes it takes a few days to find the fish that are willing to be caught.

We will be bringing a variety of fishing gear for trolling, jigging, spooning, and anchovy fishing. Seems like every year it is a different method that catches most of the fish. We will also have a lantern, headlights and underwater lights. Sometimes the fish are feeding best at night. But start out easy at night in the winter. Days are short and it is easy to get off the water at dark, go and eat and get refreshed, dress warm, and head back to the lake for some evening fishing. Without a little break sometimes it is hard to keep the concentration level that night fishing takes because usually the bite is particularly soft at night.

We will have radios to be able to communicate with each other. Each boat gives the others an idea where we will be going and what the day's plan is. That way if trouble develops, no one is alone too long. The worst we have ever had happen is a broken prop. Except maybe the time I was a little bored one nice afternoon with no bites and decided to jump out of the boat onto the shore where the falling water level had exposed a snag that had numerous lures attached to it. The exposed mud looked firm but when I hit found that it was not. I was up to my armpits. The soggy mud was ice cold. I could hardly move and after he quit laughing we determined that the other guy in the boat really could not immediately do anything for me. I was able to kind of crawl out but lost a boot. Could hardly continue to fish without two boots so I stuck my arm down as far as it would go with my head above ground but face resting in the mud, and pulled up the boot. But now instead of just being cold I am almost totally covered with stinky mud. Some of the people back at the ramp said they would not have let me back in their boat, but I was lucky and did not have to walk back. Someone with a motor home had semi warm water to wash me off and the restrooms are heated for changing clothes. Another thing the radios allow is instant reports if someone finds fish that are biting

Some sort of fish finder helps a lot too. We catch a lot more fish now that this technology is available. A boat cover for at night is needed. This will keep down the condensation, keep out the occasional snowstorm, and keep the ever present ravens out. Something to keep the fish in. Often we overfill the livewell. Electric fillet knives speed up the cleaning process. Especially after a long day or night of catching.

We don't always catch fish. I have gone from only watching others the first year to winning the Striper Derby (back then) another. It took a little while to adapt to Bass fishing from Trout fishing. But the solitude, fun and unique fishing make it well worth the trip. Marty Peterson

Angling Report 1/11, 1/12, 1/13/04

Arrived Lake Powell late afternoon on the 11th. Launched 4 boats with no problems, except, with one boat. That one boat is a 30 foot with inboard/outboard engine and apparently had enough moisture left in the impeller to freeze up on the drive down which was as cold as 9 degrees. This caused the drive belt and the impeller needing to be replaced. They had the parts there at the repair shop. The best launch is still on the left side of the dock when facing the lake. Only room for one vehicle at a time. As we left, the dock was being extended out. And area improved.

Tried some night fishing off one of the docks the first night. Set up underwater lights and brought in no shad. Caught an accidental 20 pound Carp on an anchovy. JT caught two small LMB and one nice Striper, fishing out away from the lights. No other fish caught that I know of that night. Earlier Brad caught 2 Stripers in Moki and two in Forgotten. So that was where we planned to go in the morning.

Heard that Wayne Gustaveson was coming in to do a little fishing with Doug Miller, the host of our local Outdoors Show. So we started out a little later than usual because everyone wanted say hello. Great weather for January, water smooth as glass. Moki Canyon up near the end, branches three ways. I went right. No bites. Those in the boats that went up the middle fork caught fish. Mostly right off. Using anchovies on fluorocarbon leader with jig heads. Later about all of us tried the left fork with little success. Two boats also tried Forgotten Canyon with no success. It was too bad that Wayne had to leave before having a chance to night fish Halls Buoy Field first though.

Around sunset we tied up near the channel side of the Field. First Striper was around 6pm and we caught at least one every twenty minutes until the moon came up and we left. Every Striper caught this trip was of good healthy size. The fight was nearly as good as out of boils.

This second night, only one boat tried the night fishing. We set up with both an underwater white light and small green light. Also we used a lantern in the boat. Our poles were rigged with 1/8 ounce jig heads and about a third of an anchovy, or with two circle hooks, one on a swivel at the end of the main line, the other on around eighteen inches of light leader. Half the time the fish just smashed the bait and the pole would instantly be bent over. The other half of the time, the bite was so faint that it was nearly undetected.

Tuesday morning we all headed back up Moki. A few more fish were caught. Nothing exceptional. Later, in my boat, we searched for the schools of fish that we had found at night. We searched around Halls and Stanton. None found. Several of us went up to the back of Bullfrog Bay in the afternoon. Lots of Carp around. And it appeared that Stripers were being marked at times. But no bites. We did not try the slow troll method discussed earlier. But the fish we marked did remind me a little of those we saw in May when we saw fish being caught that way. We just did not seem to have the frame of mind Tuesday. Now sitting here at the computer I wonder why we did not at least give it a try.

Tuesday at sunset I wanted to experiment and try night fishing in the Bullfrog Buoy Field. We set up early but panic set in when we had no bites by dark so we cruised over to Halls. My white light had malfunctioned late the night before so we only had our small green light. None of the shad from the night before came in. The Stripers seemed to be hitting differently. Much more lightly. After an hour or so we got a radio call from Ray. He was going to join us. He had been smart enough to go in and have dinner which Richard and I missed for the second night in a row. Good dinners. And a chance to talk with the other 12 anglers there with us. As he pulled in we boated only our third Striper of the night. Ray set up his boat about 50 or 75 yards away and set out his big green underwater light. He brought in shad that darted quickly up and down the light. Soon after Stripers started biting over there too. They explained to me that they dropped in a jig head with anchovy and paid close attention to the slightest tap and then set the hook. They boated eight or ten. But missed many other hits. In our boat we also were missing hits. But also catching a few. Both on jig heads and circle hooks. We lost several Stripers that dragged our lines past the prop, tangled with a cable or fought harder than we could handle. Ended up with only eight in the boat this night, but had a great time with all.

As I write this around ten pm on Wednesday night, I believe that Ray and Brad have their boats over in the Halls Buoy Field catching Stripers right now. At least that was their plan this morning. Will update if better info from them. Marty Peterson

Angling Addendum 1/14/04

Scott in forground, Doug Miller's boat, with Doug Leaning over working while Jason and Wayne talk "fishin" I'm sure.

Ray and Clair fishing out of Ray’s boat, Brad and Will in Brad’s boat gave me this summary of the fishing on January 14th. Brad cruised down to Iceberg area in the morning. They boated one fish. Ray didn’t know that I had already looked around Halls trying to locate a school related to the night fishing. He did not find any either.

The night fishing was great. Warning: night fishing Powell in the winter is not a casual activity. We found that our hand held GPS did not work right when the outboard was on. Two trips now. Also, the lake is really darker than some may expect. Planning to be out after dark? Bring more than one spotlight. If one goes out you are going to need the other or risk travel at too slow of speeds in the cold. But the fishing is worth the work.

They used ¼ oz white jigs and other color 1/8 oz and tried glow in the dark. All worked about the same. Technique was to cast out the anchovy tipped jig and let fall towards boat. Depth not critical. Likely between 30 and 70 feet. This worked to put 25 Stripers in the boats. Plus those that they missed. Sometimes it is a good idea to retie after a couple of fights. These guys found out why.

The fish seemed to be coming up from the deeps. The graphs showed fish as deep as 125 feet. Some had the air bladder come up after being boated. Half the fish nailed the bait hard and again about half hit so lightly the tip of the rod did not even move. Only the “feel”. All dived deep stripping line out the drag after being hooked.

They fished from dark till the fishing slowed around 11:30 pm. Then back to the docks for some “pleasant” fillet work. Something I need to add here and should have put in my last report is that the Stripers are not always going to bite just because I want them to or because the method I am fishing worked before. Need to adapt. Also as the temperature goes down there is condensation on the boats and docks which soon freezes. And things break easier when cold. Marty Peterson.

Bullfrog striper fishing map

This is a rough map for Bullfrog showing where we fish for stripers. Here are the associated gps coordinates as well.

GPS WP #111 37 32 328 N 110 45.806 W

WP #112 37 32.131 N 110 45.996 W

WP #114 31 31.071 N 110 44.706 W

WP #115 31 31.293 N 110 44.706 W

WP #116 31 31.939 N 110 45.494 W

My son and I spent the weekend of March 12-14 in the Bullfrog area.

The launching is easy, much better than last fall. There is good asphalt and the slope is good. All sizes of boats launching with no problems.

They are pouring new concrete about 8 lanes wide down to the waters edge so when the lake comes up a couple feet it will be even better.

Water temps from 49 to 60 degrees. Great weather with highs in the low 70's and very little wind. Very few people. Fishing was as good as I have ever seen it in March.

My son hates to troll but I told him we had to try it for a while so I could try out my new electric downrigger. We caught 7 nice stripers in an hour and a half all between 5 and 7 pounds in Bullfrog Bay on the west side, north of the bouy fields in 40-60 feet of water trolling shad imitating crankbaits at 1.8 to 2.2 mph by GPS. We put out three lines, 2 on planer boards 50 feet off each side and one on the downrigger.

Later in the year when the water is warmer the planer boards usually out-fish the downrigger 4 to 1 because the fish suspend and the boat pushes them out to the side but this time 5 of the 7 fish came on the downrigger with the ball at 30 feet and a lure back 50 feet that dives to 10-12 feet. I'm sure we could have caught those stripers all weekend but the bass fishing was so good that we stayed with it.

Like Wayne's been saying the big LMB and SMB are up shallow in the warmer water, especially in the afternoons. Water temp is critical this time of year. Spend some time looking around for the warmest water and fish there. The big open bays that get sun all day are much warmer than the deep canyons for now, until we get a big wind that mixes up the water again. We found 49 degree water in Moki canyon and 60 degree water in Halls bay within 30 min. time. If the wind is blowing, fish the windy side of the bay. A light wind blows the warmer surface water in to the shallow coves and they really warm up. Clear blue water was not the best. Green colored water with deeper water nearby was better than brown shallow water for the bigger fish, especially in the morning. We did catch fish in the very shallow dirty water later in the day but most were smaller 12 inch largemouth.

We didn’t catch a smallmouth smaller than 15 inches. Most were 15 to 18 inches and 2 to 3 lbs. Largemouth were from 12 inches to 20 inches, with most around 14-16 inches.

White and/or chartreuse spinnerbaits were our best lure. We also caught some on jerkbaits fished with a slow stop and go retrieve. Like Wayne said in his report the fish were grouped up. We would go along with the electric motor and not catch anything for a while and then catch several in an area. We had a lot of fish following hooked fish so we started throwing a wacky rigged senko in near a hooked fish and got a bunch of doubles that way.

I can’t wait for fishing to get really good in April and May. This is going to be a great year.

Just now, 1:30 pm Tuesday the 16th, talked by cell phone to two gentlemen fishing Bullfrog bay in a little aluminum boat. In the few minutes we talked they caught one Striper and lost another. The excuse was "that it is hard to talk on the phone and reel in a Striper at the same time." I can not say that I have ever tried that.

They launched yesterday evening intending to night fish. They caught two Stripers using anchovies about 30 minutes after dark and that was it. This morning they tried casting the shore between Halls and Moki. Looking for Smallies. Not a bite.

Around noon they started trolling upper Bullfrog with the 3 ounce weight and anchovy on two hooks. Even found a good school and chummed it. No hits. Then threw out a second line with quarter ounce jighead and piece of anchovy. Bingo. Had caught five so far. They were guessing about twenty feet deep. All around three pounds. They plan to come home Wed. night. Hopefully more to follow.

After I talked to them on Tuesday, the fishermen in Bullfrog Bay missed another dozen hits or so each. The Striper school moved around. So they tried downrigging with no further success. That night they set up for night fishing 80 feet deep. Caught a five pound and six pound Striper on Anchovy. Missed a few more hits. Actually saw a few shad and could see Stripers cruising around the edges of the light. Tried to entice the shallow fish with no luck.

Wed. morning cast the shores between Bullfrog bouy field and upper bay, on the Bullfrog side with not a single hit by 9 am. Then left for home. Total of nine Stripers for the trip. 4 at night. 5 during the noon hour Tuesday.

I had to try out the bass fishing on Powell in preparation for tournaments the next 2 weekends.

My partner and I fished all day Fri & Sat and Sun til 2:00 p.m., Mar. 19-21. It was the best 3 days in a row I've seen in many years. I estimate the 2 of us caught about 100 fish in 2 ½ days. Nothing under 14 inches! We didn't catch anything over 4 pounds but we caught lots of green (largemouth) and brown fish (smallmouth) from 1 ½ to 3 plus pounds. Fri and Sat the fish were on fire and pounced on crank baits and spinner baits (½ to 3/4 ounce sizes, no trailer hook needed!) or ½ ounce jigs. In fact, we only caught 5 bass on small plastics both days. We fished some areas with plastics and not catch anything and then go right back through the area with reaction baits and catch 5 or more bass. However, we fished about 50 cuts, canyons, points to only catch bass in about 10 of them. But once you caught one, you could catch many more in the vicinity.

Fri we concentrated on shallow sloping rocky/clay/ledgy banks for smallmouth. Smallmouth wanted to chase lures. We got some really nice 3 pounders burning in lipless crank baits. We caught a few 2-2 ½ pound largemouth on the smallmouth structure too. Later in the day we caught 5 largemouth flipping ½ ounce jigs, using 20 pound line, in trees in stained but not muddy water.

Using what we learned from Fri afternoon, Sat we went looking for green fish and of the 40 or more fish we caught, only 5 or so were smallmouth. Three largemouth were over 3 pounds. All came on ½ ounce jigs or spinner baits/crank baits. We caught one pair of smallmouth that might have been on beds. Both fish came from the exact same 2' gravel spot on back to back casts. They looked like they were fanning nests as they were a little beat up. But the water was pretty stained near the back of the canyon with water running in, so we couldn't see a bed.

Sun. we only caught one spinner bait fish and the rest came on tubes. Only two were largemouth. It was just the opposite of Fri & Sat. The bait had to be practically motionless for them to pick it up.

We fished as far north as 7-mile and as far south as Cottonwood and almost all of the canyons in the Escalante. Water temperature was 57 (main channel) to 68 degrees, depending upon where you went. The backs of Halls and Bullfrog warmed up to the upper 60s by mid day. Sunday, the backs of both bays started at 62 degrees in the morning, but we didn't catch anything consistent till about 10:00 in the morning. Once the surface temperature hit about 65, the fish turned on. The same area where we caught tons of smallmouth on Fri worked again on Sun. Plus, other people in our party and others in general pounded that area for two days, but we still caught 10 more bass off it on Sun.

We accidently caught 2 stripers about 5-6 pounds each from trees in stained water 3 to 4 feet deep on spinner baits. (good thing for 20 pound line). Lots of shad in the back of Halls and Bullfrog as shallow as 3 to 6 feet of water. We saw one boil in Halls first thing Fri morning. We went to catch some stripers but the boil was made from small smallmouth busting shad.

The Solomon's

3/24 through 3/28

Bullfrog

It was a good first trip. Got the boat wet and some good fishing and sightseeing in. Started out Wednesday afternoon by heading down to the Rincon and Hole in the rock area to check out a new part of the lake. It's beautiful as expected. No fishing.

Thursday got up and cruised around the Rincon looking for some Stripers, none found. Started pitching some baits for Smallmouth and did pretty well. My wife caught a 2-3 pounder right out from under the pumpout in the Rincon. She even was using the daughters Scooby Doo pole. I would like to echo the praise for the shape of the smallies. They are fat and healthy. Worked out way back up to Iceberg canyon and graphed all the way to the back looking for Stripers, none. Headed back up to Halls Marina for Ice and Ice cream. Marina is getting SMALL. It will be very crowded over there this summer. I would estimate they only have maybe ten slips for service to the store etc. It's basically one way in or out if a boat of any size is in the path. Pumpout wasn't working by the Halls ramp yet. Halls ramp looks good with room enough for two to launch side by side.

April 8-11, 2004

Fished the Escalante River and had a excellent time. Caught dozen of SMB on rock piles using finesse worms and SR5 shad rap. Worm: Robo - best color on worms was ox blood. Crank: Shad Rap SR5 silver back. Best bite was during cloudy/stormy situations. Also the wind helped with an active bite. SMB seem to be picking up the worm and moving it and other times they would slam it. Back of coves worked as well as secondary points... but rock piles were key. Water temp was 57-61

Saturday we launched at about 10:00am and the launch was a little tricky but not too bad. There was a bit of a breeze but it didn't bother us much. Gary seemed to know just exactly where to go and so we headed straight past the bouy field at Bullfrog and down at what I 've always called Haystack we put our Wally Divers (black and silver) on the lines and trolled down the right side as long as we had 16 feet of water. Then took the boat " The Uriel" (soon to be renamed Lakedancer) in to a wide easy turn and got a bite. This lil fishy must have been on the way to market 'cause he needed to put on a few pounds. We headed back up to Haystack and just before the turn caught another lil striper. This lil fishy must have had none cause he was real little. We just kept the same routine up one side down the other. It didn't take long for KILLER to remember what he went to the lake for.( It had been some 8 years since he'd caught striper.) I'm not sure how many Dianne caught and how many Gary caught but by the time the sunset we had 10 good sized striper and one lil guy and one pretty decent walleye. It was windy I guess as I remember but the fishing we so good I only remember it being a problem while trying to reel in one of the biggest striper and the boat was blowing away from it and just as I was ready to swallow my pride and ask for Gary's help I got it in.

We headed toward Stanton Creek and around the corner on that side of the lake to find a decent place to beach it for the night. Lakedancer (Dianne) held the light while Gary did an impressive job of filleting the fish.

Gary had brought some batter mix which we added beer to in the bag and then add the fish chunks. We fried some pre-baked potatoes, deep fried the striper and some walleye, had some baby carrots and stuffed celery and devoured the dinner. We put up the camper covers again and had a good night.

Sunday was an absolutely beautiful day and we headed back the "spot" with KILLER and Garys two rods which currently are not named, and our Wally Divers. We repeated the routine of the previous day and this day we noticed that we were catching the striper in the middle of the turns so we then began to troll up and down the middle. This day we caught 5 more striper and they were all bigger that the previous days fish. If Dianne wasn't expecting company from out of town we would have stayed the week and lived on striper. When we went back to Bullfrog to pull the boat out, the arrangement at the ramp was much better. We had no problem backing the trailer in and loading the Uriel after the improvements.

Arrived at Bull Frog Sunday AM 4-25, thru Tues 4 27. Ramp: 8 new lanes go to the waters edge, all concrete blocked off. To launch you must jog to the left, one lane in the dirt. 5 lanes on an old asphault base, the 3 on the right (as you face ramp) are the deepest. the other 2 are very shallow. Most vehicles turn into U boats. You must go up a short hill before backing, I launched a 20' Lund with a 30 motorhome (by myself) with little trouble. note I was the only one on the ramp most of the time. On a busy weekend with any wind, this could get real ugly!!

Fishing report: Went to the back of Lake Canyon, Hansen Creek, Moki, Bullfrog and Halls. All void of fish except Halls, I caught one 5lb striper and two small ones in the middle of the bay trolling silver walleye divers. Lots of fish on the graph, wouldn't bite! Smallies everywhere. I caught 7 smallies in 8 casts from the dock at Bullfrog!! (brown senko with a green jig hooked thru the nose) Water temp on Tues 65 to 70 (PM) in main channel!!

I finally found the stripers along the Moki Wall Tues AM. You go up lake across the mouth of the canyon, start trolling silver walleye divers at 3mph about 100 ft back (no weight). The wall turns left goes about 1/4 mile, then the wall ends and turns into rock humps. Some BONEHEAD left a 3' tall trash can on the rock. I found a large school of stripers 100 yards either side of that trash can!! I could actually see them in the shallow water!! One guy from Utah caught 3 nice walleye near bullfrog marine. I had 3 days with out one breath of wind!! The fishing got better when the water warmed at the end of each day. I left Tues PM because of the approaching cold front.

Saturday (the day of the Rally) did not fish much problems with second boat - Sunday fished Bullfrog bay hard with a JP rig caught 4 stripers 1 walleye and for the first time started picking up CATFISH (in fact could not keep them off) on a JP rig - after 12 cats I tired of that and came off the bottom searched for Spawning striper schools.

- Monday ran into Gary F. and Lake Dancer in BullFrog bay - Later I found a large school of stripers on the southeast side of Bullfrog Bay at about 4:00PM from 4- 6PM caught 9 large stripers all 4-5 lb class all on the JP rig fished slow I had many bites and missed hits - a school of yearlings had moved in ran out of bait at 6:00pm - this was a fun afternoon I fished alone running 2 poles - at times I would have two fish on at once in a strong wind missed and lost a lot of fish it was a blast.

- Wednesday fished late in the afternoon with "Dan" one of staff at the rental slips - we fished from about 3:30pm until 5PM (Dan had a party to go to) hooked up 4 stripers the first pass and landed one wind came up and blew us off the trolling speed -

- Thursday fished from 10:00am until 4:00pm caught 18 nice stripers fishing in about 40 feet of water at depth of 25-30 feet once again John Pauly rigs slow trolled anchovy.

- Friday fished with my fishing partner LJ - we started at about 9:30pm ran into Kurt Jensen from Logan, he came by and got a quick JP rig course and he quickly caught 2 4lb stripers - on this day we all where dealing with a lot of yearlings - I think Curt caugth a lot of smaller stripers and 4 large ones. RJ and Ed showed up I am not sure how they did that day. We finished again with 18 stripers - great fun - mostly big fish and one Walleye all in Bullfrog Bay.

Saturday Kurt left to meet Top Cat to go north(found out later TC did not make it) - we did a repeat on the stripers catching 22 this time only we caugth and keep a lot of the smaller Stripers using the the three hook JP rig - On the previous days we had been using up a supply of older tied JP rigs with just two hooks swithced to the three hooks and began to pick up the missed hits - 10 of the stripers this day where of good size the largest was 5.12 lbs, 12 of them where small we kept all of them even though they where small they still had a nice little fillet because the fish where fat - we caught one Walleye - I think that RJ nd Ed picked up some stripers on this day not sure of the count for them.

- Sunday we fished the same area about the same time frame we caught 22 stripers mostly late in the day, several times we had doubles and at one point we had all three poles hooked up - I pressed a large fish and broke it off and we lost the center pole fish so we only landed one nice 5 pounder of the three but what BLAST.

Monday we fished only a few hours in the morning caught three and the wind came up - we could not fish slow enough to be effective so we went to the dock for the afternoon - Kurt joined us and we had a John Pauly tying seminar - LJ and I watched Kurt master the rig and he watched us sip on margretta's - Kurt is a great guy and said he would show those of you in the south how to tie/rig the JP if you are interested - Kurt Jensen has the JohnPauly down and he said he would be happy to show any that have an interest.

Made it down to Bullfrog on Monday afternoon to meet up with guys already there. They had some mixed success already. They had night fished Sunday near Halls buoy field in 240 foot deep water and caught only 5 or 6 Stripers in two hours. Monday morning fishing where the wind was causing waves to wash up on gravel bars, they caught a fair assortment of fish in the Bullfrog area. The wind slowed and so did the fishing they said.

There was quite a crowd of fishing boats in the Bullfrog area and so while our group rested, I thought I would try something else and walked the shore and tried casting a 1/16th oz. jig with bright body tipped with nightcrawler. Cast to a tumbleweed and had a strike that I missed. Cast again and landed a 3 lb LMB. Moved down shore a little and caught 4 SMB with four casts. 2 lb., 1 lb. And 2 small ones. Moved again and caught 4 more fish in 4 casts. 3 SMB and a 5 lb Carp. Lost my last bit of crawler and caught no more. So walked back over to the boats.

Evening was coming on and soon we went up Bullfrog Bay looking for Striper schools. The day before, one boat had tried 2 hook JP rigs and not hooked but one catfish. Missed several hits and lost the anchovy each time. I had some 3 hook to try but we never found a school. We were also trying to find a new spot to night fish. We decided to night fish a spot 32 feet deep in cloudy water. The other boat decided to try a spot in 90 feet of water. And we agreed to contact each other via radio of any success.

We set up and caught a 2.5 lb Striper around dark. Soon after we were contacted on the radio. 5 Stripers already they reported. We pulled up anchor and off we went. The other spot may be easy to locate still. There is a tire breakwater just out from the rental slips at Bullfrog. Kind of towards the Westerly opening to the covered slips. At this water level it is in about 90 foot deep water. And the old dock from Hite is attached to it. There are 3 or so old light poles still on it. The condition of the dock is not up to the high standard of all other docks and so is most likely not meant for use. My guess is that it is just being stored there out of the way. There are splinters and loose nails and parts around. So my recommendation is to not use the dock for anything but reference.

The fish are definitely using it for reference. The four of us landed 70 Stripers by midnight when we tired enough to stop. Most of the fish were very hard to catch. The little 12 or so inch long ones. But lots of fun. Everyone but me was using fluorocarbon line, ¼ oz. jig heads and small ½ inch or so pieces of anchovy. I was using 6 lb test Stren. I would be sorry the next night.

Tuesday morning we fished Bullfrog around the marina. Caught a few fish. Not much wave action. Tipped jigs and Rattletraps worked best it seemed. Then over to Halls Creek. Mainly with crawler tipped jigs we landed several Crappie, SMB, Walleye. No Striper. Tried to nap a few hours during the afternoon. Then had a great dinner and went out to the spot. Anchored up and got everything ready. Used no chum or anything yet. Threw in an anchovy tipped jig and bam! This was before dark. We all baited up and dropped our jigs in. Everyone hooked up. The fun was on. With the dark we put out lights. The night before we caught no fish away from the lights. Did not want to lose the bite we had though, this night. Every single cast we had hits. The night before most about 30 feet deep or so. This night anywhere from 10 to 40 feet. Many hits were as the jig was falling. The smaller Stripers seem to just do a quick hit and could often steal the anchovy piece before we could set the hook. Upon inspection later, several had many pieces of anchovy and we had done no chumming. The smallest pieces of bait worked best. Heads were just about too big.

I used smaller jigs initially. Did not work any better than ¼ oz. In fact I seemed to have a little more trouble than everyone else at hooking each bite. So I switched. To the bigger sized hook. Soon after I hooked something large that eventually broke my 6 lb test line as it could not come out of the reel fast enough. Disappointed because most of the Stripers the second night were the smaller 12 to 14 inch size. All have great fillets.

A note about fillets. After two hours or so we broke out an electric knife and I got to work. Soon after the others started to complain that they were no longer getting a strike on every cast. Sometimes the jig had to set a few minutes. Did dropping the filleted out fish into the water have a negative impact on the fishing? Or was the school being thinned? Something else that may have made a difference, our anchovies were thawing out and would not hold as well on the hook. Perhaps some dry ice on top of the bags inside of a cooler that can safely ventilate would help. We had to share the filleting work later as 140 Stripers is more than one person can comfortable handle in a night. We did try nightcrawlers on a jig later as the anchovies thawed. It worked. Both the Walleyes and several Catfish were hooked this way. But overall anchovies worked best. And I think only smaller Stripers took the crawlers. The Catfish fillets are great on these fish. Better than most we have landed in the past.

As we pulled out our boats in the morning we were able to use the newly opened concrete ramp at Bullfrog. Boats over 30 feet are still directed to the sand though.

Fishing Dates 5/19 - 5/23

Bullfrog

Wed - We fished smallies starting at about noon slightly down lake of Halls crossing. Within 10 minutes I had 3 smallies. Two of us boated about 25-30 smallies. All were on 1/4 oz jigs with finesse worms (green pumpkin). Just before sunset we went to the moki wall and canyon to look for stripers. No luck.

Thurs - Windy!!! Started out by Halls crossing and fished the main channel down to about marker 87. Again, we caught smallies, but boated only about 15 between the 2 of us. About 1/2 the fish came on the jigs mentioned above. The rest came on a lucky craft Pointer 78DD jerkbait in ghost shad. No other crankbait or jerkbait would work. That night, we trolled for stripers using shad raps and cordel deep divers in front(lake side) of the breakwater in Bullfrog. Fish were caught between the covered slips and the bouy field in 70-90 feet of water. All stripers were about 12 inches long. The fish were neither plentyful nor big, so we decided to get some sleep after about an hour.

Friday - Super windy!! It was so bad that it was nearly impossible to fish anything close to the main channel. We tried several creeks up lake from bull frog (moki, forgotten canyon, and some on the left side going up). The fish were few and far between so we toughed it out and went out to the main channel. Again, we caught several smallies on finesse worms and the jerkbait. Friday night we trolled for stripers on a wind blown point by Halls. We landed a couple and had several bites. Then they just shut off. The fish were bigger at around 2-3 pounds.

Saturday - Super windy!! We tried out usual spots on the main lake channel with no luck and fished bullfrog bay. We caught a couple of smallies in the rocks (cliffs) on the west side of bullfrog. They hit on jigs. But did not seem to be holding to any structure...pure slick walls as far as we could see. We then went out to the main channel and fished cracks in the cliff walls while the wind blew us up the lake. We picked up several smallies and one walleye. I also got a catfish on a jerkbait. Saturday night we trolled for stripers by Halls. After catching one and getting bit a couple of times, they shut off. We trolled smith rattling rogues and cordel deep divers. Color didn't matter.

I fished the Bullfrog area all day Monday with little success in the daylight hours. Picked up two stripers around Moki early in the day. Had a huge carp roll on my Sassy Shad in Crystal Springs Canyon and the battle was on. Wore me out! It was 8 or 9 pounds on 8lb test line. Got 2 catfish on shrimp curly tail tipped with a worm. Lost one that was much, much bigger. I think they were spawning. Nothing in the wind in the later afternoon until I picked up one walleye near the haystack rocks. At 7pm I stopped at the breakwater, near the old Hite docks, and starting dunking anchovies for stripers (per the BB report). In the first hour I pulled in 5 small stripers, and it shut off. Dennis Jarvis showed up, then Lakedancer and Gary Foell. Dennis took off before dark, but Lakedancer was there for the duration. Wind picked up really hard from behind the marina about 9:30 for a half hour.

I moved to the outside of the tires and about 10pm the fish started in earnest. I caught 33 stripers of all sizes, and one walleye before I ran out of anchovies at 3:30am. Gary was still going strong then, so I’m not sure how he did. I left the Lake at 10am for home and work problems. Fish count for 21 hours: 35 stripers (6 over 2 pounds), two nice walleye, two 2-lb catfish, one very tired and happy fisherman.

Arrived at Bullfrog Mon 5-24-04. Fished Moki, forgotten, bullfrog bay and halls. No stripers just a few small bass. everyone had same sad story. I met up with Larry Millhouse, Gary Foell and Diane Newsome at the Hite docks and tires, moored just off the bullfrog ramp. Night fishing is not my thing so I left. Big mistake, they just killed the stripers that night!! I met them at the docks at 6:00PM Tues night. Fish turned on about 7:30PM or just as the sun went down and went strong untill 12:30AM when we left. We caught 53 stripers!! 12 to 14" no big ones! We used 3/8 colored jig heads with a white or yellow twister tails and a real small piece of anchovie. Water 94' deep there, fish caught 15 to 25'deep. Fishing was AWESOME!! The ride back to camp at Stanton was a ride I don't care to repeat anytime soon! it never slowed down!

Came back Wed night with 3 gentlemen from Battlement Mesa (met them on the lake that day) and a couple from Oregon (they had a guide at Page for $275 and caught 3 fish) Fish turned on at sun down and went strong till 8:30PM, then slowed, then picked up steady untill 2:30AM when we left with 39 stripers. We had a blast, Gary said it was just like the shad rally. We loaded the boat onto the trailer at bullfrog at 3:30AM in the dark!! Not fun.

Please note: the NPS knew we were using the docks for fishing. If you fish there, clean up your mess!! Leave it cleaner than you find it. Otherwise they won't let us fish there. They may destroy the docks in August, unless the mighty Wayne with all his influence and pull can save the docks for fishing!!

Gary Foell and I (Lakedancer aka Dianne) arrived at the Lake on Monday p.m. We had a good launch on the dirt to the right of the main ramp. We headed immediately to our favorite spot beyond the houseboats in Bullfrog Bay. I caught a good-sized walleye and Gary caught a big striper. The action didn’t last long and evening was coming on so we headed for the Hite docks tied to the lake side of the tires at Bullfrog Marina.

There we met up with Larry Millhouse and we fished well into the night. I of course didn’t stay up as late as the guys did. But the fishing was good there. A bunch of striper were caught that night, the bigger ones coming up the later it got. It was windy off and on as was the day, but the fish seemed to bite better in the wind. (Call me crazy). The days catch totaled 32.

I never had so much fun…..until Tuesday night. We didn’t have much luck at the mouth of Moki nor at the proverbial "trash can" during the day. We did however pull in a boat with a frightened employee on it in the middle of Bullfrog Bay. She had been at Lake Powell for two weeks, just learned how to drive a boat and was sent out on a mission in a rental boat that ran out of fuel. She had no whistle, no flag, no marine radio, no experience on a windy lake and NO FUEL. So we towed the lovely young lady (Gary’s idea) into the fuel dock and she was grateful. She was the biggest catch of the trip (somewhat larger that the PWC I caught trolling the next day.

Tuesday night was again profitable on the Hite docks. We caught a total that night of 53. A light in the water was the hot trick. This night Dennis Jarvis and his friend Dwayne joined us and we had beer battered fish for dinner. We all caught fish and it was a lot of fun.

Wednesday morning we again went to back of Bullfrog Bay, no wind today. This day I caught a respectable striper and Gary caught a huge walleye which is his favorite and a smaller one. I did hook a really big PWC. The kid didn’t have a clue what he’d done until we started yelling at him but we didn’t cuss the paint off of his machine.

Wednesday night it was back to the Hite docks this time with several folks we’d picked up during the day. All in all including Dennis, Dwayne, Gary and I and the others, there were 10 of us. Another fish fry was in order. Dennis and Dwayne left at 2:30. The others straggled off at different times, all with coolers full of fish and a smile on their faces. Gary fished until 4:30am. It seems like for the second night in a row as Dennis pulled away from the docks, the bigger (mo better) striper appeared and Gary just couldn’t quit. Gary filleted 145 fish by hand the old fashioned way. What a guy!!!!

The fish caught trolling were on green Wally Divers and the fish at the dock were caught on Jig heads with curly tails and a small piece if anchovy. We returned home on Thursday. The weather day and night had been great.

Report for May 26 - 30

Water temp 66-72

Arrived at Bullfrog Tuesday night around 11:00 pm. There didn't seem to be as many cows on the road between I-70 and Bullfrog this time, but go slow and take your time any ways. Launched at Bullfrog main ramp at 5:30 am Wednesday. Ramp is fine. First went to check out 99A for the Stripers reported earlier. They must have moved. I graphed a few, but nothing to target. Spent the rest of the time cruising around looking for Stripers and casting to Smallies.

Did find some Stripers in Bullfrog bay in the usual spot past the buoy field. Marked the spot on the GPS with plans to return Sunday. No luck finding them Sunday. On Sunday I talked to Hotwheels and chatted with Mike Bevelhimer (Nice boat). They both reported similar results as I found. Stripers were hard to find and very hard to catch. They both headed up lake to see how it was up there. As I reported to them after being up the day before. Good Hope is stained water, but not muddy. There were a lot of folks car camping along the shore in Good Hope/Blue Notch area. I have GPS coordinates for some great camping spots from Bullfrog Bay and North if anyone needs some. Hailed several times each day for Fishing Fool (Richard S.). He must have been far away from BF. Kent Jorgensen ran us down in Bullfrog Bay on Sunday to give some info on Stripers (appreciate it Kent). He showed us where they caught them the day before on the JP rigs so we headed over to locate the fish. I couldn't find them. Kent, Let me know if you found them on Sunday. I graphed the whole area for over an hour with no luck. Was going to try night fishing on the infamous Hite docks, but the wind situation at night scared me.

Fishing for Smallmouth was good overall. Most being caught on single or double tailed grubs in pumpkin color in small cracks and coves. Catfish were hooked on pieces of anchovy. It seemed to slow a bit after the wind on Saturday. Stripers were very elusive. We did pick up a couple. Catfish would bite readily if you were in a nice sandy area. I also caught a bat in my line one night. I guess it had flown into my line some time during the night. He woke me up about 5:00 one morning thrashing around in the water with my line wrapped around his wing. I cut him loose undamaged and he headed back to wherever they go.

The Bullfrog area was crowded as expected. I ran through some of the roughest water I have ever seen at Powell between Bullfrog and Halls. The guy in the 36' cruiser pulling a tuber on plane didn't help much. I can't imagine how much gas he used. Mike Bevelhimer reported that he thought everyone had gone south because when he was down there it was BUSY. When I ran north the crowds thinned out shortly after Forgotten. Saw a couple of fish cops patrolling in the Good Hope area which was a welcome surprise. Other than your typical crazy jet skier, gunshots and broken leg nothing startling ever came over the radio. One thing you do notice on a busy weekend is the ignorance on radio usage. Retrieved Monday morning at 5:30 am and headed home. Overall a good trip as usual. Planning of returning around the 4th of July for some boil action.

Arrived late Monday 5/31 afternoon. This is one of those trips where I wanted to be heading to the lake while everyone else was going home. What a way to go! Solid traffic heading back to SLC and nothing but open road in front of me. The ramp at Bullfrog had two rigs on it. I was worried we would get caught in long lines at the close of the holiday weekend. Camped in Bullfrog Bay north of houseboat fields. Heard splashing all night long during street-light bright full moon. I determined the carp must be spawning.

Tues. morning trolled points to breakwater without so much as a carp on the graph. Headed to Moki wall and putted by while watching graph -no fish. Headed up lake to favorite spots. Seven Mile Canyon is now seven-tenths of a mile, again no fish spotted. Headed to Good Hope Bay, mud line down to where bay narrows and enters main channel. Let the kids and the dog out to play in the mud on shore and had breakfast. Water temp was 76' at 10am. Towed the kids and wife on the tube down to Knowles Canyon. Graphed fish in canyon channel while searching for camping spot, all three spots were taken. Didn't fish as it was time for tying up and dinner.

Camped in the very back of Crystal Springs Canyon. Spooked school of larval fish (shad?) from shoreline. My 10yr old daughter was playing around with a PopR at sunset and caught a 1.5 lb SMB right at her feet. Pictures later when developed. Fileted it, still full of eggs and crawdads. Nice filets about 1/2" thick.

Wed. morning trolled main channel points and canyon mouths from Crystal Springs to Good Hope. Not a fish on the graph or a hit on deep divers. Put the fishing tools away and gave in to the toys for the rest of the afternoon. Went back to Halls Crossing for ice cream and flushies then camped in Halls Creek Bay. Water temp before sundown in small cove reached 80'. Pulled out Thurs. morning as the graduation crowd began to arrive for the weekend. Again, a steady stream of traffic heading to the lake while open road in front of me for the ride home. I feel like I stole this trip as it was too nice. All I missed was some striper action. This morning I read the fish report to see what I did wrong. It appears I did everything right, the rest was up to fate. Hope to be back down for boils in Sept.

-My 10yr old just reminded me she outfished her dad! ...I don't have a problem with that.

My fishing partner and I made a quick trip from Bayfield Co.to Halls Xing after reading the reports posted on June 1st. We arrived at Halls about 10:00 p.m. Cruised out to the houseboat about 11:00 and crashed. Had to dawn dark glasses when the moon came up. Unfortunately we didn't get on the water until about 7:00 am the next a.m. The water was smooth and water temp about 72 degrees.

We fished the coves near bullfrog with shad raps and top water. Caught and released two 2.5 small mouth right off the bat which was a pleasant change from years past. Caught several little smallies and kept the ones that were big enough to make a fillet out of for the sake of improving smb sizes.

Success dropped off as the sun began to beat down and the wind came up. Returned to the shade of the houseboat for a beer or 2 and a Siesta. At 6:30 p.m. managed to hook up with Lakedancer and Gary Foell on the dock that came from Hite (near Bullfrog Marina- Its the dock with three steel light poles on it.) Even though we didn't know them from anyplace but the Anglers Corner June 1st Lake dancer), Gary and Dianne welcomed us as if we were old friends. Dianne offered us (wonderful) fresh beer-battered catfish (which she prepared right on the dock on a Coleman stove) and striper from Gary's Friday night action. Gary caught 28 of the small stripers along with some from Lake Dancer and her fishing pole dubbed "killer". He said "I could have caught more but I ran out of gas for the generator at 4:30 this morning". (Gary hangs about 4 lights in the retired boat slips). Small stripers started hitting about 10:00 pm and bit sparingly. Gary lent us small chunks (1/2") anchovies which we hung on 1/8 oz white crappie type jig heads. Some other displaced Coloradoans (actually a real nice couple with their son and his gal friend) joined us about 10:30 p.m. and we all stood around the illuminated-vacant boat slips watching the carp slurp the plankton under the lights. About 2:00 a.m. Steve and I had combined for about 14 foot long stripers and a couple of 3#ers. Unfortunately our eyes were about to glaze over so we headed back to the houseboat.

Were on the water again about 7:00 Sunday morning and it was already getting hot. We fished coves on the Halls side. We each caught 2.5# Walleyes, sunfish and some smb. By 1:00 am my foot had given out trying to keep the boat on track while battling the wind so we called it a trip.

We stopped on the way out at the store just inside the toll gates for in ice cream and the air temp was 101. The good news was that the unleaded gas was still reasonable at $2.14. Attached are three photos showing Steve with a lmb, a Walleye and myself cleaning the catch from the transported Hite Dock. If you see a Bayliner at the above described dock, overflowing with rods, reels, and enough camping equipment to sail round the world, a red Honda generator, a guy and a gal, stop by, you might luck out and eat some of the best fish you have ever eaten and meet two of the nicest persons on the lake.

After reading the reports of the incredible fishing on the points, we fished about 60 of them without so much as a strike and hardly a blip on the sonar. Then, out of desperation, we started looking along the walls south of Halls. Just like the old days, there the stripers were, piled up at 10 to 40 feet, eager to attack Rattletraps and ready to grab anchovy chunks on weighted hooks. All healthy. All males. All fun.

Well, who knows what the real ticket is, but for us last weekend, the points were a complete bust, we found nothing in the canyons but smallies, and a few big long high walls were all we needed to catch plenty of stripers. They weren't near the ends of the walls but pretty much toward the centers. I don't have a clue why. It was like 150' deep or more, apparently almost straight down. We found them both right next to the walls and perhaps up to 20 yards out. The schools seemed to be pretty much hanging in one place. Once we found them, they remained under us. There didn't seem to be shad around, and they hadn't been feeding on shad, or anything else that we could discern. But they hit like gangbusters. No nibbling. They were all males, seemingly prepared for the spawn. All totally healthy, mostly 3-5 pounds. If we moved 50 yards in any direction, they'd be mostly gone. They were initially scoped at about 20 feet, with some ranging up to 6 feet or so and some down to 40' when we first scoped them. After we started catching them, there would be lots more in the 10' range. We just fished the mornings in the shade, but fishing remained good until the sun hit, up to around 11. Then the fish would flat disappear. We were as successful casting Rattletraps and Renowskys as we were with anchovies on leadheads. Great Auk Durango, CO

Waynes Note: Seems we have a difference in translation between lower and mid lake. Lower lake has lots of main channel rocks and points (Padre to Rock Creek). From Annies Cyn to Bullfrog its all walls. Stripers are on walls south of Bullfrog and will also eat ANCHOVIES. Thanks for finding them Auk!

My wife, two girls and I went to Bullfrog Sunday June, 13/04. Started fishing around 4 pm using John Pauly rigs. We caught a huge Walleye south of the bay. The girls were excited to play in the water so we pulled off to let them swim. I got out the bait caster with some black senkos and caught a smally. Went back to the bay just before dark and dropped an anchor. caught small striper with the lanterns on using cut anchovies. Worked pretty well but was difficult to make it back to the dock. The next day we went out to Moki Canyon cliffs and trolled. Caught 6 Stripers. Very nice size using John Paulys. They're awsome. Tuesday we went back and caught 7 more (Lotsa breaks in between for the girls to swim). Wednesday we caught 10 more but had to leave early due to the storm. The Stripers were stacked up in Moki Canyon right at the mouth of the canyon.

We stayed in the Bullfrog RV Park and were treated great. Met lots of friends. Did a lot of braggin'. Thanks a bunch,

Weekend of 6/11 - 6/13.

After hearing of The Great Auk's success fishing the walls with anchovies, we just had to go check it out for ourselves. Sounded like fun, relaxing fishing, I used to do a lot of that a few years ago and always enjoyed it. We didn't have much time so we just took the weekend and went for it.

Arrived late at Bullfrog Friday night, launched at 1:30 am when it is cool and quiet, and headed out to the Hite dock. No one there to our surprise. Night fished for just a bit, brought in a lot of tiny shad but were too tired to wait up for the stripers. Woke early to boat wakes rolling into the dock, if you sleep there you need to bug out early before the traffic gets too busy. Headed straight over to the wall north of Moki Canyon, on a hunch if the stripers were down south of Halls, they would be here too. They were. Chummed a few anchovies, hooked up the first striper about 5 minutes later, and had a ball until around 11:00 am when they slowed down. Kerry had the hot hand, she was catching stripers right and left. She even caught some on bare jigheads after the striper had cleaned her hook. Kept me very busy chumming, netting fish, and catching one myself now and then. These pics show some of the action, and also where we were in relation to Moki.

Spent the rest of the day running around the lake, looking at what camping spots are available, cooling off in the water, usual stuff. Ran into Mike Nester at the Bullfrog store, good to see you again Mike! Night fished for a while Saturday night back in Halls buoy field, drew a few shad but mostly carp sucking in the plankton. Enjoyed a brilliant Powell sunset, and a free fireworks show courtesy of someone at Stanton, and called it a day.

Repeated the same on Sunday morning, we ran into Howard Oatman on our way to the wall, told him of our success and to join us. We had a great morning of striper fishing, kept a dozen or so to filet. Howard invited us to his houseboat to clean fish and have lunch. But I didn't realize, he would clean our fish for us! He cleaned them so fast I didn't even get a chance to take any pics. Then they made us lunch..what a great bunch of guys. Thanks Howard and crew! Then it was time to head home Sunday afternoon, a short trip but very much worth it. I hadn't fished the walls in a long time and it was really fun. Thanks to Great Auk for finding this and telling us about it.

The smile says it all.. We used 1/4 oz. Chartreuse glow jigheads with red painted hooks. Chummed against the wall, caught fish anywhere from 15 - 40 feet deep from sunup until 11:00 am.

Weekend of 6/25 - 6/27

Another great trip..no problems and plenty of good fishing. Everything was as previously reported. Met up with Rich & Sharon Bailey and girls Saturday a.m. at the Poco Loco, found a campsite, then ran over to the wall uplake from Moki. Although not as hot as 2 weeks ago, still enough striper and catfish action to make it worthwhile and fun. Chum with anchovies a lot and the action is better. I am sorry to say both mornings we saw no slurps in the stretch from Halls bouy field to mile 103, which was a hot zone last year. Still a lot of fish on the walls in that area but they are not slurping, so bring along the anchovies. I would think a John Pauly rig would work too if someone used one.

A big wind came along Saturday at 3:00 pm from the thunderstorms in the area. No rain or lightning on the lake, just wind. It happened Friday also. It died down in a couple of hours though so we had a nice evening with cool temps for this time of year at Powell. And, calm water to hunt slurps on.

Rich, Kerry and I ran into Halls creek bay Saturday evening and found the slurps. Had some good action but the stripers could pick a better place to do this. They were right in a narrow spot just before the bay opens up, so there is a lot of boat traffic going in and out to deal with. We threw the walleye assassin plastic shad jig (yes that again!) and were getting hookups every time we got a good shot at them. Here are some pics of the Halls slurp action:

We left those slurps in Halls in the name of research, to go look for more in other areas of the lake, up to mile 100 or so and saw one brief slurp just before twilight. Puzzling, but that's the way it is sometimes. Headed back to the Poco Loco for a great dinner and happy hour.

Sunday morning we went back up lake looking, had prime conditions weatherwise but still no slurps. Went back to the wall and bait fished, caught stripers to bring home, and got off the lake before 3:00 so we didn't have to deal with the wind again. Fun trip. Many thanks to the Baileys for their hospitality and friendship, it was fun to fish with my buddy Rich again. Well, go find those mid-lake slurps! There has to be some more coming on soon in the mid-lake area somewhere.

Fished Moki Canyon wall on North side of canyon at mouth of canyon.

Caught 4 stripers, 3-4 lb, on 7/3/04 in two hours of fishing approximately 10 am to 12 pm.

Caught 5 stripers, 3-4 lb, on 7/4/04 in three hours of fishing approximately 8:30 pm to 11:30 pm.

Catches were at at edge of where shadow met sunshine. Expect we would have caught more if we had realized that issue of the shadow line sooner. Saw other boats leave without success. Now know that the sunshine line is a good place to try.

Fished with anchovies rigged on both anchovie hooks and in John Pauly rig. The John Pauly rig did best but both caught fish. Drop shot rig also worked well with whole anchove hooked through nose on Yamamoto split-shot hook.

Suggest that tip to try the sunshine line is a good clue, not that it will work again. But another angler I talked to knew it also. I had not seen this tip on your site prior to this trip.

P.S. Waves were tough with the constant barrage of the July 4th Armada. But fish were still biting…...

Bullfrog Report from 7/9 - 7/12

Family trip planned for tubing, swimming, and fishing with my daughter, her Mom, and friend Megan. Arrived at Bullfrog late on Thursday 7/8, launched the next morning on the concrete ramp at Bullfrog without any problem, then they closed it a couple of hours later. Went and got a slip, then took the girls out tubing. Rich Bailey hailed me on VHF, and tipped me off on boils in Bullfrog Bay. Thanks Rich! We were tubing back in the bay, so I meandered around and sure enough, there's a big boil!

Now these girls had never seen a striper boil, and were real excited about it.

I hooked them up with walleye assassins on 1/4 oz. chartreuse jigheads, gave them a refresher on casting, and they started catching big stripers. Once they had a taste, they wanted to go boil fishing every evening, and did real well at it. It was great fun for everyone, especially me. The girls had on doubles quite a few times. I lost a few pounds!

My daughter not only casts and catches, she even lipped this striper for a photo. Proud Dad? You Bet!

One evening's boil tally. Now 14 fish might not sound like that many, but for two little girls, and one net man who also has to get the boat in position, watch for traffic, take pictures, fix jigs, well it was all we could do, non-stop mayhem!

Slurping stripers with Halls Marina in the background, these went on every morning and evening.

And, of course, what boil fishing trip would be complete without the multitasking pic, I was out by myself, catching a striper with the left hand, taking the boil pic with my right. Entrance to Annie's in the background.

The preferred striper boil weapon in my boat, the lowly walleye assassin which works well, not every day, not every boil, but day in day out catches a lot of fish. I use either a silver or chartreuse 1/4 oz jighead, cast over the boil, and experiment with different retrieves. Usually burn it in as fast as you can crank, but since the shad are still small, a slower retrieve caught more fish this trip.

Now and then I got together with Rich Bailey and Tony Inman, good to see my old friends on the lake again, we teamed up in two boats to help each other find the boils. All in all, a great trip, in this case a picture tells more than I can say. Lake Powell is still a wonderful lake, and continues to give me, my loved ones, friends, and family so many priceless memories - Thank you old girl, keep your chin up, we still love you!

My wife and I arrived at Halls around 10:00 pm Friday night. We promptly launched our Viper Coral in search for our friends houseboat where we were to stay through Monday. We promptly got dumped on with a sudden cloudburst and couldn't see 10 feet in front of us, so we made a dash for the marina and found shelter in a houseboat slip. Some folks from Denver were nice enough to invite us "soaked rats" into their beautiful 72 footer for dry towels and a movie. The rain quit and we made it to our friends houseboat.

We were on the water by 6:30 am Saturday morning. The air temp rose quickly and must have been up to about 90 degrees by 9:30 am. The water temp was 80 degrees. We chased about 5 striper boils that morning, catching only one 3 pounder on a Kastinger. No more boils all day or night.

We caught about 20 crappie (on squirmin squirts) in a shaded cove with old cottonwoods about 2:00 pm. We hung out between Moki and the houseboat waiting for boils the rest of the evening and there were no boils to be found.

Sunday was a repeat of Saturday. We chased a few boils again. Although we got up on the boils, the bass didn't seem to like our offerings of Kastingers, Curly-Tails, Shad Raps, Popars, mini-Rattletraps, etc. We waited inside Moki Sunday evening until dark without a trace of any Stripers. Other boats we talked to reported the same with some talking of some success in Bullfrog and Knowles in the evenings.

Monday morning seemed like it was going to be a repeat of Sat and Sunday. No boils between Bullfrog or Moki. At 10:00 am, things turned around. First a few boils near the houseboats, then up the bay towards Moki, soon boats were running and gunning for striper boils in all directions. The boils seemed to increase in duration and in the number of fish boiling. Some boils lasted what seemed like ten minutes. By 1:00 pm Fran and I had landed 23 stripers. We were literally having to stuff them into our livewells. They ranged in size from 2 to 4 lbs, probably averaging 3lbs. We were also out of the best bait which turned out to be Berkley PowerBait 5" Power Jerk Shad so we ended our trip with stripers still boiling all over the area. I don't have a guess why the Stripers "went off" on what seemed like identical days but the three hours of Striper Madness made the whole trip worth the waiting.

We fished out of Bullfrog, July 21-25, with GoldCup. arrived Wednesday night ~8:00pm.

launched and headed towards Halls houseboat field. tied up on the outside, north, edge near a friend’s houseboat. set out a crappie light. chummed a few ‘chovies, let baited hooks down to 30-40’,and waited. lots of shad came in, pretty soon we had thousands swimming counter-clockwise (how do they know?) around the light. fish finder was black with shad to 50’. maybe a half hour to the first bite. then bam, Bam, BaM, BAM, BAM… we couldn’t even drop the bait back to depth without a hit. finally quit fishing (yeah, it’s sacrilege…) because we were exhausted. caught 35 stripers in 2 ½ hours.

originally planned to head south based on earlier reports of boils. after the first night, decided to stay at Bullfrog. went to fillet the night’s fish. met a fellow at the dock who saw the flag and asked if I was Wayne…no, he‘s cuter than me…:) he had a stack of 30 pages printed for his trip from Wayne’s Words. showed him the cooler, told him about our night fishing adventure and about the top water – hope he caught a lot of fish!

found a spot in Stanton – a good ways up a slope from the water so that GoldCup could get his exercise. after GoldCup finished setting up camp, headed out to find some shade. fished Moki wall for an hour or so – one catfish. took a nap then headed out to find a boil. drove all the way to Seven Mile seeing nothing but wakeboards, jet skis, and camp spots. headed back to Bullfrog then over to Halls Creek. stumbled onto our first boil just at the second turn. but, they went down and we got no hits. ran into Grant who told us about fishing from Farley to the Escalante. said the best boils were from Stanton to Halls Creek. thank you, Grant! you made our trip successful. we focused on the mouth of Stanton with occasional trips to Halls Creek. oh, and GoldCup managed to sneek in another nice largemouth while waiting for a boil in Halls Creek Bay. ran into Chet on our way back to Stanton – hey Chet! – couldn’t figure out what that boat was doing following on our tail…it’s the flag, silly…

night fished again.. tried starting earlier, but did not get a hit until after full dark, ~10:00 pm. success was poor compared to the night before. just as many hits but we couldn’t hook up. they bumped the bait – dink, dink – and were gone. got less than a dozen in the same amount of time. drove the boat back to camp in the dark for the first time! using some shore reference, a spotlight, and the GPS, drove slowly and directly to camp – going at idle you get there safely.

boils, Boils, BoilS, BOILS everywhere! Friday afternoon, we chased a school of stripers all over the mouth of Stanton. up, down, through boat and ski wake, near the shore, almost to the channel – it was a zoo! but we caught fish – sometimes we guessed right and they came up around us, other times we raced over just as they went down, many times they were too far. got to use my new boil rig – Abu Garcia Ambassadeur 5601 w/17lb Trilene XL, 8 ½ foot Ugly Stick Lite Steelhead pole – man, does that thing cast!!! caught a lot of fish because of the added range of the new rig. tried top water (jumpin minnow, sammy, zara spook, zara puppy), rat’l trap, walleye assassin, even spinner bait. the only consistent hit was top water – big top water - so I threw a Rebel Jumpin Minnow (silver/blue) most of the time, GoldCup threw a big Sammy size 115 most of the time.

we made a new convert! that’s our new friend Gary, from Albuquerque - Hi Gary! – in the kayak. he just happened to be at Stanton, camped next to us (poor guy), and stumbled onto the boils. we gave him a Jumpin Minnow so he could join in the fray. as you can see in the picture, boil fever is now ravaging his mind! after half a dozen fish he was hooked. and, as we all know, it’s permanent - the only known relief from symptoms is another trip to Powell!

as I said, boils were everywhere. these are not slurps like we saw last year. these are wild, heart thumpin, shad jumpin, striper splashin BOILS! problem was, they don’t stay up long. am sure a good part was all the holiday traffic, and all the boats that showed up at the first splash – maybe a quiet mid-week and they will stay up longer. never had a chance to follow them with the electric because when they went down, they stayed down for a long time – then we had to race to the next boil. caught fish in boils going into Halls Creek, all the way in Halls Creek, saw & heard of boils from Halls Crossing ramp down along the wall, caught fish all over Stanton, and got into a monster boil north-west of Stanton along the bank halfway to Bullfrog – went zooming over into the middle of stripers splashing 100 yards across! – somehow we ended up in the middle of it. at the end we looked up to find all the boats circled around us.

and best of all - we hit a number of smallmouth boils! the biggest started on a point that sticks out from the northern part of the edge of Stanton – we saw it while waiting for the stripers inside Stanton. there’s a whole series of reefs along the shore towards Bullfrog. we followed one boil after another along this shore, some smallies, some stripers.

all in all, a very fine trip - ~120 stripers (12 gallon ziplocs of fillets), 20 smallies, 3 catfish, 1 largemouth. this is two years in a row for summer slurps/boils – expect it to be an annual thing! and GoldCup is a fine fishing companion – expect that to be a regular thing too!

Gary and I left for the Lake on Fathers Day after the birth of my grandson. A cute little guy who looks like his grandpa Jimmy. We arrived to launch at 10pm. It spooked me but AMAZING GARY said "no worries" and he was right. We went looking for the proverbial "DOCKS" and found in the dark that they's been moved. We discovered this just after I said "wouldn't it be funny if they moved them?" Not funny! We did find them but only caught one striper all night. We got some sleep and found a nice spot on the wall to the left of Moki and spent the day there. We had a great time. We caught striper and catfish all day. It didn't seem to matter what time of the day it was or whether it was sunny or cloudy. It really was a beautiful mild day for fishing until storm rolled in at about three o'clock, at which time we ducked back into Moki to get out of the rain and wind.

At 6:30 we headed for Halls Mall and on the way came onto a full striper boil. I didn't really know what to do but I figured the best thing was to duck as Gary threw lures, caught fish, and jumped up and down. He caught three and was really excited at his first boil of the year. After getting supplies we went back to the wall and continued to fish it. We found a great tie off and Gary filleted 18 striper and 6 catfish, the old fashioned way by hand. "He da Man".

Tuesday morning we rise and shine...Well Gary rises, I shine! We found our way back to the wall and repeated the fun of the previous day. This day no storms and it was hot. So was the catching. The action didn't really start until 1:00pm but once it started it just got better and better. There were obviously some very large fish down there (about 40 ft) lost several, hook, line and sinker. 24 striper went into the cooler that day as well as 15 catfish. Stripers measured from 15" to 27". Most were between 20' and 27'. Gary filleted fish with spotlights on the beach from 8:30 to midnight with time out between the striper and catfish for a beer battered striper dinner. Yes we have an electric knife in fact we have two. They were in Gary's truck and once again he filleted them by hand.

We left the lake Wednesday morning and headed down the road. Somewhere we decided to take a short trip off the beaten path to see some Pictographs. The short trip took a strange twist when we were finished admiring the handy work of the Native American artists and Gary's truck wouldn't start. I had just commented and so did Gary that we wished we could stay longer (be careful what you wish for), and now we were staying longer 31/2 hours longer, while I SOSed all airplanes that went overhead and Gary worked on the beer, I mean truck. Then we decided to Macgyver it and access what we had in the truck that would be helpful. We had a Jump Start battery and a gasoline powered generator. We had lots of fish and water and other food and could have stayed a week but I was glad we didn't have to. Gary's truck suffered from a dead battery but the back ups we had worked and Amazing Gary saved the day.

We arrived Fri. night about midnight. Stayed at Stanton down the 4wd road facing right out at the Poco Loco. Sat was SLOW! Not one keeper. THEN came Sun!

I didn't see any full blown "boils" all weekend, but did encounter a few "sloils". 75% slurping mixed with 25% boil type activity (tail slapping and aggressive jumping). The aggressive activity only consisted of one fish in a particular spot but could happen simultaneously with 10 others (for example) over hundreds of sq. yards.

Awoke about 6 to a "sloil" right off of the beach! Caught some nice SMB and 18" striper for about 30 min. Out fishing we didn't have much luck for awhile when we happened onto HotWheels and his crew. We left them after a chat and headed to the opposite wall to try some deeper trolling along the wall. Immediately hooked a Walleye that went about 18". That was about it (except for SMB) until about 5pm while trolling out in front of camp between the 3 rock buoys and the shore. There was a school of 3# stripers hangin'. We trolled back and forth for awhile and landed quite a few.

Monday produced "sloils" on and off all day. Most of the action we saw was right there in that section of Stanton Creek camping area that makes the bend into Bullfrog Bay. If things got slow we trolled back through those 3 rock buoys for some nice SMB. Late afternoon brought a pretty big blow in for about an hour. We saw it coming and were approaching our beach as it hit. Afterwards we went back out and hit an area between the rock buoys and the green channel marker at Bullfrog Bay. SLOIL CITY!!!!! There was a bit of a slick and row of tumbleweeds about a 200 yards long. Lots of fish in the 3#(?) 18" range.

We wanted to try the night fishing and talked to Hotwheels and his cadre about technique when we saw them. Mon. night we got around to heading over to the houseboat field about midnight to attach to an unoccupied buoy. But when a wind came up we changed our minds and came back without tying up. My little aluminum boat is a little too small and unreliable to push it considering the amount of fish we already had in the cooler.

Tue. I got out about 6 and trolled off the beach close enough to refill the coffee and wait for Brad to wake up. Somewhere about 7-7:30 we got out and ended up in that last car camping bay in Bullfrog Bay, with the gravel bars, just around the corner from Stanton. MORE SLOILS!!! We fished there most of the rest of the morning. Another 10-15 fish in the 14 to 18" range in a couple of hours. When the action near the surface stopped I got one jigging and one on anchovy using the information from the BB about the fish needing to return to colder water after warming up on top for awhile.

My workhorse lure this trip was a Kastmaster about 1 1/4" long. Brad used a Krockodile about 2" long with a little less success. I think that was mostly a result of less experience on his part and gear that was a little light, more than the shape of the chrome we presented. And he still caught allot of nice fish and had a good time. I thing we totaled about 50 fish for the weekend. We mostly fished in the top couple of feet of water, trolling and casting, and sometimes attached a small splitshot to get down a little especially while trolling and looking for visible action.

Once again it was a pleasure to meet those of you we ran into. Thanks for the tips! Very valuable and helpful for those of us without the benefit of electronics.

We arrived Mid morning Friday and found boils each morning at the launch area of Halls which is a great energy treat when you average four hours of sleep. Most Halls /Bullfrog boils lasted 3 to 12 min. Rains moved in and the sun did not show on Monday so we opted to return home.

We found the best boiling action in the Good Hope Bay area where we had one Boil stay up for 50min. That was as far up as I ventured. Boils were not massive but the fish did have the shad holed up in very tight quarters which made for some lasting action and with three in the boat numbers added quickly. The simple truth is the fast accurate cast on the sporadic boils accounted for very consistent action. All fish came on the surface with Spooks in clear finish and blue heads being the best.

Sore hands : yes but not as bad as they have been in the past this trip I bought a Rapala Electric knife kit for $40 let me tell you for a combo knife package it is worth every penny a fish only take 30 seconds to get him in the bag. I cleaned over 175 so for three days of just Boil fishing.

Next I forgot to mention the sheer numbers of SMB/LMB's that we brought to boat with my son catching the two largest with a 4.6 SMB a very nice one and a LMB at 4.1. No action at night but we really were very tired from the drive and the daytime fun.

I hope to return in a couple of weeks as it can only get better. Cracker

Halls Report

Days fished: July 30th to Aug 2nd

Chris and I arrived at Halls, and met Hotwheels on Friday, and headed out on the lake about 2:00 p.m. We scouted mainly the Halls Creek, BullFrog, and Moki most of the afternoon. Weather was hot, and no boils seen through evening hours.

Saturday morning we fished the Halls Creek, and Bullfrog area, and saw a few slurps, and Chris picked up a nice one out of them. Hotwheels took a look at his graph, and saw shad with stripers below them, so we got out the spoons and started jigging, and picked up five in that area. That was a rocky point off the west side of Bullfrog across from the Halls houseboat slips. Picture of Hotwheels, and I with a couple of jigged up stripers! I picked up another one out of topwater slurps on the way over to Moki.

With the absence of boils during the day we decided to nap the late afternoon, and night fish the houseboat field! We pulled in there 30 minutes before dark, and tied to a buoy a houseboat away from Richard Sutterfield and got ready for the evening! We were running a 4 foot hydroglow off the front, and Jack(Hotwheels) had a two footer from Cabela’s off the back. The action got good about thirty minutes after dark, and Mike Bevelhimer, and his family showed up, and tied off the side of Jack’s boat. Everybody was catching stripers consistently for three hours before we stopped for the night! I snapped a quick pic of the huge cooler that Hotwheels had on his boat with 30 plus stripers in it.

I know Mike, and his daughter caught quite a few also.

BTW Chris the master caster, was using the cast net to get 10 to 12 shad with every cast. The stripers were hitting the real thing like candy, but Hotwheels was using them up faster than we could bring them in…LOL! We took a cooler full of stripers from Rich Sutterfield, so we could send some back with Brice Wilson’s brother and Dad who only came for two days! Lots of filleting the next morning early.

Sunday we headed down to the Rincon, and saw boils that were up, and down to fast to get to! These were the 1st real boils that we saw, but we could not get to them fast enough before they would sound and not come up again for ten minutes! Went in early evening for a fish fry! Monday had us heading for Striper city hoping to get into some boils that Bryce, and Eric Wilson, and Mike and family got into the previous afternoon! The boil gods were not on our side this trip, but we did manage to jig up a couple more stripers by Two Mile. Came back and tried Moki for awhile, and I jigged up a walleye before we left with the wind kicking up big time. We went back out Monday night to fish the houseboat field again, and caught about twenty stripers with the Wilson brothers tied up to our side this time. Ended it early though as Chris and I had to come back Tuesday morning! It was great seeing Hotwheels, and The Wilson brothers again, and enjoyed getting together with Mike Bevelhimer, and family, and chasing stripers around with them! I think we have another young hooked on Powell fisher lady joining the ranks---right Mike? Thanks for the invite Jack, Chris and I had fun fishing off that awesome Tri-toon of yours!

Arrived Bullfrog Thursday evening 8/5. Ramp conditions good except I forgot about the road base tar and got some in the boat. Looked for boils in the Bay then up Halls Creek. Found a good boil right where the channel opens up again. About 6 PM. Had plenty of pleasure boaters to keep us rocking. One Striper nearly jumped in the boat trying to get a topwater lure as it was lifted out of the water for the next cast. After that ended we headed towards Stanton and saw several boats together fishing. We joined them for a boil around 7:30.

Friday morning we followed intermittent boils and slurps around the Stanton area for several hours. Before noon we thought we would fillet the mornings catch and go nap to return in the evening. By evening a storm was moving in but that did not stop us from going out. We ended up sorry. Just after the south wind and rain slowed down we decided to set up for some night fishing in the Halls Buoy Field. As we found no boils that evening. The wind shifted to out of the north. We were anchored in around 150' of water where we had been told that the night fishing had been good the night before. The waves started to get big. Within minutes the waves were breaking over the front of the boat and filling it up with water. Anchored we were not riding the waves well. Had to cut the rope and head to the shore. And now it is just about fully dark. Going to shore was a mistake too. The waves were so huge that we could not hold the boat away from the rocks well and damaged the fiberglass.

Saturday morning we slept in. Had already decided we were still water worthy if the weather was improved. It was. Saturday evening we lucked into the big boil near Stanton. It lasted until completely surrounded by boats and was about half the channel wide. Before that we fished a few small slurps and did OK. Our best topwater lure for the trip seemed to be a smaller silver and blue with red mouth and the one with a rattle was best. At dark we decided to set up for night fishing in the Bullfrog Buoy field. We had called and received permission to stay aboard a boat there in case the weather turned rough again as we were still a little worried about the misadventure of the night before. We set up lights and after two hours still had not had a bite. We were in about 100' of water. So we moved to the tires over near the Bullfrog Covered slips. 83' deep. After an hour and a half, still nothing. So off to bed for a few hours.

Up at the crack of dawn, we headed over to Stanton. No boils all the way to Moki. But as we watched the area we could see carp jump and some small possible slurps. We caught several Stripers out of some slurps with topwater. But after a bit and noticing fish on the finders we were able to get into the Stripers big time on spoons and anchovies as we were the boat next to the one in a previous report.

In summary: Anchovies were working. Smaller topwater worked better than large for us this trip. Spoons are fun, but only worked this time when jigged not cast. No Stripers came in at night where we fished up Bullfrog Bay. And use better judgment than us when deciding to night fish. Powell can make you earn your fish.

Started from Bullfrog Aug 2 and did well on smallmouth in the bay close to the marina(nothing very big though). Was awakened to a boil in a bay near to the Rincon and the stripers were forcing the shad out of the water up against a wall...had a ball catching them but now understand why it is imperative to have more than one rod ready. I spent most of the time unhooking the stipers as they splashed around me!! As the week progressed and we headed further south toward Dangling Rope the fishing really died off. Occasionally I would spot a small boil while I spent time looking for smallmouth but the boil would subside quite quickly than come up again somewhere else.

Have to say that the price I paid for the Lucy Craft Ghost Minnow was worth it but I still haven't told my wife how much one lure costs!! Even jumped in one time to retrieve it after it snapped off during a cast. Thanks for all the great info...see you again in Sept.

Fishing Report for August 5th - 7th.

Water Temp: 80-83

Bullfrog

Launched at Bullfrog around 7:00 pm Thursday night without incident. Ramp is not very steep, but usable. No tire spinning or anything. Oh, that black tar stuff is a pain. Especially with a white boat. Make sure you have a change of shoes with you! There were two park employees monitoring the ramp and checking people for life jackets etc late into the night. One fellow was lucky enough to be taking the sobriety test and not doing well by the way. The parking lot was extremely full with some folks using the overflow. One thing that irks me is when people park their cars in the trailer parking areas. Oh well, guess that will never change.

We motored over to a small cove across from the ramp to bed down for the night. Did some catfishing off the back of the boat and caught 3 or 4 that night. Used circle hooks slip sinker and lunch meat. Woke up the next morning before dawn and started putting over to Stanton where the boils were reported earlier (Kurt & GC). Watch out for the reefs jutting out from the Stanton area!! I found myself in the dawn cutting between them and shore! Eeek! They have 3 marker buoys that stick way out into what used to be the channel.

We went up into Stanton and waited for boils that never happened. I got impatient and decided to cruise up around the corner past Moqui. Didn't see anything on the way up. On the way back I started noticed sporadic splashes on the shore across from Moqui wall just up from Stanton. I stopped to investigate one of them, and it was scattered Stripers chasing shad on top. I wouldn't classify this as a boil, but rather individual fish chasing shad and breaking the surface once in a while. These fish are catchable! We caught quite a few casting to these splashes on Zara Spooks. This time I noticed a lot more Stripers missed the bait than before. I probably counted 10 times that a Striper would hit the spook more than once and not get hooked. One Striper hit it right at the boat and almost knocked it clear over the motor!

Boils seemed to die down about 9:30 am so we found a beach for some play time. Saturday night we camped right across from where the boils were earlier that morning with the hopes of eating an early dinner and fishing the evening bite. A storm had different plans for us. It rained and blew pretty hard causing us to take shelter until after dark. We started Catfishing once again and my daughter (4) caught her first solo catfish. From bait to cast to hook set she brought it clear to the boat. It scared her at first, but she was soon well into the fight. After catching 10 or 12 more Cats we retired for the evening. There were some awesome moon rises through the clouds that night.

Got up the next morning and headed across to wait for the splashes again. They didn't appear as they did the morning before. We picked up a few. Mike Bevelhimer stopped by for a chat and said he was doing well jigging and his daughter was catching them sightfishing the splashes. By the way Mike. I can't wait for the day my boat is set up as well as yours!! Very nice fishing rig. We followed Mike to out in front of Stanton to the area right by the channel marker where he indicated the Shad were thick. They were! Lots of "clouds" of Shad. We picked up a few of the smaller fish jigging Kastmasters in that area. The fish and game did stop by and check our licenses BTW.

Sunday night caught more Catfish and went to bed early across from the Bullfrog ramp. While fishing at dusk it was good to see the rangers still out patrolling giving tickets/warnings to PWC riders without lights. Woke up before light Sunday morning and was loaded by 6:00 am.

Side notes: The Halls store and slips have been moved out to the channel, but as of Saturday they still had no water or ICE CREAM! The gas docks at Halls are still located in the old spot.

One caution. Unless they change the breakwaters at the Halls store, it is a very rough docking situation. They really don't have slips set up yet and there is a break in the tires right where you tie up so be prepared to have good bumpers and lines or go around back. Bullfrog store and pumpout are operating and busy. Make sure you have your own pumpout fitting or buy one at the store. There are a lot of people having to be pulled off of beaches and rocks with the dropping water levels to be careful and reset every day if you are staying for awhile. Overall it was another great trip. The boat traffic was terrible around Bullfrog/Halls. If I were doing it again I would take my chances and head up to Good Hope (as many are this weekend) or way down to escape the crowds. Until next time! Rip some lips!

Date Received: August 12, 2004 - Lakedancer

Gary and I(lakedancer) arrived at the lake and launched at about 9:00pm on August 3. We headed straight for the Halls Bouy Field and fished all night. Had some company with Larry Millhouse and Jim P. I caught one striper and retired for the night and Gary caught 19. He was not yet ready for retirement.

Next day, we cruised the Halls, Moki, areas and up to mm105 looking for boils with not luck. We tried the Moki wall for a while but to no avail. Then we headed into Halls Creek, still no boils.

As a fierce storm began to brew, we ducked into a canyon and as the story goes, we fried up some mushrooms and chicken and began to look for ways to pass the time when striper fishing wasn't available. Gary was scanning the water for buried trees before beginning to fish for cats, when he discovered little creatures about the size of a dime with a figure in the middle. It was all membrane and looked like it had arms and legs (2 each) with some kind of dangle in the middle. We watched them for hours and none of the blue gill in the water even went near them. There were many. We also saw some other marine activity we'd never noticed before. That's odd as we have spent many hours over a span of many years at Lake Powell and not seen any of this.

August 5, we left Lost Eden around 6:30pm and found the main channel still white-capping. We noticed Hotwheels boat and Mike Bevelheimer's in the waters in front of Stanton Creek, so we joined them hoping they's spotted a boil.

No boil but a lot of striper and shad on the depth finder. And they were catching fish so we stayed. After a while a boil appeared in the middle of us (silly striper). We were all prepared to "get'em". Marty Petersens boat and several others had joined us by now and I don't remember ever seeing such craziness....maybe it was just me that was crazy.

There I was stand in the seat in the bow of my boat (with a broken toe that made it difficult to even stand), with the lake white-capping and lures flying everywhere, Gary jumping up and down and helling "get a lure in the water". All of the sudden my blood sugar decided to take a dive soooooo I sat down to eat a sandwich to which Gary replied "WHAT ARE YOU DOING??*!!!>><++**%#!#~~?????>+%##!!!# ETC."

I hooked two got one to the boat but didn't get it in the boat. I am learning....I can't recall how many Gary got into the boat. We chased around for a while longer and then went to the Bouy field. We fished until 4:00am and crashed.

Total striper for the trip 60, total cats 8. It was a great time......It was in fact a priceless experience. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

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Date Received: August 15, 2004 - Kevin

Got to Bullfrog thursday the 12th, and started looking for boils, did'nt see anything quick so went to plan B, go to the walls around Moqui and try jigging up the stripers. It failed to, but I got here in the middle of the day. So I was'nt expecting much. The plan was to do a little night fishing and heading up to farley's. ' 'PLANS CHANGED'

Went over to Stanton and did some smallmouth fishing just waiting for the night fishing to start. And a man and woman pulled up in a nice bass boat to say hello, and it was Topcat, and I think his wife. We had a nice talk about boats, motors, and fishing. And it was time to go set up for night fishing. Nice meeting you guys Topcat.

Got into Halls bouy field, and got every thing set up and in place, I figured then I would look out and see boils all over. But it never happened. So I got my lights out, two green in the front and two mining lights out the back, a lanturn and the boats running lights. I was well lit up. As Richard Sutterfied had reported earlier, it took the shad about 45 minutes to an hour to start coming in. The small ones came first, and then the bigger ones came and they were all arround my boat, It was a feeling of Im going to catch fish' And then the bite was on. There was others, night fishing, and then it started blowing pretty good and people left. But when the little wind storm blew by, all hell broke loose. I caught fish, and a lot of doubles the rest of the night until the sun came up. And then they shut off just as they had started.

I went to the cleaning station and layed out 91 stripers for a picture, and cleaned my fish. Then I headed back out on the lake, and not even 100 yards theres my first boil of the trip. I hooked up and got the fish in, and when I went to put it in the live well, It was packed clear full of night fish, in which I had forgotten were there, I was sick of cleaning fish and there were 21 more That had to be cleaned or they would ruin. But the good part was the total for that great night of fishing was 112. I chased that boil for about 5 or 6 more times and got three more. I had forgotten all about boils, until I saw the first one of the trip. And then it was a whole new energy, all over again. But it was short lived, and did'nt see any for the rest of the day. Went back and set up to night fish agan, talked to some new share owners of the Poco Loco, and they did'nt have any chovies, So I gave them some chovies and chartreuse leadheads, in hopes there kids getting into the stripers. I dont know how they ened up. I told my wife, when I started falling to sleep behind the rod, it was time to go to sleep. I caught 29 more stripers for friday the 13th and sat.

BUT I WILL NEVER KEEP 143 STRIPERS AGAIN.

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Date Received: August 16, 2004 - George Banker, Durango,CO

Two of us got to the lake late Sunday, launched the boat and fished Bullfrog in the evening for smallies. Found one good chunk rock/dirt point next to deep water and caught a 2 1/2 lb black, several smallies 1 1/2 to 2 lbs. Best lure was a Yum Wooly Hogtail 4 1/2 " in watermelonseed, baitcasting 12lb line with 1/4 oz weight. That spot continued to produce during our entire stay. Tried to duplicate this pattern for the next several days with limited success. Split shoting and jigheading with 8lb spinning gear and similar color grubs also produced. Averaged 30+/- smallies a day with 4 to 6 each day in the 1 1/2 to 2+ lb range. Caught one 2 1/2 lb(+/-) largemouth each day.

When we saw striper boils we threw chug bugs and caught 'em. Best boils were early about half way back in Halls. Also fished a smallie boil in the same area. We fished the mornings, got off the lake during the hottest part of the day, and went back at "em in the evening.

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Date Received: August 16, 2004 - Billy Lewis Salt Lake City, Utah

We fished August 13th. and 14th. The fishing was tough, to say the least, this past weekend. We located 1 boil, where 60 ft. water meets 15 ft. We mapped fish along the vertical cliffs where 120 ft. meets 30 ft. with no takers. This was the toughest fishing I have ever experienced at Lake Powell. We put in at Bullfrog and traveled most of that end of the lake. Smallmouth was even a challenge for the first time as well. We did catch numerous stripers in one boil, but the smallmouth where spaced about a hour between each catch. All together, it's almost funny that we burned about $100.00 in gas and caught 95% of the fish about half a mile from the dock.

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Date Received: August 16, 2004 - Tom Brown

A small group of us spent four days on a friend’s house boat moored at Halls Xing Three fisherman, Steve’s daughter and her girlfriend. The bad news is that we didn’t see a striper boil from Tuesday to Saturday. So, we didn’t get to use any of the imitation plastic shad that I had just blown $50.00 on at Wal-Mart and also missed out on the fun of running and gunning at the churning stripers. The good news is that we went home with about 260 striper fillets on Saturday morning and we still had gas in our spare gas cans.

I had a @## business meeting and didn’t leave Durango until 11 p.m. Tuesday night. That put me and my boat at Halls at 4:00 am Wednesday. When I got to Steve’s moored houseboat all was quiet. Steve crawled out of his rack long enough to get to his cooler. He cracked the lid and flash lighted me a view of about 25 stripers. He and Terry had done the light thing off of the houseboat. He said they lowered the light into the water just after dark. The baited their ¼ oz jig heads with 1/3 of an anchovy and watched the shooting stars reflect off of their beer cans. He said the action started about 10:00 pm and was slow and steady. They went through an entire bag of anchovies. Steve said they called it quits about 3:30 am, even though the stripers were still hitting.

At 10:00 Wednesday morning the three of us boated down to Moki hoping to see boils with no luck. We tried drop-shotting along the walls for a couple of hours without success. My suggestion for a nap was well received to that’s what we did for the rest of the day. We kept an eye on the bass boats from Bullfrog to Moki while we were skiing and making ice runs to the Marina, but never saw any of the boats making runs at striper boils. About dark we repeated the drop light procedure and about 9:30 pm the stripers started hitting the anchovies. We stopped about 2:00 am Thursday with about 45 stripers ranging from one to four pounds.

Friday was a repeat of Thursday with the exception that a couple of friends joined us on the houseboat and three others had to leave for home. After a short lesson on how to catch stripers, us “vets” hit the sack and let the newcomers do the fishing. They landed stripers until two coolers were full at about 1:30 am.

We will anxiously be watching Wayne’s column for some of the fall boil reports. Good fishing!

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Date Received: August 23, 2004 - MTFields

Arrived at Halls Crossing mid day on Thursday the 12th. We headed South to find a good camping spot. Good beaches were taken and we ended up staying in the main channel @ mile marker 75. After setting up camp we fished for cats the rest of the evening. Fishing was slow and only a few small ones were caught. Up early Friday morning, we started searching for boils. We worked our way back North to Halls, no boils! Friday morning was shot. Returned to base camp to find our partner ( Butch) from Rio Rancho, NM with boat problems. Back to Halls we headed to work on the boat. Gave up and returned to camp without Butch. Saw a few fish surfacing about 8:00 PM in the Rincon. Fished from mile marker 75 North to the Rincon Saturday Morning. We netted 15 good sized Stripers 6 to 10 pounds using Shad Raps and Rattle Traps. No Boils, but great action and the best quality of fish we have taken.

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Date Received: August 23, 2004 - Kevin

Put on at Bullfrog 10:00 p.m 21st of August. Went over to Halls bouy field and night fished for acouple of hours and caught 10 stripers, then Brian my son in law, was falling to sleep, and fishing was slow so we went and slept just down from Stanton, To be woken up by a Coyote.

We headed up lake for a trip to Farleys and White canyon, must have been around 6:00 a.m. We did'nt see any boils, until we came around the corner at mile marker 117, and there they were spread out over 200 to 300 ft. but it was'nt an all out fish flopping type of a boil, there were just individual fish surfacing 10 to 20 ft apart, and all the way in to the bank. We fished the bank mainly, and Brian's first boil was a good one. This boil lasted for 40 minutes or more, with only two boats fishing it. When it stopped, we started looking on the other side of the lake, and did'nt see anything for 20 to 30 minutes, and started to cruise and there they were again with a house boat, and one more boat fishing it, we got a couple out of it, and I looked up lake and there was another going on, so we let the two boats alone, and ran up to the other boil. I don't know exactly how long we fished these boils, but it was a while. When it ended we had caught 35 more to make us 45 stripers. So we figured we had better clean some fish, and take some pictures. As we were doing this Dreamweaver and his wife,who had also been fishing these boils came over and introduced himself. Then when they left Jack Herrin (Hot Wheels} and his friend came up and talked for a while, and they had just missed those boils.

Then we took off back on the way to Farleys. We never saw another boil all the way up. We ran back into Hot Wheels at the mouth of White canyon, and had a great visit with those guys. They had'nt seen a boil either. So we started back to 117. We never saw the first sign of a boil all the way back. We watched for them the rest of the day between 117 and 119 marker, and then it blew up a heck of a sand blasting storm. It was late when it calmed down enough to fish. We finally found a few more boiling on the bank, and caught four more. We also were watching the crows as they ate shad that were jumping out on a rock. Then here comes a fox trotting along the bank, and we thought he was after the shad also, but he ran down to the water and grabbed himself a nice size striper, and off he ran with it flopping in his mouth. It was neater then heck watching that. Brian and I will talk about that forever. It was too windy to night fish so we turned in, and got up early saturday, and looked for a repeat of the boils, but it was'nt to be, on this day. After waiting them out till 11:00 or 12:00 a.m we headed back to Bullfrog. We never saw another boil all day, but when we went back to Stanton, we ran into Lakedancer, and Gary Foell. We talked for a good while, and Gary told us they had been boiling just around the corner. Sure enough, late that evening they were on Que. There we were all jigging and baiting when they started boiling in the area Gary had mentioned. Hot Wheels, and all of us had a great time with those boils. We caught 10 out of it, and a treble hook in the arm.

Then it was off to night fish, And it was hot action until we stopped at about 1:30 a.m sunday the 22nd. We caught 30 nice stripers between Brian and I. The total for the trip was 90 stripers, And 50 of them were out of boils, and Brian's hooked on Powell, to say the least.

It was great meeting HotWheels,Gary, lakedancer, Dreamweaver, and Lynn Wiggens and family.

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Date Received: August 24, 2004 - Skeeter, Captain of the Who Cares.

Those how love to fish and love fish stories read the whole thing, those who just want info jump to the bottom for the facts.

My report is quite contrary to yours. My buddy and I arrived at Bullfrog on Thursday night and set up ship while pumping each others anticipation for the few days ahead. Friday morning 5:30 we began our trek across the lake while scanning as much water as possible for any sign of “striper flopage”. None was seen but the fish computer showed that there was defiantly a very large abundance of shad at the 20-30 foot mark all the way from the south buoy field at Bullfrog all the way to the drop of into the main channel just south of the channel marker in Bullfrog bay. We drift fished the large shallow flat near the middle of the south end of the bay by the channel marker in 30-15 feet of water jigging the bottom while maintaining vision for flopage. We picked up one striper and a hand full of small mouth until about 9:00. We headed lake and fished the Stanton area all the way up to Moki canyon on the north side. Picked up some nicer sized small mouth and a decent walleye jigging at around 20 feet with tube jigs. We ran up into Moki and tried to fish for some small mouth but instead we just wasted gas on the adventure. We headed back to Bullfrog and jigged the flat for a while, should be an interesting sight next year at this time there is going to be one long point from the shallow water markers at Stanton all the way to the center of the south end of Bullfrog if the lakes decline continues at the rate. We jigged and hauled off a few small mouths but not enough to keep us around. We slowly drove around in circles making lunch and watching for boils.

Three bites into my potato salad burrito, simple accommodations for simple fisherman for the weekend, there they are 50 yards in front of us. We dropped our chow and grabbed our which our rods, which are always rigged with 1oz Castmasters, and winged them past the boil. We both drug through the center of the boil and had no luck at pulling a single fish. One cast is all they would allow us and they were back down. So we keeped an eye out for them and fished them here and there as they popped up around us. We could not get any thing to hit!! What are we doing wrong!!! This was around 2:00 on Friday.

Eventually we got bored and went over to the south west point where the bay meets the channel and fished for small mouth. The weather came and gave an entertaining blow from the north while we hid around the corner and watched. We got of the boat and walked around while jigging small 3/16 -1/4 oz tube jigs. It was almost a Smallie every cast. The technique was simple cast wait until the jig hit the bottom and then slowly reel in while twitching the rod endlessly.

Just when we figured that striper fishing was a waste we looked over the point and saw single fish flopping here and there right at the mud line 150 yards off the shore. So we jumped in the boat and head round the corner the give it a try 7:30. Luckily the wind slowed down and we each hauled out about 10 fish each over a 30 minute period until several extremely ignorant jack asses in 3 boats screaming and hollering cut directly over the top of the boil with not even a clue. Boating etiquette people, think about it. After that the fish dispersed and it was over. We stuck around and kept an eye out but nothing happened.

So we waited until sun down and began the night light assault. After reading the success many people have had in the area with lights I was very confident that this would be the way to send us home with fisherman’s elbow. The wind changed direction from the north to the south and we set up an anchor right on the end of the point and positioned the boat so we would be in about 50-70 feet of water. We sat and we observed some huge shad come to the lights. We saw shad and netted a few to check them out, many were in the 3-6 inch range. We continued while drowning anchovies at about 30-50 feet. We sat and we sat and we sat. Wow this sucks nothing for 3 hours. We moved closer into the shore to see what we could do in shallow water. We set up in 30 feet of water and sat some more. We noticed that the shad in shallower water were significantly smaller than the ones in 70-50 feet of water. As we moved in closer the shad got smaller and smaller. Interesting. We eventually got tired of our heads falling into our chests and set off to camp for the night 00:30.

Early morning Saturday saw the same as Friday, tons of shad on the fishometer but no stripers to be seen anywhere. We fished the flat again with no luck and proceeded back over to the channel on the north side of the south west point at the entrance of Bullfrog bay to check things out but saw nothing. We went over to the south side of the halls buoy field and fished the rocks for smallies. We were so tired from Fridays midday basting and the nights excess in boredom that we really dint care much about fishing so we tied up to a empty buoy and stuffed our face with more potato salad burritos and PBJ sandwiches. Living on a 20 foot pontoon boat for the weekend limits what you can bring for grub, could be worse. We decided that the sun would be hotter and make our lives more miserable if we head down lake to jig for bass during the midday. So that’s what we did and it sucked just like Friday did. We eventually went back to the south end point in BF and parked the boat to shore fish for small mouth again while watching for flopage.

About 7:30 bam there they were out in the middle, I preformed the Olympic sprint across rocks and sand to get back to the boat trying not to auger in and break my buddies loomis stick while yelling to get the boat ready to launch. Off we went and we cast into the boil with no luck again with cast masters. DAMN what is going on here? Watching the fish TV I saw that there was a lot of big metering down around 30-50 feet in 170+ of water so I dropped straight down with my castmaster. 1, 2, 3, 4, ..., 21, bump and a miss, 22, bump hook up!!!! Fish on for 30 minutes. It is always fun to haul fish out while other boats around you sit watching the surface with nothing. It was upside down u’s for the both of us the whole time while the others just sat and waited for boils. Yea I think we figured it out. They are deep!!!

We continued this until about 30 minutes after the sun fell below the rocks and then it was over. We could find no more solid activity on the fish computer. We noticed a congregation of boats at west Stanton so we headed over to check it out. People were catching a few fish but we performed the same technique but while casting and we both caught fish every cast. We fished until it was dark and there were no more hits. We jumped back to BF to meter for fish with no readings and then jumped back to the channel north of south west point and saw nothing. The days sun torture delusion set in and we decided to head over and anchor off of the shallow water markers at west Stanton to set up the lights. We set up in about 40 feet of water and turned on the lights. 3 hours and infinite electrons later we shut off the lights asking why we preformed this stupid method two nights in a row and began our night time voyage back to the BF buoy field to sleep for the night. My thoughts on night fishing right now is that with this much food in the water you are basically making sand castles at the beach and the fish really don’t care about the nice congregation of shad you have created, they can get food by just opening there mouths and swimming forward. I think that during times where shad are fewer in numbers or locations where shad are fewer lights have a higher chance of working to pull in fish.

Sunday morning we sat to apply our previous days education and watched the fish computer for good readings. 7:30 bam there they were in 30-40 feet of water right at the channel between the two points on the west side of BFB where the ferry passes through to get to the shore. We both hauled out 15 fish each over a one hour period while chasing good meterings on the fish finder. Not a single boil was ever seen the whole time we caught fish that morning. We caught fish until about 9:00 at what I now call the ferry channels. We ran around and checked the previous days GPS marks on the fish computer to see if we could meter any fish and then set out for the days sun torture. We found refuge on the Miss Adventure for the day while working on the boat and waited until around 4:30 to go meter for fish. My plan was to find shad pockets early and locate areas of interest to watch through out the later afternoon for boils or meterings. We could see small pockets but noting to go get reel excited about until we showed back up at the channel north of south west point, the same place we caught fish on Friday afternoon. We waited and we metered a few single larger readings but could not pull any thing out of them.

We saw a few boats over at west Stanton so we decided to blast across and see what was up, it was two boats from the day before and it looked like they had pretty high hopes but that was about it so we ran back over to the point to check for meterings once more. Sure enough 7:00 they had condensed and it was fish on for an hour. We caught fish right on the bottom every time we dropped. The fish TV looked like it was malfunctioning there was so much activity. Lines back and forth across the screen from the bottom all the way to 30 feet deep in 40-50 feet of water. We attempted to quickly anchor to the shore and let the annoying west wind push us over the fish, I need to remount the minkota, repositioning for fish sucks. Bam like that they were gone. We tried to meter for another 30 minutes but could not see anything of interest. Three sun and fish filled days later we decided it was time to go home but not until we checked the GPS marks one more time. With nothing to see we headed home.

Moral of the story. I have been fishing lake Powell for 20+ years and every trip I learn something new. This is the first time ever that I have caught fish vertical jigging on Powell. To catch fish you cant just limit yourself to what the herd is doing you have to use your tools and stay alert all the time watching birds boaters and surface activity. Following the herd can also be the sure fire way to catch fish as well so make sure to watch other boaters but PLEASE USE COMMON SENSE AND ACT AS IF YOU ARE FISHING FOR DEER, BE COURTEOUS TO OTHERS AT ALL TIMES. Wish more jet skiers read this stuff.

Abridged version

Fish caught.

Two people on a 20 foot pontoon boat for three days. We fished A LOT. Of the 30+ hours we fished probably 4 hours of that were highly productive for stripers, pretty typical. During the basting hours of the midday we fished for small mouth. We caught 60+ Stripers, 20+ Small Mouth, 1 Walleye, and one Catfish on the troll to our surprise.

Areas fished.

Bullfrog bay only, (don’t have the fuel capacity to get to the fish unfortunately or maybe fortunately). The small channel just off the north side of the furthest south west point where Bullfrog bay meets the main channel. The channel is about 80 feet deep just before it drops into the bullfrog creek channel. We caught fish here twice and metered large populations of shad every morning and night.

Next area is what I call the ferry channels, there are two points on the east side of bullfrog bay where the ferry goes to drop off and pick up people. You can see the ferry ramp from this channel. If you watch the fish TV you will see that there are three defined channels between the two points upon which the water can get as shallow as 10 feet. We caught fish between these two points in 30-50 feet of water and further out in about 70 feet of water towards the center of BFB. Watch for diving birds early in the morning before boat traffic disturbs them and watch the fish computer for readings beneath them. West Stanton creek area just watch for the hordes of boats grouped up. Following the herd is often a good way to catch a few fish but please be sure to use some etiquette and don’t just blast up at 50 mph and start getting in every ones way and do not plow though the boil - approach as if they are deer.

Gear used.

Small Mouth: ½ - 1/8 ounce tube jigs. Best luck with smaller sized 3/16-1/4 oz 5-20 feet from shore on the bottom the whole way. Best jig color red, white, and chartreuse. Any time of the day was found to produce fish. Caught several fish over the 1-lb mark and a few pushing over 2 its nice to see some better fish closer to the marinas.

Stripers: ¾ - 1 oz castmasters and hopkins jigging spoons dropped deep and reeled up 10-20 cranks each time before dropping again. Some times jigging full rod length right on the bottom. Don’t bother if you can’t find definite schools on a fish finder and don’t be confused by shad schools. Best schools were found generally in 30 feet of water. Early morning we metered underneath groups diving birds before the boat traffic broke them up with good readings about 50% of the time. Best fishing was around 7:00 both morning and evening. Watch for boils but don’t limit your self only to boils often the fishing is better beneath the boils, be prepared to fish deep after the boil has dropped. Heavy jigs and spoons were the best way to fish and give you the option to head to the bottom unlike top water baits. Fish as heavy as possible so you can drop fast to the bottom without waiting. Lighter spoons like dare devils tend to flutter too much and waste time when trying to get to the fish same goes for swimming jigs. Bottom line fish finder, not sure on the model number. Magellan GPS interfaced to the fish finder. Was a definite aid in marking metered fish and helped us relocate the school during windy conditions. I wish I had the trolling motor this trip would have been of big assistance to fight the wind while jigging deep schools.

Things to watch for.

Diving birds in the morning. Don’t bother with large groups of birds you are looking for the spread out packs of 10-15 birds that are diving. The large groups that are sitting in coves are just hanging out and we noticed no activity around these groups. In the evenings watch for these same diving birds but keep and eye on where they are flying to. They will start to mobilize around 6:00-6:30 and you will see them flying low to the lake. Keep and eye on where these birds are going and go check out with a fish finder what they are landing on. We found two schools doing this Sunday evening. Use a depth finder in the early evenings and try to find shad schools so you know where to look for boils or deeper schools later in the evening. We stared around 4:30 and pinpointed 4 areas of interest one of which paid off later.

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Date Received: August 26, 2004 - Leonard Wiggins and Family Paonia Colorado

Fished from late Friday the 21 until Tuesday morning - Friday till early Sunday morning there were four of us - my two sons Nathan and Lukas, and our Nieghbor Jesse.

Friday night - Fished sporadic boils in Stanton - 6 stripers - two smallies. Lots of boats

Saturday - Early fished Sporadic boils in Stanton - 4 more strippers - and a smallie - lots of boats, most did not have electric motors. Hard to take - headed up lake. Found a few active fish in an alcove between MM 107 and 108 - east side. 2 more stripers - 4 more smallies - one was 14.5 inches. Should have stayed there. Went out in search of boils - none found. went back to Halls house boat bouys for some night fishing. Ran into Kevin. We had meet in the mid 80's at Pelican Lake fishing for big bluegills. When I introduced myself he recognized my me. We both originate from the same area in Kentucky and both of us came out west to work in the mines. He gave us some pointers on the how-to's of night fishing. We sat and watched him and the house boat on the other side of us catch several fish. We ended up with 6 for the night. If we could have figured out how to hook them we could have had many more. We missed lots of bites and had lots of snags on cables below us. Around midnight the wind came up pretty bad, and we got out of there first chance we got. I think that I am going to try circle hooks on a 2' leader and a casting sinking next time. They did not hit the bait like they do in the daylight for us? I wish that I had asked Kevin where he had tried fishing while I was by him because the next day we went all the up past Farley, and he had just made the trip that day.

Sunday fished for boils in Stanton and around toward Bullfrog bay. Had motor problems with the big motor - would not start. Managed to catch 4 more stripers. Went back and cleaned fish and sent the to older boys back to school. Lukas and I headed for White and Farley. Stopped at 107 again and caught a few more smallies and 2 stripers. Should have stayed there. Went up two miles above Farley hitting every canyon on the way. Nothing boiling anywhere. Saw one other boat, he was trolling. He had caught one in white canyon. Tried night fishing in the mouth of white. 6 cats - 2 small stripers.

Monday - Up at the crack of dawn looking. Down to the horn and back looking in every canyon three times - Nothing. Fish were as thick on the screen as I have ever seen, As long as you had at least 50 feet of water, especially in White. Water clearity was 1.5 to 2.5 feet in most areas up lake. The back of White was really muddy. You can not circle Battleship rock anymore - have to go around and can't go much past that. There is a hugh mud flat that runs way out from the south side of Trychate. Water is only 8 feet deep almost halfway to the other side.

Headed back down into Good Hope. Looked around till around noon - Nothing. Played on the beach - picked up some trash - cooked lunch. Saw 6 chuckars drinking out of spring. Tried to catch shad in a cove with a dip net. Noticed I said tried. Would have made for some interesting watching. Lots of gravel bars way out into the lake in and around Good Hope. water clearity 3 feet upper end - 5 feet lower end of good hope. Headed back down lake stopped at MM 107 2:30 stripers boiling against the bank in a small cut. Caught 15 in about 1.5 hours. Could have caught more had I not had to take a hook out of a finger. Happens about every time. I am getting better about getting them out. Spent two minutes and found gaff. Decide to stay there for the night. Did not find another boil that night. Talked to some houseboaters who said that the fish would "go crazy everywhere" about three times a day. Wish I had talked to them the first day I saw them there. Tried night fishing. Could not find a good place to tie off that had water over 28 feet. Caught lots of catfish, no stripers.

Tuesday - Got up early - looked for fish. Ran back and forth between Cedar and Knowles. Found fish right at camp at 8:00 - caught 12. Went looking again. Lukas spotted some ravens back in a small cut that you could not see from the main channel. - Stripers everywhere and backed into a cove. They would circle out see the boat and go back in. Caught 22 more. Left when we had agreed, 9:30, so that we could get Lukas back to school on Wednesday.

The nice thing about where we ended up fishing was that we were the only ones fishing these boils. There are many nice beach spots to camp between Knowles and Cedar canyons. The big alcove straight across from the lower end of Tapestry wall has lots of shade, fish could be caught there most any time of day.

fish totals - 73 stripers most where like footballs and pulled like Fords. Caught one skinny one? - 7 small mouth - 1 large mouth - 15 cats. Biggest fish where 25.5 inches. I am guessing they would have weighed close to 6 pounds. Most where 22 inches and would weigh around 4 pounds. Caught two small ones, 16 inches. They where really fat also.

Baits. Best bait was a 3" skitter pop in a shad color. Dark gray back and a white belly. They would hit this with out moving it. A 4" of the same color worked well also. They would go down for a while they would come back up and hit it. I was fishing a spook junior in the same color as the skitter pop. When they where boiling hard they would hit this, or anything else. When Lukas started kicking my but, I swithed to the skitter pop. A white speckled 4 or 5 inch jig/grub worked well when they would go down also. Other deep baits that we had caught fish under boils with in the past, like rattle traps did not seem to work well this trip?

When night fishing we fould that they would hit the anchovies, but a real shad would get more bites, was hit harder, and catch more fish. Where lucky enough to have Lukas catch us several around the light with our net.

Some things that I learned - stop and ask people - especially skiers and jet skiers about boils. They cover a lot of water, and are not concerned about you catching their fish. A striper will come half way out of the water to suck shad out of the rocks. Wish I had taken a picture. Saw this 5 - 6 times. Reminded me of the shark on Jaws biting at the old fishing captain as the boat was sinking. If you plan to night fish, get a lantern and a way to hang it over the side of you boat. Preferably 3 to 4 feet away from the boat. A cover/reflector to keep it out of you eyes is nice too. A paddle, some elecetrical tape, a rod holder, some bungie straps, and a peice of heavy duty aluminum foil will work, but you may need your paddle, and it take a whiel to assemble in the dark. For those of you the cook over a camp fire, a dry tumble weed makes great fire tender. Watch for the briars.

One thing that bothers me. We picked up a small bag worth of trash about every beach we stopped on. I have a small boat and can't haul a lot. We also picked up trash all the way out of Stanton Creek along the road. What is with these people.

I enjoy reading all of your stories, and have gained many valuable bits of information from this sight. I hope some of you get something out of our experiences.

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Date Received: August 31, 2004 - Justin Kimball

Shane Johnson and I caught these Stripers between 0600 and 1000 hours the morning of July 26th, 2004 at Halls. The boils were amazing. We released near 50 Stripers and Small Mouth.

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Date Received: September 13, 2004 - Marty Peterson

Arrived Bullfrog late afternoon on Sept. 10th. Richard Snow and I boated around Bullfrog Bay and Stanton looking for Striper boils and for likely looking schools on the graph. Found Stripers along the channel edge in the Stanton area. Spooned up a few in water 24 to 70 feet deep. Also caught Catfish but none were very large. Saw a fisherman troll up some Stripers in the same area. He said he was using, if I remember right, a Stump Jumper, fast, on Mono line.

At dark we tied up for night fishing, in between several other groups in the Halls Bouy field. Within a half hour with only 2 Stripers in the boat, we were invited over to fish next to a houseboat where lots of Stripers were being caught. We found the Stripers to be hitting very softly and I could not develop the touch to hook them. But Richard and our host caught 20 or so each, over the next 4 hours. The biggest 4.6 pounds I think. They were using jigs with anchovy. Frustrated with feeling a hit each time I lowered my bait and doing little more than reeling the line back up to put on a new piece of bait, I decided to put on a circle hook with no weight. I managed about 5.

In the morning we looked for boils again. None found. We were able to catch a few more Stripers near the island out from Stanton. Again I used circle hooks. We watched more Stripers get trolled up also. Then we went in for a nap.

Five P.M. found us again looking again. Nothing to speak of. Then a windstorm came up and pushed us off the water. We were glad we took shelter. Late we set up in fifty feet of water and night fished. Caught a few.

Morning of the 12th we fished with no success except Catfish, none with very good fillets. But the fisherman trolling, he was doing well. Also saw a few fish caught on the channel side of the "Stanton Island". We tried trolling with no success. Used Rapalas, Rattletraps etc. Several people told us that the Smallmouth fishing was good. We never tried it. Not enough time, as usual.

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Date Received: September 17, 2004 - Cal Rowe

Subject: Bullfrog Trip 9/6 - 9/12 04

What a week, virtually no wind for a change. We caught these stripers tied up in the Hall buoy field close to the covered boat slips I believe. Buoy 202 to be exact.

We were fishing with a green submersible light which was down to a depth of approx. 20'. Lots of bait fish. We were fishing with a half of a anchovy at a depth of between 35 and and 60 feet and fish were being caught in that range. I was using 20lb Fire line and a 2 - 3 ft leader which was also Fire line with a barrel swivel above and a 1 ounce weight. I am not a night person but I convinced myself that if I was going to catch stripers I would have to change my habits. For 2 nights of fishing and we were out for a total of 12 hours, the 3 of use caught a total of 48 stripers. Not bad for 3 rookies wouldn't you say? Saturday night we couldn't get out because of the blow and didn't want to take the chance of another coming up after we got out there. Stayed in camp and ate salami and cheese with crackers, salsa and chips and a few good cocktails and reminisced about the great week we had just had.

We also did quite a bit of jigging on Moki Wall but to no avail. Lots of fish deep and we were hanging between 5 - 15 feet off the wall. Someone told us that we needed to be right on the wall. I will have to try that on the next trip but only if the weather cooperates.

We caught 21 smallmouth over the first couple of days along with a few catfish. We still used melon colored jigs with 1/4 to 3/8 ounce jig heads. All of our bass fishing was in the back of the canyons in the shade as much as possible.

We wasted an awful lot of gas chasing boils from Bullfrog to Good Hope Bay and then the following day from Bullfrog to Rincon and beyond, and did not see one boil. We were out before daylight just to clarify.

I am so pumped after this last trip that I need to get back before the cold sets in.

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Date Received: September 17, 2004 -Mike Bevelhimer

We just returned from a week at Halls/Bullfrog (Hotwheels is probably pulling into his driveway about now). We didn't keep a real accurate count but here's the numbers (reported on the low side): Two fishermen; Seven days; 150+ stripers; 500+ pounds, live weight; 180+ pounds of fillets (You can add these to the North rally totals, if you wish).

We fished Moki Wall to Rincon and found stripers wherever we went but most were within one mile of the launch-ramp. The largest stripers (many six pounders) were in the mouth of Halls Creek Bay at the bay-end of the narrows. These fish were there every evening but moving fast and hard to stay on top of. The most fish were in the mouth of Bullfrog Bay. Directly north of the Halls houseboat field is a green buoy that is, actually, in shallow water. This buoy is on a very large flat that extends out from near the mouth of Stanton Creek, past the rock markers, then circles back toward the old ferry launch ramp. All along the drop-off of this flat the stripers are holding. Depending on the time of day and their mood they will be from 40 - 110 feet. Find the schools and drop jigging spoons through them, then reel up as fast a you can turn the crank. And HOLD ON!!!! We had the most consistent catch rate with 2 ounce "Wally Lures" but 1 1/2 oz. were working well too. Another fellow was having fair luck using Hopkins spoons. Not the "Shorty's, but the long thin ones. When they are HOT they will hit on the way down as well as on the retrieve. These fish are running 4 - 5 pounds but there are smaller fish as well, and up on the shallows are many yearlings. Mostly it seems, the deeper the school, the larger the stripers.

We found boils of very short duration on the points at the mouth of Stanton at first light (long before dawn) and these fish could be jigged up after the boils ended.

In the other areas of the lake we caught stripers but the fishing was slower and fewer fish. However, everywhere we went the pattern was the same: Find a drop-off, follow it's edge until you graph stipers and/or shad, start spooning.

Have a great SHAD rally and good luck to you all. If you have half as much fun as Hotwheels & I you won't be able to stop grinning.

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Date Received: September 20, 2004 -Jim Morrill

Jim shows off the walleye he caught just before starting his duties at the Rincon as apprentice electrofishing helper of the best kind. He was working the rocky points near buoy 77 with a crank bait just at dusk.

We jigged up stripers at Slick Rock Canyon mouth the next morning and then he spent the remainder of the week jigging stripers in Padre Bay. He was worn out by catching fish when he went home last Friday.

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Date Received: September 20, 2004 -Lake Dancer

Gary and I launched on Friday Sept 17, at Bullfrog. I did unfortunately find the unmarked rock that was mentioned by one of the wordlings who warned of it and others wrote back stating that there were no problems at the Bullfrog launch. I have an out-drive that doesn't trim and that was the problem. The wind was blowing and I didn't see the rock. Damage wasn't major and was able to do ok with a chipped scag. We went immediately over to Stanton Creek where the boils allegedly had stopped and saw 5 boils before night fall. They were small and didn't last long, but.....they WERE. No fish made it into the boat but the adrenalin was pumping.

We then found our way to the "bouy field" and spend the night catching striper and cats. I retired at 2:00am on Saturday and Gary ( who is not yet ready to retire when fish are biting) did not sleep a wink. He had them hitting doubles most of the time and when I was awake we had 'em hitting triples at times. It was a hoot, two in the net at a time. I had never seen such calisthenics as one foot on a pole, each of a reeling ours, line twisted between all three....I am sure many of you have experienced this but I have led such a sheltered life before I met Gary, it was new to me. When the sun came up (notice the pic of Gary with the sun rising in the back ground)

there were striper every where.

Every time I woke up in the night Gary said "don't look down". The carnage was everywhere. Two big coolers were full and fish were on the seats and floor. My boat looked like the wreck of the Hesperus.

We had such a good time it didn't matter. The boat got cleaned out good when the rain fell all night Saturday night and Sunday which curtailed our fishing hopes. We spent Saturday tied off at Stanton Creek, the sight of the much celebrated "North Rally"....(with emphasis on celebrated") Gary cleaned fish and then crashed. The rest of the Wordlings enjoyed visiting and meeting new friends. We had a great time even though the winds were merciless. My boat blew off its tie off with the rocks it was tied two pulling loose. Many thanks to the guys who helped us rescue it.

Speaking of winds and blowing sand our fish fry experienced a new spice ......sand! The Wordlings are sure good cookers as we all enjoyed the side dishes and the great fish. Gary's and my count for the day we fished was 51 striper ranging up to 5lbs and most were between 20 and 24 inches long. Gary (who will from hence be referred to as Gary the Great) did real good to get them all filleted and wasn't going to measure and weight ALL of them. Thanks TC for the fish fry. We enjoyed it all. This trip my boat became officially re-named "The Lakedancer"

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Date Received: September 27, 2004 - Cranky Granny

Senior citizens, my husband and I, have been reading everything on your Powell pages. Got real excited and arrived at Bullfrog Wednesday afternoon. Talked to everyone in the campground and they reported no fish. Finally at dark some people came in and they had fished hard all day, caught 6 stripers. We went out early Thursday and had no luck. The 6-striper group fished hard all that day and only one striper. No one on the dock and no one in the campground had any luck that day. Had health problem and had to head back to civilization. That was a long trip from Vernal! Beautiful red walls, coyote chorus, but fishing seemed to be very poor. You probably won't post this on the web, perhaps the only e-mails posted are from the very few who have some success.

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Date Received: October 10, 2004 - Marty Peterson

Arrived at Bullfrog 5:30 pm Thursday 10/7. Headed to Halls Creek after seeing no action in Bullfrog Bay. No boils seen there either. At dark we tied up to an empty buoy in the Halls Buoy Field. We only had a small 2 foot green underwater light, small white light and a lantern. Shad came in by 7:45 pm.

At 8:00 almost exactly, two Stripers caught on two tries. Using a 1/4 oz jig head with small piece of anchovy. By 2:00 am the two of us had boated 38 Stripers and nearly half as many catfish. But the wind was variable and we had trouble with the underwater cables. So we lost many other fish. The 3-4 lbs Stripers can pull enough drag to cause trouble with the cables in addition to the wind drifting the boat over one. The majority of the fish were caught around 40 feet deep. And were not fussy about line or type of hook. Tried Fireline because the cables were messing with our mono, and still the fish would bite.

About 20 of our Stripers were smaller, but fat, 14"-16". The rest 3-4 lb. I seemed to have no trouble this trip setting the hook properly after feeling a strike. We chummed moderately with anchovies initially.

We slept in a nearby cove and after waking about eight in the morning cast out a line with old anchovy. Catfish within moments. Then again and again. So caught catfish for a couple hours in the morning then off to the fish cleaning station and a nap.

On the water again about 5pm on Friday with no wait to launch and no one having any trouble with the facility as far as we could see, we headed out to the channel near the first green buoy towards Halls from Bullfrog. Met up with Howard Oatman, started talking and asked him to join us for nightfishing. Then a small boil erupted nearby. I had an anchovy on a jig in the water while we talked and Howard's boat did too. As we cast topwaters toward the boil, it dived under us, because we both hooked Stripers on the dangling anchovies. But that was it.

We set up early in the Buoy Field excited for more good nightfishing. Again by 7:45 we had Shad and by 8 pm had a Striper on. In the meantime the wind was calm and variable and so we could not set up with two boats. So Howard went 2 or 3 buoys in toward shore. We could see at least 4 big green underwater lights at work in the area and several other boats with lights, maybe fishing. We ended up with only 10 Stripers by the time we quit at midnight after an hour without a strike. Howard's boat 14 they told us and they complained that the strikes were very light. We ended up working a lot harder for fewer fish the second night. But only landed two small Striper, the rest larger. And only a couple of Catfish. We definitely had fewer Shad. The weather was nicer also.

Back at our camp we set out our light out the back of the boat. Shad came in but we landed only one Striper, it was over 4 lbs and 1 Catfish, over 5 lbs. That was it. And in the morning, thinking we could duplicate our success of the morning before, we fished again for Catfish and did not catch even one. Before heading home Saturday morning we trolled around Stanton a little but were unable to find any schools before we had to leave.

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Date Received: October 19, 2004 - Ralph Johnston

This was a very interesting trip. I was there for 10 days and didn't catch one fish during the day time. I trolled, fast jigged, dunked chovies, nothing. BUT the night time was a different story. THe bite started at 8PM and lasted until 10 or 11PM and sometimes midnight. I personally caught 90 nice stripers. There was no moon. We used a crappie light, anchovies at 50 feet all week. I want to thank Howard "Hooligan" for inviting me to fish with him one night. I had only night fished, for the first time, the night before. I'm sold.. Night fishing is for me. It was great to meet Howard, David, Jerry, Terry and George. Thanks guys. I have no idea how many the whole group caught, probably 250.

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Date Received: November 1, 2004 - Dave Huffaker, Bountiful, UT

I decided to take my chances with the weather and go to Powell over UEA while the kids were out of school. The weather was both good and bad.

FYI - gas was $2.16 in Hanksville for regular, $2.14 at Ticaboo Conoco. It pays to take some gas with you. We took several gas cans from the Salt Lake area at $1.90 for both the truck and the boat. We arrived at Bullfrog at 1:00 am Wednesday morning, camped in Stanton. Loaded up and launched at 9:00 am. Only 5 other trucks parked on the ramp and 3 up in the parking lot. No problem launching, plenty of slope if you back off the main pavement to the right looking out at the lake. Water temp at the ramp was 63. Headed down lake to the Rincon and set up camp.

We fished all day with only one 15 inch SMB landed on a sammy. We tried jigging on numerous schools of stripers with only one on briefly. Lots of shad schools in deeper water both in the main lake and in the coves, especially in the cove where the floating restroom is. We didn't see any shad in shallow water all trip except under our light while night fishing.

We went back to camp by 5:00 pm for dinner so we could be ready to night fish with the new hydro glow light. We wanted to tie up to the floating restroom but the wind was blowing hard and my spotlight somehow broke since the last trip so we tried to anchor in the cove we were camped in. We put out the light but could not get the anchor to hold in the wind so we quit after a half hour or so with no sign of shad or stripers.

It started raining at about 8:00 Wednesday night and didn't stop all night and it rained off and on all day Thursday. Again we fished all day with out much success. We tried almost every cove in the area with spoons and tried trolling crankbaits both on the downriggers and off the planer boards without a bite. We ended up fishing topwater for LMB & SMB in the coves and caught a few SMB in the 10-15 inch range, and 1 LMB about 14". Again we headed back to camp for dinner so we could try to night fish again even though the skies were clearing and there was a full moon.

This time the wind wasn't bad so we went down and tied up to the floating restroom and put out the light. Then I realized I had left the anchovies in the other cooler back at camp so we had no bait. I thought we would wait a few minutes to see if any shad came in and try to snag some for bait. We had a few shad start coming in within about 15 minutes so I put on a treble hook and soon snagged up a few and put them in the cooler on ice. We rigged up two rods and dropped them down to about 40 feet. We tried for two hours or so with only one missed bite even though we had some shad in the area. Maybe it was the full moon but the stripers (or the shad) never seemed to come in very well so we gave up and went back to camp.

Friday morning dawned clear and cool. A typical post frontal blue bird day with very little wind. It warmed up into the 60's by afternoon and t-shirts were comfortable. I thought fishing would be tough but we did better than I thought we would. We finally caught a few stripers jigging wallylure spoons in about 60 feet in several of the small coves. They were all in the 3-5 pound range, nice and healthy and great fighters. They were hitting very softly on the drop. You really had to watch your line or you would miss them. We didn't feel any of them hit. We either had the line go slack before it should have on the drop and we set or they were just there when you went to jig back up.

We decided to head back up towards Bullfrog and fish for SMB & LMB in Halls bay. We did quite well on spinnerbaits and rattletraps in the murkier water in the backs of the coves. We landed a dozen or so SMB up to 15 inches and one very nice LMB that was 19" that's in the attached picture.

Even on a Friday of UEA weekend there were only maybe two dozen trucks total on the ramp at Bullfrog. The place seemed deserted. I've seen more people than that in January before. Water temp was 61-62 in Bullfrog bay on Friday the 29th.

Anyway we had a great time once again despite the bad weather the first two days. Catching could have been better but given the full moon and the weather we did alright.

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Date Received: November 8, 2004 - G D Beckett

Thanks again for the advice Wayne. As promised, here is our bleak fishing report, but a great outing! We fished around the coves of Rincon, Iceberg, & Slick Rock. There were lots of fish on the scope, mostly hanging around 60 - 80 ft where the water was deep enough. There were no surface signs of activity short of the rare surface splash; no shad, no boils, no birds. I was able to trick up a good striper & smallmouth (iron & hologram plastic), but the others were not as lucky. We threw just about everything & the kitchen sink at them. Iron, plastics, powerbait, diving rattlers, surface stuff, trolling, slow trolling bait, chum chovies, you name it. What we weren't able to do was the thing most desired: run the lake looking for active fish signs. We had steering problems associated with the early deep freeze up here in the mountains. So by the time we went back to Bullfrog for help, couldn't find any, duct-tape rigged a backup solution, etc., we didn't have a much fishing & running time as we would have liked. Always next time.

So, there you have it. An outstanding time at the Lake, but not too many fish. Don't know how other boaters did, but the few around us were just as skunked, so maybe is wasn't soley our defective fishing techniques. Take care, & we'll be back soon!

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December 13, 2004 - Dennis Garmann, Junction Utah 12-8-04 We night fished at Halls house boat field and caught 12 stripers from 2 to 7 lbs. Also one walleye. Next morning we trolled along the island West of house boats with no luck. So went to Halls creek. I like to troll in less than 50 feet of water. I was using a Cordell Spot and stump jumper with lead line which gets down 30 ft. There were more stripers just up from the trees than I have seen all year. Cant figure that out. Had double hook ups several times. Caught 12 more huge stripers they are sure in good shape. Had two grocery sacks full of fillets. O Happy DAY. I have been seeing real small shad at night but at Halls they were nice big shad. I thought that was my last trip for the winter but not sure now. I never seen striper fishing this good so late in the season. This has been an unusual year for stripers. I have enjoyed 5 trips this fall.

December 14, 2004 - Marty Peterson Summary: night fished Halls Buoy Field Friday night 12/10/04. Three of us caught 40 Stripers. Largest, 28” 8.3 pounds. Two at 26” 5.9 pounds. Several more over 5 pounds. Second night, 12/11, two of us landed 20 Stripers. Several in the 5+ range. All on anchovies and jig heads or circle hooks.

Arrived in Bullfrog Friday evening. Launched with no problems. Found that the newest Lake level has made the ride to Halls a little longer. Need to stay in the main channel. Basically straight line from Bullfrog Ramp to Halls Ramp. Cannot shortcut towards Moki anymore. So be careful if traveling at night without prior day scout.

We set up in the Buoy Field as near the main channel across from Stanton Creek as possible. This was right at dark. We set out our new killer fish light (new product similar to the other 4 foot green lights but extra durable). By 6pm we started catching fish. Had a couple break our lines. Combination of aggressive fish and poor line and drags. After getting rid of any line previously touched by cable and back-reeling, we never lost another. Used quarter ounce and lighter jig heads with piece of anchovy.

Tried some frozen shad. Shad did not work as well for anyone as the anchovies the first night. About 6:30 Richard Snow caught his new personal best Striper of 8.3 pounds. Had to break out the scale for this one. He had on a green jig head, and 10 lb P-line. The Shad had started to gather around the light by this time. They did not get thick enough to darken the graph for another hour or so. By 7 or so we started to enjoy condensation on everything. But with the fish biting and being dressed right this did not bother us too much till morning. The fish generally were biting rather gently. Several just took the bait and self hooked. But most needed the hook set and only barely made the rod tip move. Cary Hill who had wrapped up nice and comfy in a sleeping bag never hooked any after falling asleep but landed 4 or 5 the first hours while awake. The fishing slowed around 11. And our smallest fish were after that. We quit around midnight. Saturday we talked with someone who started fishing around 4 am that morning and caught some. We camped on shore nearby to avoid traveling far in the dark. The condensation made for a damp night. In the morning we semi dried out in the sun while filleting fish. Also caught two 3 pound catfish there. After putting 84 fillets on ice we spent the day searching for Striper schools. Looked in Moki and around Stanton. None found. Did catch a couple of SMB on anchovies. Set up early in the Buoy Field on Saturday night. Cary caught one and missed several other Stripers before dark even. After that no more bites until 7 or so. By this time we had maybe twice as many shad circling as the night before. The catching was slower this second night. I tried shad again and had about the same success as with anchovy. The fish seemed less aggressive. The rod tip needed more attention. I tried several line and hook combinations. For me, 8 pound Vanish and 10 pound Stren line seemed to work fine. Some green 8 pound XT did not entice as well this time. Had equal success with a circle hook or jig head. Enjoyed the meteors a little better the second night, as a passing boats wake, right at dark sent Cary’s lantern overboard. We were also better prepared for the condensation. The bites slowed again around 11 and only landed one between then and midnight. So headed to camp. Had even learned that putting a plastic bag over the porta potti back at camp can increase comfort levels later. In the morning we semi dried our stuff, filleted fish and went home. Left the boat. Going back down in January. Had fish for dinner at work tonight. Wonderful stuff.

December 21, 2004 - Dennis Garmann My son and family came up from San Diego and wanted to go striper fishing so just had to go back one more time. Arrived at lake monday night dec 20 just as the sun was going behind hills. Headed for Halls house boat field but didn't graph many fish so we rigged up at the same spot I did so well last time. About 2 hours later we had 0 stripers and no shad came into our light so at 7 PM we untied and I said lets go back to Bullfrog Marina and see if we can catch some crappie. When we arrived at covered slips we tied up under an over head light and right away started graphing large amounts of fish. My grand daughter caught the first striper a few minutes later and it was one hook up after another. We caught 16 stripers and no crappie. What a great time. We had lost more fish then we caught on those dreaded cables that run everywhere so might have to go to heavier line. Water was 60 feet and fish were from 30 to bottom and no shad came in at all I guess they all went to the happy hunting ground in deep water. Stopped fishing at 12 midnight and went back to dock and bedded down for the night.

December 17, 2004 - Dennis Garmann Went down to bull frog again this week and back to halls creek, there were fish there but couldn't get them to take anything. Some guy said he had been fishing for 4 days and only caught 10 fish. real slow. So went night fishing at halls boat field And caught 15 real nice big stripers, up to 7 lb. O HAPPY day Shad came in to my lights and i caught some with treble hook, just snagging them. They were nice big shad 4 - 4.5 inches long. Big fat stripers, can't wait to go back. Yes it was a little cold but i hardly notice.

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December 31, 2004 - Ron Hepner

Fishing Report for Dec 27 Thru Dec 30. First off I want to wish Happy New Year to everyone. Bill and I just returned from Bullfrog where we had a wonderful three days of fishing. The 8 hours of driving was well worth it. We arrived Monday and after getting settled down in the Stanton Creek area we ventured out to try some night fishing. We did not know the area very good so we stayed close to camp. We tried it for an hour and caught one fish each - one nice five pound and a 2 ½ pound fish. Bill was not feeling the best so we called it a night.

With the full moon we expected things to be slow so and Bill was not feeling the best so we figured we would check out the area around Bullfrog in case he started to feel worse. We decided to experiment with the JP rigs Kent taught me how to make and use. We didn’t start until 8:30 but I used a 3 oz weight on one pole and a 4 oz on another pole one at about 30 feet down and the other at 40 feet down. Bill decided to use the down rigger and set it at 30 feet. He took the small weight off and attached the JP rig directly to the cannon ball.

I was going to shoot for 70 foot of water to troll in but the bottom changed so much and so fast we had to work really hard to keep from hitting the bottom a lot. We started catching fish right away and they were all in the 5 to 6 lb range. It was great. We spent a lot of time figuring out how to position everything so that we had a routine. Simple things like where to put the hooks that needed to be baited, how to place everything in the boat so we could keep up with the fishing. It took quit a while to tire the fish down. It was a blast. By the time we made it to the marina our cooler was full. It only took 7 fish to fill the sucker up. They were longer than the cooler. We had to head back to camp to take care of the fish and change to the 55 gallon cooler.

We made a place in the rocks to put the fish carcasses until we could haul them out with us. After soaking up the sun and beautiful weather we went out again and did not get 10 feet from shore and the crows were into the fish carcasses. A minute later a coyote grabbed one and was heading back into the tumble weeds. We fished until dark and had a great time. I quit using the second pole because we could not keep up with the action of two poles and rebaiting all the time. The only thing that could have made the day better would have been if Bill would have been feeling better.

It got dark really fast so we had a trick finding our way back to camp. The clouds moved in and boy was it dark. With a spot light everything looked the same. A friend lent me his GPS so it helped us find our way. It rained all night and Bill was miserable but fishing was at our doorstep so he got up despite the way he felt. By the time we got the fish taken care of and set for a wet day it was late getting out on the water. We had 20 crows and 3 coyotes watching us taking care of the fish this day. Everything was muddy and we were 20 pounds heavier by the time we tried to head out because of mud on the boots. With it being so dark all night I though it would be a great day of fishing especially after being spoiled the day before.

I had high expectations for nonstop action. We decided to stick with what was working so we worked on refining our approach. I decided that I was not catching any more or less than Bill so I started using the down rigger. Things were a little slower and the fish were smaller than the day before. They were hitting differently. We were missing a few fish and had established some areas were we were always getting fish or hits. I could not figure out how a fish could get the bait off of the hook and not get a hook in him. I was busy all day but we only landed 10 fish. I could not get my hands dry. It rained all day and when the wind picked up out of the west Bill wanted to get warm so we quit at 2:00.

We had found a favorite area around the south west end of the house boats. I learned the hard way that when the rigs get roughed up that it was time to retire them or loose them. Despite our efforts to keep the boat clean, the floor was red. Bill wanted to hit the sleeping bag to see if he could shake the cold a little, so we were in bed by 7:00.

By 5:00 AM I had bed sores and talked him into going out early. I learned that you have to be set up better than we were to troll in the dark It was really tough. It seemed that every time we caught a fish near the main channel it was a small fish and that was the case for the first half hour in the dark. We drug one around and could not see the rod move and of course he managed to tangle up with the other line. We were used to having the line ripping out for 50 feet after the first hit. Trying to take care of that in the dark and keep track of where we were proved to be quite a chore. The wind started to blow from the North then from the east then the north again finally settling on a constant south wind. By 8 AM we had 10 fish. It was a beautiful day except for the wind. It was tough trying to keep things slow enough to catch fish.

We found fish just about everywhere. Some areas proved to be more productive than others but the fish were more abundant in the deep water. We caught more and bigger fish at 40 feet down than at 30 feet on Thursday. I saw fish come from 90 feet down and slam into our rigs at 40 feet down. The JP rig was dynamite in our book. We caught 21 fish on Thursday all but three over 4 pounds the biggest being 6.5 lbs. And 26 inches long. I know I need an electric fillet knife for the next trip. If Bill would have been feeling better and we could have fished like we normally do I think we could have easily doubled the number of fish we caught.

We had to chain up to get out of the mud in Stanton Creek. If it is going to rain stay back on the hard packed path. It had a day to dry out so most of it was just fine but as you get closer to the water it turns to muck with a little rain.

Oh one more thing that we learned about the marina is that the crow at the dock is very good at living out of boats. Before I made it to the end of the dock he was in the boat. I put a hat on my bread and he found that in about 10 seconds and was having his way with it before I got back to the boat. I put everything under coats and stuff and was going to head up the rest rooms and after going about 100 yard decided to take a turn and wait for Bill in the boat, by the time I got back to the boat that crow had pulled the coat off of Bills grocery sack tore open the side and was feasting on his sandwich rolls. I hope to try some of the other methods you all have shared with me on my next trip down. Thanks for all the help. Sorry about no pictures Bill and I are real mad about that oversight on our part.

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January 3, 2005 - Grant, Tony and Marie Foster

	The pictures are from a trip we took this last August. We encountered a boil in a little cove about 3/4 mile above Stanton Creek on the north side. This cove was not more than 30 yards across and less than 2 feet deep. Marie was snapping pictures while Tony and I fished the boil. The pictures are scanned from prints, so the color is not the best. In the picture of the boil, you can see the shad up on the shore with a striper clearing the water in the right hand side of the picture. This boil was within 24 inches of the shoreline.
	These stripers were on a low carb diet and preferred plastic bait.
	Also included is a picture of one of the ever present chipmunks.

January 14, 2005 - Duane Hone, West Valley City. We fished out of Bull Frog Wednesday January 5th afternoon, Thursday 6th and Friday 7th. The group was mainly Salt Lake City Firemen on their yearly Powell trip. They were kind enough to allow us outsiders to join in. There were about 7 boats. We fished Hansen, Moki, Halls Marina, Halls Creek and Bullfrog. Fish were marked in all areas tried. The fishing was best in 35 to 40 Feet of water. Water temp. was from 46 to 51.7 degrees. Weather breezy, some sun, and temperatures in the 40s. A cold front was coming in. Friday was a beautiful day until about 5 pm when it started to snow. The fishing was slow, our total catch was about forty fat Stripers averaging about three pounds. Our experience verified your lessons learned January 2004. The fish were easily spooked. Two or three boats catching fish another boat moving in with electric motor often put the fish down. We used jig, anchovy and John Pauley rigs. The jig anchovy combination was fished on bottom.

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January 10, 2005 - Marty Peterson

	Summary: Between 5 boats we landed somewhere around 100 Stripers in 3 days. Not “hot” fishing, but then it is January. The majority of the fish were caught on “JP Rigs”. The back of Bullfrog Bay is holding a lot of Stripers. A few fish also came out of Hansen and Halls Creek. No fish found in Moki. Night fishing was slow from the slip area at Bullfrog. The wind and weather at night kept us from trying other spots. The weather during the day was mostly tolerable but windy.
	Richard Snow and I pulled into Bullfrog late afternoon January 5th. Coming out of Salt Lake we had snow till just west of Price. But the roads were plowed pretty well by the time we left work and got on the road. Two other boats in our party left town early and were on the Lake already. When they came in they reported to us that they picked up somewhere around a dozen Stripers and one Walleye on jigs and rigs that first afternoon. Launching was fine using some care and the water was amazingly clear considering the rain of the day before. The ramp and parking lots were bare of any other vehicles.
	We moved into the houseboat arranged for the trip and set up for night fishing the slip area. Four lights worth. The lights did their job of pulling in plankton. Clouds of plankton. We started rigging up jigheads with anchovy to fish with. My boat was near Doug Miller’s (our local fishing and hunting guru, and host of one of the best outdoors shows on television). So I say “hey try one of these 1/8th or ¼ ounce jigs”. He agrees and puts one on his line. I am still rigging up as he lowers his bait into the dark waters. “Zing” the pole tip dips and drag starts to unwind. Again he proves he can just plain catch fish. The first of the evening. But the hazards of cables force him to muscle the large fish in just a little harder than maybe he normally would and wouldn’t you know it, the hook on the cheap jig I offered him straightens out and disappoints us all. But he will catch more even though he is “working”. The rest of us and there are about 10 by now, all fish but land only 3 or 4 more fish that evening. No shad ever show up. The water is around 72 feet deep and if I heard right, 49 degrees. Down three degrees from two weeks ago? We make a plan to night fish elsewhere the second evening. Another interesting observation: Carp soon arrived and started eating the plankton around the lights.
	We awake to a pleasantly warm morning around 40 degrees I think, but with a little wind. At the advice of Wayne (the Fisherman’s friend) and a seconding from Doug Miller, we break out of our regular winter fishing strategies which for me are not always too effective, and start out fishing with a “JP Rig”. Five minutes later I have a Striper on!
	Fish were caught the day before in Bullfrog Bay. So we started out just about 100 yards north of the North Bullfrog Buoy Field. We started out slow trolling the Anchovy baited JP rigs with electric motor power. On the graphs we can see fish near the bottom. Zoomed in makes the fish easier to detect. So now I have to re bait my rig. Remember the wind is blowing a little, now my hands are wet and I have to delicately thread the hooks. And now I remember the advice from those who know: have some more baits rigged and ready to go. That is why the snap swivel. Planning ahead when catching fish this way is worthwhile. I power up the electric again and lower my rig to the bottom and then up about ten feet. Within I think about ten minutes another Striper on!

After a few hours during a lull in the catching all 4 other boats leave searching for more readily feeding fish. A few fish are caught up Hansen Canyon. Both on rigs and jigs. For us in Bullfrog Bay the Stripers started biting again. After about 6 or 8 fish the tie around the top hook on my JP rig came loose. This rig is a two hook regular color. I changed to a 3 hook, top red, second two stainless. Worked about the same. Around 2 P M we went in for lunch and to clean the 19 fish that now had all our cooler and well space filled. Largest was 6 ¼ pounds. Planning to head back out for evening and night fishing. But, just as we finish up, here comes another boat back with fish to fillet. Then another. Finally Doug Miller comes in with several nice ones. Although Doug tells us he wants to take care of the rest of the work, there is no way we are going to let him. In the meantime the wind has picked up and clouds are creeping down toward the Lake. We decide to be careful and cancel night fishing except for around the houseboat after dinner. A few fish again are caught. Friday morning the weather clears. Ice has formed except on the Lake. But the sun is shining and off we go. Water has clouded up a little. The fish are still occasionally biting we find out. Doug Miller catches a few to make the morning a success and heads home trying to beat the storm. The rest of us have results near the same as the day before except that the fishing slows around noon when clouds fill the sky. My last three hits result in a shredded anchovy and no fish. I wonder now if the stainless hooks had started to dull. Had missed few hits prior to that. Several boats find schools and catch a few fish with baited jigheads. Moving slowly. Anchoring did not work. There is little wind now. One boat heads to Halls Creek Bay. An hour later a report comes over the radio from Halls. “Pretty good Striper bite over here.” Another boat leaves to join them. They arrive and quickly catch a couple and that encourages us to join them. About that time the bite stops. The clouds are thick and snow soon flies. First boat 12 Stripers out of Halls. Second boat 4. That’s all from there. We fillet about 32 Stripers that afternoon. The snow squall quits after a few hours and everything is covered with snow. Again the potential for trouble keeps us from going to the Buoy fields to nightfish. In the morning as I am leaving the two boats out fishing report that each angler has already landed two fish using baited jigs out in upper Bullfrog Bay.

January 31, 2005 - Steve and Rhonda

Halls Creek bay was nice too us on January 23, 2005 with these 8 stripers. We fished off the bottom with anchovies and chumming.

Largest was 26 1/2 inches 5.2 lbs . Most were all 4.7 lbs. nice fish.

Here's one of the catfish we missed.    Steve  and Fred are the models.

This was a trip the week after we caught 30 stripers at the halls house boat field. I thought we would knock them dead again, but too our disappointment no stripers. We did find the catfish. Check this out. Steve, Rhonda, Fred, Jeannine caught 43 catfish in the covered slips at Halls.

February 18, 2005 - Tim Bagley, Grand Junction, CO

Went down on Feb. 16 and caught 1 striper in Halls Creek. The next morning we moved to the back of Hall's Creek and caught 45 stripers trolling a 3.5 inch sliver shad rap in 25-40 feet of water.  They were suspended eating shad. We got one more on JP rig trolled deep at 50 feet. Caught them all before noon.

Rain moved in Friday and the bite shut down. All the fish were full of shad. Biggest striper was 7-lbs. Best Feb. trip ever. My first time back to the lake since 1999. Wow what a change.

February 22, 2005 - Striper Steve and Fisherman Fred

	Striper Steve caught the biggest (not this one) but he did land 2- 6 lb stripers.
	Fisherman Fred and Striper Steve. Having a great time!
	This is Marty before she took a plunge in the lake. No fish here but she held her own catching stripers.
	This is Mark he was the youngest and caught the most.....Way to go Mark!
	This is Rhonda and I lost more than I caught.
	Bruce is pretty proud of his striper Picture 012

These were the fish that we caught on Fri and we caught just as many on Sat and Sun night fishing at Hall's. Total 178 . The guys had their work cut out for them at the fish cleaning station. What a great weekend!

March 3, 2005 - Dennis Garmann, Junction, Utah

Dennis is my name, fishing is my game.

Arrived at Bullfrog @ 11 A M  monday  1st of march. Unloaded boat and went straight to Halls creek and started trolling in back of Creek along trees. Caught one striper in 16 ft of water so stopped right there and started casting crank lures and caught 2 more. That was all we caught there so at 4 pm we headed for Halls Marina and fished by pump out station with anchovies for about an hour, no luck there. Decided to check out the restaurant on hill at Bullfrog. Everything thing was closed down so we ate our sandwiches and went out in Bullfrog marina area for some night fishing.

Set up just as it was getting dark and started catching stripers right away, Harold caught and broke his line on the first 5 stripers.  Finally I told him to pull off 100 ft of old line and re tie. Then he started pulling in some fish.

He learned a hard lesson. Don't go striper fishing with bad line and nothing under 10 lbs test.  I use the best 10 lb line I can get. We caught 21 stripers From 2 - 8 lbs. Nice big healthy fish. We stopped fishing at 11 pm.

Next morning went back to same spot using anchovies again and coudn't catch a fish one. So we went to back of Bullfrog Bay and couldn't graph any fish at all. We went back along tires at marina and trolled cranks, caught 2 more stripers. Stopped fishing at 11 am and headed back to Piute county with a cooler full of fillets, O HAPPY DAYS.

March 3, 2005 - Marty Peterson

Fished Bullfrog Monday evening 2/28 and Tuesday 3/1. Two boats ended up with a total of 23 Stripers. Also too many Catfish. Overall found the Striper fishing tough. Arrived at Bullfrog ramp and launched with no problems. Launched off west side of ramp. Did not even have to put the back tires in water. That is how steep and deep right there.

It was about 4 PM when we started fishing back of Bullfrog Bay with JP Rigs. Picked up several Catfish fishing near bottom. When we raised bait further up, no hits. Second boat arrived about 5 PM. They fished with jigs and anchovy. They picked up 5 Stripers and some Cats. The fish quit biting just before dark. I think we saw the most fish marks on our graphs in forty feet and deeper water. The Stripers were caught in around forty-five foot deep spot.

Monday night Richard Snow and I went out to the tire reef north side of Bullfrog covered slips to night fish. In three hours we landed only two Stripers and several Catfish. When we arrived back at dock those fishing there had found that they could hook a Catfish with about every cast.

Tuesday morning we fished around the Bay. One Striper between two boats. Went up Halls Creek. Found no good looking schools. Plenty of lure grabbing trees up there just underwater though. After some food and rest went back out and fished Upper Bullfrog Bay, for the evening. Picked up 13 Stripers (two over 6 pounds) and lots of skinny Catfish. Using jigs with anchovy piece on fluorocarbon line. Tried other methods with no success except for Cats.

Tuesday night Richard and I anchored out where that afternoons Stripers were caught. Forty-five foot depth. In three hours we never brought in any Shad, although again our light did its job and brought in plankton and again, we landed only two Stripers. In my opinion though the Stripers are so nice that it is worth the work.

Monday's weather was upper 50's in the afternoon with light winds and partly cloudy. Tuesday was calm and bright in the morning. Afternoon had a light chop. Both nights were windy on the water. Water temp in the Bay was 52 degrees. We noticed that every fish filleted had eggs and none had Shad.

March 13, 2005 - Jody Kidd, Centerville, UT

	We arrived at Bullfrog Thursday March 10th. Launched 2 boats and began fishing at about 2:30 pm. We started out fishing the back end of Bullfrog bay, by the buoy field trolling JP Rigs at about 30 to 40 feet deep. There was only one fish caught and at 5:00 pm we decided to go eat and get ready to night fish. With the air temp in the 60s and no wind, the lake was perfectly flat; we left Bullfrog and drove over to the Halls pump out docks.
	There we tied up the boats and placed two KillerFishLights about 50 feet apart. The lights green glow lit up the water very nice. The four of us put are line in the water at about 7:30 pm and began the wait for the first fish. At about 8:15 pm the first fish had been landed and our night was only going to better. There was one time during the night when all four of us had fish on at the same time. What a great night, the totals for the first nights 41 nice big stripers.
	Friday night began with a nice cool breeze blowing across the lake or should I say a cold breeze, everyone began putting on sweaters and coats to try and hide for the cold. We tied up the boats to the dock, put out the KillerFishLights and began to fish. It was about 6:30 pm and the fishing seemed slow. Around 8:30 the breeze died and the air and the fishing began to get warmer. Soon everyone was starting to catch fish again.
	A little while went by and Striper Steve and Fisherman Fred showed up and began to fish.  We left the docks at 12 midnight; our total for the night was 40 Fish. We left the rest to be caught by Striper Steve and Fisherman Fred. I am looking forward to hearing their report on how they did for the weekend. Our trip ended up being a great trip with 82 fish caught.

March 14, 2005 - Rhonda and Striper Steve

	Hey first crappie of the year for us. Thats Fishin' fool Rhon....
	Took these pictures of shad, wondering if they might be gizzard shad or just threadfin ? Could you please let me know. Came out of striper in Halls Pump-out 3-12-05. Waynes Note:  Notice the mouth is pointing straight forward - not down like a carp.  The tail has yellow coloration.  Both of these characters make this a threadfin shad.  Wayne

March 29, 2005  - Rex Huang Thanks for all the tips on your site.  Got me excited to go and chase the stripers. Here's my experience for this weekend. Arrived at Bullfrog on Saturday for the Easter weekend.  Trolled around some during the day in Bullfrog Bay only picking up one smallie.  That night tried night fishing for the first time.  Fished with a couple nice fellows from New Mexico on the marina slips.  Cold, clear night with a full moon.  We managed some nice catfish right on the bottom at 60 feet and chock full of anchovies.  One of the guys had caught a striper the night before at 30 feet down just as posted on the fishing tips. Easter Day was a beautiful warm day with water temps at 54 degrees.  Trolled Moki wall without graphing a fish much less hooking one.  That night was overcast and warm.  Started night fishing armed with all the knowledge from this webpage.  Tried for awhile to get stripers at 30 feet down with out so much as a nibble.  Got impatient and decided to try catching catfish on the bottom again like the night before.  Dropped down 1.5" pieces of anchovy on a 3/4 ounce unpainted jighead.  Caught a nice cat pretty soon and was getting constant bites but couldn't hook what felt like small cats. At 10:20 p.m. hooked a nice fish I was sure was a big cat since I was still fishing six inches off the bottom in 60 feet of water.  When he started stripping line on several nice runs I started to think this wasn't a big cat but a nice striper instead.  Sure enough it was a beautiful striper.  My first!  Managed 3 more in the next hour and a half while losing two others.  All about the size on the one in the picture.  2 males, 2 females.  Empty stomachs on 2, 1 with a shad in its gut and another with 4 chunks of anchovy, one piece of anchovy complete with 1/4 oz. jighead.   Didn't catch  anymore catfish and I can't say it was any skill of mine because three of the fish hooked themselves when I had put the pole down to warm my hands or cut bait.  Thanks to Wayne's great site and Jim at Fish Tech in SLC for setting me up for a great trip.   April 2, 2005  - Craig, Kelsey and Keller Smith, Denver Monday 3-28 through Thursday 3-31 We've just warmed up from our second annual trip to LP for spring break.  Arrived about noon Monday and put on the water ASAP.  Trolled past the houseboat field at BF and a few loops in the top of BF bay w/o success.  We were pulling Wally ers and Bill Norman DD-22 in shad colors on flat line with weights up line from the lures to get extra depth.      Repeating the same pattern on Tuesday afternoon we trolled up a trio of stripers in about 40 minutes before the wind came up an temperature started dropping chasing us off the water.  Our biggest challenge this trip was the wind, rain and sleet.  We were serenaded by a waterfall about 40' from our bed rolls at the top of Moki Canyon Monday night.  Returned to BF to camp and dry out on Tuesday morning. Trolled up Stripers Tuesday afternoon in BF bay until the wind came up. Wind, sleet & rain kept us off the water  Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday, which allowed for completion of homework and exploring.  At the advice of one of the gas station attendants at BF we night fished in the covered slips at BF and had the best success of the trip. From 8pm. - midnight we fished anchovies on 1/4 & 3/8 lead head jigs and had a steady stream of action.  The nights total of 8 Stripers and 5 nice Channel cats kept the kids awake, and me cutting bait.  Striper bites were very gentle, and 2  out of 3 nibbles went un-hooked.  While most fish came up without too much hassle, a few managed to get tangled under the framework and cables of the slips and escaped.  One strike showed no interest in coming to the surface, after pointing its nose to the depths it stripped off about 20' of 8 lb. test and snapped our line. My daughter and I had read  Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea"  while waiting out the wind that afternoon and this fish gave added meaning to the novel.  It’s the one that got away that I'm still thinking of. Next spring we'll be back ready for wind and snow, hoping for calm and sun (like last year) and intent on helping "manage" the striper population in LP.  Thanks for hosting this website and all that you do.   April 4, 2005  - Tubby Just got back from bullfrog. I took the advice from Cal, Wayne and others and took my skiff on a 1.5 hour run up to Red Canyon. I tried night fishing for the first time and I could not buy a bite. Sunday I woke up and began trolling over the north point on Red canyon. Graphed fish holding on the point at 10-25' instantly got a double hookup on deep runner Shad Raps. Trolled over the same point 20 times and got instant doubles each time. (This is a challenge when you are the only person in the boat). Tried casting plugs and caught several but with the wind it was a bit of a hassle keeping the boat in the exact place. By 2pm I had pulled about 50 stripers (1-6 lbs) and one walleye (2 lbs) off that point. They were still biting aggressively but I had nowhere to keep them and a storm may have been coming so I left. I should have left earlier because it took way too long for me to fillet those suckers by myself. Thanks to TOP CAT for offering to to help clean them. I had my doubts about running 25 miles in an open skiff to fish, but it seems as if it was well worth it (and I only used 10 gallons of gas). Thanks again.   April 4, 2005  - Doug Rule My name is Doug and two friends Mike and Mike fished Powell this past weekend.  We are from Weber and Davis counties.  We fished from Bullfrog north on Friday April 1st.  We caught 3 Stripers.  Saturday we headed down 25 miles to Escalante River area and caught 22 Stripers and 2 Walleye. Sunday April 2, we caught 20 more Stripers down south.  We had several 26 inch and most in the 22 inch range.  We used downriggers and trolled shad raps in shad colors.  This was our first trip to fish Powell.  We appreciate your web site.  All our information came from there and helped us be successful.  We are planning a return tip.  Thanks for your information and great web site.

April 5, 2005 - Jay Taylor Two friends and I set out last weekend (March 31-April 3) on our first Striper fishing trip. We launched from Bullfrog and fished in Halls Creek Bay, Bullfrog Bay, Lost Eden, Moqui, but didn't have any success until we fished in Lake Canyon. We did catch some Crappy at the back of Lost Eden. The Stripers in Lake Canyon were near the back of the arm that goes south and is full of trees. We caught fish that were about 3LBS, in water about 1ft to 30 ft deep using white tube jigs.

We fished the 13th, 14th, and morning of the 15th around Halls and to the north.  Outstanding weather.  One friend we ran into told us about the incredible striper trolling on the flats in Halls Bay near the Halls buoy field.  There were lots of boats crisscrossing the area, a couple getting hung up on the invisible island (not far from the barely visible island), but we didn't see any fish boated there and hardly saw anything on the scope.  There must be something cooking there, though, because the boats persisted there the entire weekend.

But along the cliffs from the bottom of Moki Wall up toward Hansen, we got into walleyes both morning and evening trolling.  We also found several rotund stripers, mostly by trolling but a couple on anchovies.  Judging by the scope data, it looks like the fish are spread out all along the cliffs.  We didn't find any big concentrations anywhere, but did have almost continuous fish on the screen everywhere we went along the steep cliffs.  Yes, we also know that walleye aren't supposed to hang around those kinds of places over very deep water, but I guess these hadn't read the book.

May 22, 2005 - Jon Middleton

We fished out of Bullfrog the afternoon of the 16th through the 19th.  In a word, it was slow.  Had a hard time finding the stripers even though people had done well on Saturday (14th).  We spoke to some USU researchers who told us on Wednesday that they were in shallow, scattered, and staging for the spawn.  We trolled Bullfrog with crankbaits running from 5-27 feet, anchovies out in the channel, soft plastics, etc, with limited success. We were told Monday afternoon to look for the fleet of boats at the mouth of Bullfrog, but nobody was there the next morning.  We caught some juvenile fish out deeper, and a couple of mature females in shallow water on the west side just north of the marina on Shad Rap 7's at 10 feet. Interestingly, we caught a couple of nice walleye up north in Bullfrog, out in the middle, on SR 7's running at 10 feet in 40 feet of water.  Walleye were the bright spot as we caught 11 on Thursday bottom bouncing out in front of Stanton Creek.  We also tried night fishing in the marina for a short time and caught the only crappie of the trip.  Had a follow in Hall's one day, but despite fishing back in the trees, caught none there. We spoke with a number of people during that time, but it didn't appear that anybody was doing much.  Guess we'll have to go back in the fall.

May 18, 2005 -Monte and Deb Tish - Nampa Idaho

The wife and I  and some of are friends got to Powell at Bullfrog are first time to Powell on May 17th. After a short tour of the area we ran down lake to Escalante river and water temp was 65 to 68 degree we started to fish for bass found some nice small and largemouth small mount 1 1/2 lbs to one over 2.5 most where caught on green pumpkin lizards and minnow looking cranks we caught 15 to twenty in that area. Caught my first Striper on a white spinner bait. What a blast! Fished some other places as we head back to Bullfrog for the next day of fishing. At the fish cleaning station we ran into Kent Jorgenson. After a talk we found what they where using to find the stripers on anchovies in about 20 ft water in the afternoon. So we ran up lake to Moki wall and found stripers and walleye there. Caught these on crank baits, wiggle wart fire tiger color caught 6 and ran back to bullfrog bay in the after noon and fish anchovies where we saw Kent J. fish. We caught 7 more stripers these where caught straight across for the marina at bullfrog in 12 to 20 ft water temp 66. Fished sat morning and caught 13 more stripers. Here are some of the stripers we caught the big was 11lbs we caught that week. Again thanks Kent Jorgenson.  I will be back to Powell

May 25, 2005 - Larry Lewis

I had to send this picture.  At just over 5.5 lbs., this striper was the largest I've caught at Powell. The technique was a whole anchovy on a 1/8th oz. weighted hook that was just tossed overboard and let drift to bottom. Got several hits while the bait was simply sinking on its own.  Otherwise I jigged high and slow.   This particular fish broke my wife's line during a previous strike.  How do I know this, because when I pulled MY hook out of its lip, I discovered HER line and hook way down its throat.   Naturally I took credit for the catch!!''

May 24, 2005 - Thomas Jansen and Jason Verry

Just got back from Bullfrog and wanted to give a quick report.  Full report later.  Jason caught a 17 lb striper in Bullfrog Bay on Sunday morning, right after I caught a 10 lb.  We used those Storm Deep Thunder lures in silver mullet color.  First couple of days it was tough.  We finally figured it out.  Had to run a 1 OZ in-line football sinker on main line, then swivel to leader to lure. Had to stop the boat and let the sinker take the lure to the bottom, 30-40 feet, and let lure sit on bottom.  Count to 30 and start boat moving quickly, picking lure up of the bottom.  We caught more fish this way than just running at a constant speed.  Thought you might want to know to help out others.

	Arrived at Bullfrog Friday at 2:00 pm. Launched the boat and we got camp set up in Stanton and headed for Bullfrog Bay. Trolled Shad Raps, Thunder Sticks and Little Macs. Krista (my daughter) caught a nice Walleye and I managed one 5lb striper in about 2 hours of fishing. Saturday we hit the bay about 8:30am and together we caught 6 stripers all 4 to 5lbs each.1.5 hours fishing. Krista and Lanie (my daughter) both got in on the catching. Went and played the rest of the morning and afternoon.
	Returned to BFB at about 5:30. I had picked up a couple MegaBait lures (I had never heard or seen them before) they are about 6-8 inches long, black and silver and jointed. They troll about 14 feet deep, so I bought them thinking they would work. Well, trolled at 3 to 3.5 mph the MegaBait was just what the stripers wanted. We trolled up 12 more in the next hour and a half.
	My wife Beckey, Krista, Lanie and I all had a ball. Not the fastest action but fast enough to keep a smile on the girls face and that's what counts! A thanks to Beckey as she was running the camera and net.

	May 15th through May 19th. We fished after the Shad Rally and caught a lot of fish in Hansen's Creek and near Moki. All of the fish were around 5lbs. Mostly stripers and some walleye. Most of the fish were caught in the morning before 11:00 am and after 5:00 pm in the afternoon. Dale and Jerry with the first days catch:
	Paul with another stringer full of fish.
	Can't forget Ed, he had one day that he put on the most fish.   As for lures; we caught most on Bill Dance blue lures and lost a lot of hooks due to split ring failure. The others we caught on chartreuse deep ers ( 25ft. ) with absolutely no red marks on the belly. We gave some fellow fishermen our hot lures the day we left,with instructions on how and where to fish. All trolling was at 4 MPH.
	Along with Hansen's Creek we caught 50 or so at the "danger buoy" outside of Moki in the channel, trolling between the channel marker and the danger buoy.   More to come

We had a great trip, the size, fight, and overall health of the stripers was the best we have seen yet.  The fishing was very good on Saturday, but progressively got slower each day that we were there.  The morning bite while trolling Saturday was excellent.  We caught most of our trolled fish in water depths of 45 to 28 feet on Saturday, 32 to 26 feet on Sunday, 26 to 18 feet on Monday, and 22 to 14 feet on Tuesday.  We trolled at 3 to 4 mph.  The downrigger was the hot ticked for us throughout the trip, even when used in shallow water.  We seemed to have better luck with the smaller crankbaits, if we could get them down at least 10 feet.

We tried night fishing with a submersible fluorescent light for the first time, on this trip.  We had mixed results.  On Saturday, we trolled until it was dark, then we set anchor  when we saw a good school of fish on the fish finder (39 feet   of water).  We attached the light to the down rigger ball and lowered it 12 feet and chummed a little.  Within 10 minutes   we had our first striper, and continued to catch them at a steady pace until we quit at 1:00 am.  We saw a few shad swimming around the light, but not any schools.  When we raised the light, we noticed lots of small larval shad swarming the light.  We went back to the same spot Sunday night and tried to repeat the last nights results.  We only got one striper in two hours.  Finally at 11:30 we pulled anchor and drove around for a while watching the fish finder until we saw a good school in 28 feet of water and set anchor.  We had some fast fishing for about an hour, then it shut down.  Monday night resulted in  one fish only.

She awakened from her Saturday afternoon nappie and sniffed the air.  The tiny hairs on the back of her hand stood erect, a sure sign that something wonderful was afoot.  A call, subtle but certain, came wafting from the cliffs, saying "Nancy, today is yours."  Disregarding the thick brownish-gray soup lining the channel from wall to wall, she confidently donned her lucky visor, gracefully boarded the legendary Incredible Fishing Boat, and beckoned its humble driver to steer a course for the super secret striper burial grounds north of Halls.  She somehow had a feeling that he, along with other even still more humble flunkies, had cleaned out all the little fish earlier in the day there, and that her moment had come.

Upon arrival, she instinctively pointed to the nearly invisible X  that had been inscribed on the water just a few hours before.  With her long blonde hair gently blowing in the breeze, she eloquently murmured, "Dat be de place." Armed with but a single weighted hook and an unusually unimpressive,   somewhat tired and rank anchovy tail, made her single, purposeful, deft cast.  She then patiently waited, ten or  perhaps twenty seconds.  Suddenly her Bionic Blade, that bloody blameful blade, took a massive dip and her monofilament was brutally pulled into the abyss with her drag screaming and her reel smoking all the while.  But despite the boat being pulled this way and that, despite her rod being bent into a pretzeloid shape, and despite the agonizing exhaustion  of her every sinew, she held on, slowly but surely regaining line, ultimately boating her majestic ten pound prize.