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Wayne's Words Lake Powell Fishing Forum
Over 70 Stripers in Warm Creek Yesterday
Posted By: russ@bassdozer.com
Date: 11/17/09
Patrick Sebile (who many say is the world's most accomplished angler), Laurent Picq, a famous angler from France and I trolled, retrieved and jigged over 70 stripers in Warm Creek Bay yesterday.
The day earlier, we had started fishing in Labyrinth, Gunsight, Rock Creek and Padre, with high hopes of laying into bass and stripers in those basins. We did okay, but not great. Best was Rock Creek. The bass hit a variety of Patrick's lure models (he is the owner/designer or Sebile lures) including:
1.) the jointed Magic Swimmer 110 Fast-Sinking, with which Laurent landed our best bass of the trip - a nice smallie in Gunsight.
2.) the Flatt Shad Snagless. This a lipless vibrating crankbait that can be pulled through the thickest brush cover on our lake and hardly ever snags, which is exactly how Patrick snagged a couple nice bass nestled in brush beds in Rock Creek. It has a hookless feather tail, and an upward-facing double (not treble) hook on the belly that tucks up tight to the bottom. The broad flat sides of the lipless bait serve to shield the hook from everything the lure encounters except for striking fish which get solidly hooked.
3.) a white Koolie Minnow 90 LL proved best for bass this day. It looks like a jerkbait minnow, but I swam it steadily through the brush like a crankbait, not jerking or pausing it. The Koolie has a bowed body and a very broad, flat belly that shields the trebles from snags, so it comes through brush amazingly snagless, which is how I landed a handful of nice smallies and largemouth in the brush in Rock Creek.
4.) Patrick also dropshot a bass or two on his new Stick Shadd Hollow soft bait in the brush in front of the Cookie Jar in Padre Bay.
The bass fishing was decent, but we were hoping for more. On the way home, I pulled into Warm Creek basin at last light in order to scout for the striped bass that I know always winter-over in there. I put the boat down about 1/2 mile from the back on the eastern shoreline (which gets the late light), idled onto the 60 foot mark, and immediately found big dense walls of shad and striper schools blacking out the fishfinder. By the dense, compact and fairly featureless blobs of bait and predators, we knew they were not actively feeding right then, but we dropped a few spoons down, and pulled up a couple stripers, confirming this would be where we'd start the next morning's fishing for stripers.
So yesterday morning, we got to Warm Creek bay about 8 o'clock and started marking and fishing the thick black balls of fairly inactive fish on the graph. In the morning, most of the bait and stripers were in water from 80 to 60 feet deep, and there was also a significant presence hovering over depth breaks (rapid changes in bottom depth) down to 100 or more feet deep.
We started to jig a few stripers, mainly from the 60 to 70 foot schools, but it was difficult to keep the boat over the schools. Although fish were coming aboard on a steady basis, we spent as much time idling around as fishing. So I reckoned that if we couldn't easily stay on the schools, we would instead bring the schools to us by trolling, retrieving and then jigging them.
It wasn't any one technique - but the combined effect of trolling, retrieving and jigging that started scoring striper after striper for us from the late morning and lasting through 2:30 pm.
What I mean by our devastatingly effective trolling, retrieving and jigging combo is the following explanation:
1.) First, we trolled Sebile's Koolie Minnow 118 LL plugs about 60 yards behind the boat on the thinnest braided line possible. Patrick had a wispy thin 12 lb test braid that was letting his Koolie hit bottom about 43 feet deep. So we put Patrick's line down the center behind the boat, in between Laurent's and my line. I had a thicker 20 lb braid and was only achieving 34 feet of depth due to the thicker line diameter. Laurent also had a thicker braid, and he wasn't achieving the 40+ foot depths, only Patrick. We mainly trolled the 50 to 60 foot depths since by late morning, the stripers and bait had moved shallower from 60-80 feet in early morning to 50-60 feet deep by late morning, and the dense balls of bait and predators had started to open up (were not as densely compacted) by late morning, meaning they were becoming more active.
2.) Because Patrick's plug was reaching 40+ feet deep (due to his ultrathin line diameter), he was hooking almost all the fish as we trolled, using the big motor at idle speed (800 rpm's). I'd start marking fish on the graph, and a few seconds later, Patrick was most likely to hook up. But that didn't mean Laurent and I were shut out. It's true we did not hook many on the trolling phase, but once Patrick hooked a fish out of the school, we'd shut off the motor right away. This is where phase two - retrieving - our plugs so they followed and flanked Patrick's hooked striped resulted in multiple hook-ups for Laurent and I. We had 60 yards of line out behind the boat, and as Patrick fought the first fish, he'd pull the school up to the level where Laurent and I had our plugs as we retrieved them on both sides of Patrick's fish - and we'd also hook up.
3.) Now, 2 or 3 of us were hooked up on plugs, and bringing the entire school to the boat along with the hooked fish. The school would come right up to the top by the time they were boatside, and you could simply cast back out and catch another one or two near the surface for a minute as we boated the hooked fish.
4.) Next, we'd drop 1-1/2 ounce Sebile Fast Cast jigging spoons down on the school, now under the boat, and this was almost like chumming with the jigging spoons, thereby keeping the school with us for a few minutes more. All of the fish were super fat and their stomachs were stretched to the bursting point with shad. They looked like stomachs with tails and fins. By 1 o'clock, the feeding activity was so high, that the streaking fish on the graph looked like Fourth of July fireworks exploding beneath the boat, and most of the stripers were so stuffed by this time that they regurgitated fresh mouthfuls of both gizzard and threadfin shad - about the size of our spoons - further chumming the water to keep the schools with the boat.
By 2:30, we got into the biggest, most active school, that stayed under the boat for fifteen minutes, and we caught them on almost ever drop of the spoon as the boat sdrifted from 60 to 30 feet deep, with constant double and triple hook-ups. It was our finest moment! Marks on the graph were no longer dense blobs, but more like streaking, scattered markings, surely signaling that an all-out, furious striper blitz was going on below. The scent of battered shad wafted to the surface, and a sweet smell of shad oil spread over the water, filling the warm air all around us. We also caught stripers on Patrick's 2-ounce size trange of Vibrato wacky-jigging spoons and Spin Shad tailspinners, but the 1-1/2 ounce Fast Cast jigs were most effective this particular day.
I am not sure if the school moved with us, or if we moved over them, since as we got shallower (from 40 to 30 feet), the fish got smaller. Most of the fish all day were 4 to 5 pounders, but as we drifted over the shallowest tip of this school (about 30 feet deep), there were only 1-2 pounders. So I think that was just a solid 15 minute long school that we slowly slid over. There was no wind at this time, and we were fishing off the deep side of the boat, so as 2 or 3 of us were always hooked up, the fighting stripers were actually working like mule teams to pull our boat back toward the main melee, helping to pull and position the boat right over the heaviest action!
All good thing must end, and around 2:30 pm, a slight breeze arose out of the south, which riffled the surface. The fresh breeze was just strong enough to finally blow the boat off that massive school and into shallow water. Since we were almost up on the shoreline by this time, we turned around and started casting to shore, which was how Patrick landed a nice walleye on the Koolie Minnow 118 LL, and we also had some other bites from bass - but didn't land them.
I am not sure whether it was us or the stripers who had enough, but whoever gave up the game by 2:30 pm, we didn't catch or mark many more stripers after that. I honestly think it was us, the anglers who were finished catching for the day. I feel the stripers continued feeding, but had moved to the sunniest side (the east side) of the bay, which was where we first found them the evening earlier. I find the stripers will often lay on western shorelines when the sun is in the eastern sky and on eastern shorelines after 2 pm on sunny winter days. I do think they moved over to the eastern shoreline, but we did not. We had a dinner date that we didn't want to miss that evening at the home of Jarrett and Becca Edwards. So we left Warm Creek around 3:30 pm with a cooler full of stripers to fillet, and a great day we won't ever forget, followed by a scrumptious home-cooked dinner by Becca with friends!
If you want to try for these stripers, it was difficult but not impossible to put it all together like we did yesterday. These stripers that always winter-over in Warm Creek won't come to lures as easy as during the summer months, but hard work will pay off all winter. Key this trip was the 60 foot depth, and out deeper than that in the morning, shallower than that in the afternoon. Simply motor straight back into Warm Creek until you are in the very back where the depth comes up to 60 feet, which will form an imaginary line from one side of the basin across to the other side, at the 60 foot depth. This is your key depth for now. Then pivot the search up along that 60 foot mark for about a 1/2 mile on either side, keying off the mouth of the deep slot creek on the east side, across the back of the basin to the western shore (up to the brushy creek mouth).
First thing in the morning or toward the tail end of the day, try the east side from the deep slot creek up about a 1/2 mile to where we found the original school at last light of the earlier day.
We did get plenty of photos, but the photos may not be available for a week or two. So I wanted to pass the info about yesterday along while it is still fresh, for anyone who may find it useful if you plan to go out on the lake over the next few days.
Keep the story of our trip in mind and hopefully you too can keep a tight line deep into to a Warm Creek striper blitz.
Regards,
Russ
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