Lake Powell Fish Report

http://www.wayneswords.com

  Striper boils reported last week were visited by more happy anglers this week.  Stripers did not disappoint - if the proper rules were followed.  Stripers feed on their own schedule when in these bonus days of high shad numbers. The prime feeding time over the length of the lake was the last two hours of daylight.  

Major feeding events were described by lucky anglers as "covering 20 surface acres, continuing for hours, full of big fish, and totally satisfying."  Those who fished the big evening boils caught more big stripers than thought possible.  

The Best Locations

The best locations were Trachyte Canyon and Cha Canyon in the evening.  Other locations that were also good were the main channel from Oak Canyon to the mouth of San Juan, and Good Hope Bay from Ticaboo to the Horn and Piute Canyon to the Great Bend on the San Juan. There was a large morning boil in the main channel just upstream from the mouth of the San Juan, but it did not repeat the next day.

Boils are the crown jewel of freshwater fishing, but stripers could be caught during the day by trolling and much faster by graphing and spooning. Once the large schools leave the surface, they are still in the same area usually hovering around the 40-foot depth range.  

Hundreds of stripers swimming together at mid-depth are quite easy to find and identify on modern electronics.  Jigging spoons dropped into the large suspended schools were consistently ingested by eager stripers.   

Unusual Occurrence

The unusual occurrence is that shad schools are more abundant in areas removed from intense boiling activity.  My guess is that these wandering schools of large stripers will work over the shad supply in Cha Canyon and Trachyte and not leave until the shad have been depleted or run away.  These stripers like their current schedule of feeding each night and randomly throughout the day.  

They are getting enough to eat so they stay. When shad numbers decline, stripers will then move up or downstream to find another feeding bonanza where they will stay as long as forage is available.

Bass Fishing Is Good

As expected, bass fishing is good in these striper feeding zones. As shad flee from aggressive stripers, they soon find large and smallmouth bass waiting for a meal near shore.  Bass are harder to catch in areas where shad are abundant and "the living is easy."  Bass do not have to work hard to get a shad meal and get pretty fussy about only eating shad when they are so common.  

An Unusual Year

This is one of those unusual years where striper boils will continue into October and November.  For now, the best piece of knowledge is "location." The inflow areas (San Juan and Trachyte) will consistently provide boiling stripers, but other lake areas will periodically have boils erupt in canyons like Navajo, Last Chance, Wetherill, Escalante, Rincon, Halls and so on.

Let's Help Each Other

We can help each other by reporting striper boil locations to me at Wayneswords.com.  I will then put the information out to the public so we can join together to harvest as many stripers as possible right now.  Each striper caught this fall will save over 1000 shad during the next year.  These numbers get large in a hurry. Catch 1000 stripers and save 1 million shad.  Those who read this report can easily catch that many stripers from now through the end of October. 

Quality of life is measured by amount of time spent fishing.

At press time, lake elevation was 3,611, and water temperature was 79-85F.