Lower Bowns Reservoir
Fishing is great for fat rainbows! The evenings are especially good when
the midge hatches comes on. Very fast action for fly anglers.
Mill Meadow Reservoir
Fast fishing for perch along any shoreline! Use small jigs tipped with a
nightcrawler. Anglers also catching trout trolling spinners, small popgear,
and spoons.
The good news is that Lake Powell surface temperature dropped 3 degrees
in a week and is now holding near 74 F in the mornings. The bad news
that wasn’t enough to release game fish from their thermal prison. Perhaps
“prison” is the wrong term since the shad food source is locked up right
with the game fish. Looking at this from a different angle, fish have found a
“luxury resort” where stripers and bass are spending a few weeks of high
living with all the food they want to eat while exerting absolutely no effort
to obtain it. Stripers and bass are “on vacation”.
There have been a few angling bright spots recently. The most notable was
the new houseboat trolling technique employed by Brian Shaw. Brian’s
family was headed up lake from Bullfrog and decided to troll in the main
channel. A large white Kalin Jig was deployed while the houseboat was
slowed to 6 MPH. After a mere 10 miles of trolling a huge striper ate the jig
near Knowles Canyon. Brian landed the trophy weighing nearly 30 pounds.
Further trolling resulted in no more fish.
There are a few signs that some bass and stripers are returning from
vacation. A few quick boils have been seen this week in Oak, Rainbow,
Dangling Rope and Face canyons. Boils were quick and only a few fish were
actually caught. But it shows fishing is slowly improving and some surface
activity is returning to the southern lake.
The same quick boil pattern is seen north of Bullfrog without many fish
actually being caught. The exception was in Good Hope Bay where many
quick boils were seen but a cooler full of fat stripers were caught on
anchovies, 20 feet deep in the back of the canyon.
I guess the best way to sum this up is to look for stripers on top anywhere
from Face canyon to Hite. Then fish in the general area where splashes
were seen with a wide variety of lures and bait until a willing school is
found. Then enjoy the moment.
Still the very best method of consistently finding stripers in the main lake is
to troll with down riggers at 60-90 feet in the open bays and channels.
Bass fishing remains slow but is coming back faster than stripers. Look off
main channel reefs and in the cracks and ledges of steep cliffs for willing
smallmouth bass. A few largemouth bass are caught in the brush shelters
at the backs of the canyons. Catfish are still eating hotdog rounds on sandy
beach as the endless summer continues.
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