04-16-2018, 05:36 PM
We headed down to Bullfrog on Friday night, spent the night in the Defiance House Lodge before getting up Saturday morning and making the long trek to the Escalante. While heading down the main channel we were lucky enough to catch an otter cruising across the main channel near Iceberg Canyon and watched him for a bit. My boys thought that was pretty cool. Once in the Escalante, we headed to the back of the canyon until we hit muddy water. We then trolled until we started picking up stripers which didn't take long. We were finding fish on the sonar around 15-25 feet and had great success using deep diving walleye runners--blue, white, and black/white seemed to work best. We also spent a little bit of time dropping spoons on schools which worked well too. But, mostly we trolled and when a fish was hooked up, we would cast behind the boat and often pick up another. We had many doubles and it got to the point where my two boys--ages 4 and 7--were fighting over who would hook up first. My youngest boy would always start crying if his older brother landed a fish and he didn't. By the time we left--we arrived around 10:30 and left around 5--we had boated around 40 stripers and one walleye.
On Sunday, we headed over to Halls Creek because I don't think the kids would have handled the long trek back to the Escalante. We had a more difficult time finding colored water in Halls Creek and tried trolling a bit in the back, but found very few fish marks. We looked also at the mouth of Halls and found no fish. So, we headed down to Lake Canyon and found some colored water in the back of Lake Canyon and started marking fish. I dropped a bottom bouncer looking for some walleye or crappie or blue gill and immediately hooked up before losing it without seeing what I had. So, I tried dropping it again and never had another strike. After messing around a bit with the bottom bouncers, we switched and tried trolling and saw a lot of good marks on the sonar but only had one hook up that broke my boy off. Other than that, nothing in Lake Canyon either.
Because the boys were bored with the lack of fish on Sunday, we headed up to Lost Eden and let the boys check out the alcoves before heading back to the marina and home. IN all, the weekend was a success, and the boys had a ball landing stripers. It seemed pretty obvious to us that the colored/stained water was best...
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On Sunday, we headed over to Halls Creek because I don't think the kids would have handled the long trek back to the Escalante. We had a more difficult time finding colored water in Halls Creek and tried trolling a bit in the back, but found very few fish marks. We looked also at the mouth of Halls and found no fish. So, we headed down to Lake Canyon and found some colored water in the back of Lake Canyon and started marking fish. I dropped a bottom bouncer looking for some walleye or crappie or blue gill and immediately hooked up before losing it without seeing what I had. So, I tried dropping it again and never had another strike. After messing around a bit with the bottom bouncers, we switched and tried trolling and saw a lot of good marks on the sonar but only had one hook up that broke my boy off. Other than that, nothing in Lake Canyon either.
Because the boys were bored with the lack of fish on Sunday, we headed up to Lost Eden and let the boys check out the alcoves before heading back to the marina and home. IN all, the weekend was a success, and the boys had a ball landing stripers. It seemed pretty obvious to us that the colored/stained water was best...
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