Lake Powell, September 20-24 2007

[CBR]

Lake Powell, September 20-24 2007

AlabamaSlamma's Boat (AlabamaSlamma, BassAckwards, CBR)

We launched at Bullfrog at 6 PM on Friday and made our way to Moqui Canyon. We went to the very back and set up "home base" then started to fish the canyon's many rock piles. Right off the bat our group started getting bites and catching small Smallmouth Bass and Sunfish. We only fished for about an hour before it was time to get some sleep for the next mornings fishing.

The next morning we awoke to a calm conditions and we were anxious to hit the water to find the fish. We started in Moqui again working the rock piles and the backs of little canyons of the Moqui system. The small Smallmouth were everywhere. They were eating anything we threw, we also managed some big sunfish, yearling stripers and some very active catfish eating our baits. We focused on a little deeper water hoping bigger fish would be holding deeper to cruise shallow to feed on shad and sunfish but only found smaller fish were holding in 17-30 feet. The magic number for most of the sunfish and smaller Smallmouth was 17 feet deep.

After working over the entire Moqui Canyon we made our way to just out from Haystack to find some stripers. We didn't see any surface activity so we put on some spoons and started jigging. The sonar was stacked with fish from 25-70 feet deep with big schools of shad everywhere. We all immediately started hooking up. After the bite died and the schools of stripers either moved on or started resting on the bottoms we decided to get back to bass fishing. Again in the Bullfrog bay we had a hard time finding any shallow active Smallmouth or Largemouth. We left the bay and headed back towards Moqui to finish out the evening. We ended up catching around 60-70 fish this day, not finding any huge schools of stripers or any bigger class schools of bass.

The next day we planned to head up lake and hunt some of the other canyons. On our way out of Moqui we hit some of the rock piles that produced fish the day before and we managed around 20 bass, and a nice 17 inch Walleye. We then headed up lake to Forgotten and caught several bass and some sunfish there, then we headed up to Knowles. Knowles had excellent structure for both Smallmouth and Largemouth. The largemouth were not in the backs of the canyons like they had been in previous years, the water temps were a bit too warm to allow the fish to seek shelter in the backs with out becoming sluggish and belly up so we put most of our focus on 17-35 feet of water as usual. This day produced a lot more Smallmouth, biggest going around a pound and a half and a couple spawner Largemouth in the 13-14 inch range. Bassackwards ended the day with the biggest fish being a nice Catfish. (See the video below)

That evening/night a rain storm rolled in that brought with it a wind that blew the hell out of our camp. We came back to camp with our unsecured belongings blown over. The storm lasted all night then the rain let up just as sunrise in time for us to go fish some more. The game plan was to head to Halls to chase some bass and then look for schooling stripers. The Wind was still blowing, not hard enough to blow us off the lake, but hard enough to use the electric trolling motor all day and causing us to move off of the canyon walls and shorelines with the big motor at times. We all caught some Smallmouth but not nearly as many as the day before, the cold front that moved in the night before slowed things down slightly. Our group managed a couple Largemouth in Halls until we decided to head to get gas. We got gas then decided to head back to Haystack and we immediately found the shad with Stripers cruising through eating. We managed a dozen stripers before the wind really picked up. Around 1 PM we made our way to Bullfrog's store to grab some supplies and get a rest from the wicked wind that was blowing us all over the lake. We also had plans to meet up with RDRRM8E, his wife, Polokid, and also the fish fry extraordinary, Ron. While there waiting we found a nice spot to tie up to and we decided to fish for cats. We caught some nice cookie cutter catfish 12 inches or so and even played with the carp for a while with some bread baits.

3:00 rolled around we made our way to the boat ramp, trailered the boat and ran by the other half our of camping party. Rippnlips had had it with catching small fish and wanted to go home early, so he left taking Scartinez with him. Sissies! 2 down, but we weren't about to give it up yet. We had a day to hammer the fish!

Just after 3 we met up with BearLakeMack to fry up some fish and have some drinks in his RV site. Boy the pirate has a wicked setup. We show up to find he had a full service camp, nice shelter, a freezer to keep filets and food fresh, and even a TV with a dvd! They had a mini-hotel in this camp and knew how to do things right if spending a week at Powell. Ron whipped up some of his famous fish fry batter and fried up about 50 stripers for us to eat. BearLakeMack's wife whipped up a nice pasta salad, and some other extras and we ate like kings. Boy Ron knows how to fry up some fish. We got full, sat around and had a couple beers then it was time to head back to camp.

We got to camp and decided to pack up everything but our tents so we could dump off our dead weight in the truck before going out the next day. The pirate (BearLakeMack) tipped us off on where there was several huge schools of stripers hanging out, and we were on a mission, a serious meat expedition. We finished packing our belongings in to the truck then launched, the pirate was right behind us as we cruised in to Lake Canyon. We immediately started marking mass amounts of Shad and Stripers. For the next 4 hours we put a hurting on the stripers. We managed somewhere in the area of 100-150 stripers. All on spoons. During our catch fest we had on board two kings of fileting fish taking turns fileting stripers as we caught them. BassAckwards and AlabamaSlamma put those fish in to filets pretty quick, we filled the bottom on the Triton 21 footer pretty quick and needed room for more. We whacked the crap out of them! The Pirates ship holding BearLakeMack and friends were whacking them as well, the schools would move but it didn't require much moving to find them again.

We had a killer trip. A lot of fish caught, somewhere in the 300 range between 3 of us, not sure on Rippnlips and Scartinez's numbers, they didn't talk much about their fishing so maybe they will report after this.


Striper School Canyon


30 Minutes in to our KILLING SPREE


A (Censored) topless image of AlabamaSlama and a revealing Largemouth Bass


BassAckward and a Largemouth Bass


AlabamaSlamma at work


BassAckward and his nice Channel Catfish


1/4th of our mess of Stripers


BassAckward Verticle Jigging


The Pirate Ship

Overall the trip was fun, a lot of fish, no tank bass caught in our group but still a load of fish were caught and I think we did our part for this fall's saving of the shad.
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[trowtslayr]

WoW and they said there was no fishing reports, ha nice report and looks like you had a blast. Just one question, is there no limits on the stripers [crazy]?
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[CBR]

[reply]WoW and they said there was no fishing reports, ha nice report and looks like you had a blast. Just one question, is there no limits on the stripers [crazy]?[/reply]

No limit on striped bass. Infact they are so over populated in there they say to rip their gills after you catch them and let them float in the lake if you aren't keeping them,
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[Wildcard]

Awesome job men! I'm jealous!
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[trout_slayer]

Actually you are suppose to "knife" them through the stomach so they DO NOT float. They will sink and rot in the water and other "things" will take in their nutrients!!!
TS
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[bassrods]

Sounds like you had fun....


.
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[trowtslayr]

see ya learn something new every day, thanks CBR
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[jekern1015]

We'll be up there on the 15&16 of oct. I hope we can find a school like you guys did. What are the fees at bullfrog as far as entance and boat permit. Where the spoons you were using all chrome or did they have some color to them, also what size spoon where you using. Great job on fullfiling your meat expidition.
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[Majja]

Great report and pix, sounds like it was an awsome trip.
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[CBR]

[reply]We'll be up there on the 15&16 of oct. I hope we can find a school like you guys did. What are the fees at bullfrog as far as entance and boat permit. Where the spoons you were using all chrome or did they have some color to them, also what size spoon where you using. Great job on fullfiling your meat expidition.[/reply]

They were kastmaster 1oz spoons in all silver. To get in to the park there is a boat fee and a truck fee. Not sure on the boat fee because we had a sticker on the boat, but the park fee for your truck is $15.
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[icejigginfool]

Good times; Good fishing, and Good friends. You can't beat it!!!!!
Good job.




If you know Talk about it, IF NOT: SHUT UP[shocked]
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[BassAckward]

I still wish I was still there, except I did miss my kids and wife.
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[a-b]

We were there from sat the 22nd till tuesday the 25th. I'm sure we passed you some where. We were almost straight across the r.v. park from BLM. Like you said .Waht a blast . We found them in Bullfrog. Sunday we cought 45 from abour 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. Monday we headed back to the same spot and boated 127 from about 10:00 am till 3:00 pm. doubles and triples constantly. We were by the dome rock just north of the bouy field in about 50-60 feet of water floating chovies. We ran into BLM, Polo and Ron at the cleaning station monday afternoon and they were working on over 100 fish. We told them where we were fishing and thats where we left them tuesday when we headed home.

a-b
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[fshslyer36]

Great report i have been wanting to go to powell for a while now but i dont havent had the time but its starting to get slow now so ill have more time
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[ScottyP]

Nice kitty ackwards. The question is if your family missed you?
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[Warchild]

I love lake powell I was up there in may and had a blast...
I am glad you guys had a great time.. thanks for the report
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