04-13-2007, 05:08 AM
[red][size 3]Had a great week at Lake Powell over Easter. Weather was partly cloudy in the 80’s, gas was around $2.90 a gallon, water temp was 60 to 64 degrees and the Stripers were active. Stay away from the Texaco in Beaver on the way down unless you enjoy paying $3.50 a gallon for gas. Pulled into Lone Rock beach where some of our party was camped and about buried the truck and trailer in the sand. With lots of spring hopping and clutch smoking we got it out and launched at Stateline. There were a lot of camp trailers down there and it looked like the sand was firm enough in some areas that folks had launched some small boats from the shore but I wanted to spend our time in the water, not digging the rig out of the beach. Spent the first day motoring around exploring Lone Rock area and making sure everything still worked on the boat after being tarped all winter. Didn’t put a line in the water and only saw two marks on the graph in the whole bay. The next day we ran up to the bend just below Antelope canyon and found a 20 foot “notch” in the east wall at water level where we marked a few fish about 40 feet. Some nice folks at the motel said they had their best luck with whole anchovies so we rigged two 1.0 circle hooks in an upside down “Y” so we could place one hook through the gill plates and the second through the back towards the tail so it would hang horizontal in the water and threw them out. Within 10 minutes my seven year old had a Striper on. After that the catching was pretty steady with several doubles. We chummed very little – didn’t really have to. We did find the catching was faster by putting a small split shot 12”-18” up the line to make it sink a little faster to where the fish were. We would cast out toward the wall, put the pole in the pole holder and let them drift down below the boat. The main channel was rough with some monster chop so there was some pretty vigorous jigging without doing any jigging. We were still catching fish but decided to use the electric to wander down the bend to see what else we could find. We didn’t find anything but there were several other boats held up pretty tight along some other breaks in the cliff that were probably on some. Got bored and beat the chop back to buoy 1 where we slowed for a bathroom break and check the graph. We floated between the shore and the buoy watching the bare underwater ridge come up and then a whole row of big marks stacked all the way up along the bay side of the ridge. Anchovies Overboard! Immediate triple! We would toss them over the ridge and watch them sink down and across toward the boat and as soon as they crossed the ridge they were nailed. For the next 10-15 minutes there wasn’t a time when we didn’t have a fish on with several doubles. When we stopped at buoy 1 there wasn’t another boat in sight and 15 minutes later there were 5 right on top of us. A guy in a pontoon pulled right over the ridge with other boats on both sides. Everyone was catching fish but it kind of ruined the fun of drifting anchovies across the ridge and watching them get ambushed so we took off for dinner. Also the fish we caught by Antelope were a lot fatter and better eating. All fish were 18”-32”. Next day we slept in, cruised the dam then we were the ones that parked on the ridge at anchovy point amongst other boats and had two immediate doubles for my granddaughter then took off. There were probably 100 fish on stringers combined on the other boats. Dark clouds were moving in so we headed for camp but got caught in the wind and waves before getting there. Some good neighbors saved our camp from getting blown clear to Wahweap before we arrived. The beach looked like the scene from Hidalgo. We didn’t fish the pontoons by the dam but noticed that it was a race in the early mornings to get to the west wall corner then when that filled with several boats next to go was the east wall corner. Wanted to wander up lake and chase some Bass and Walleye but didn’t make it this trip. If you are in the neighborhood be sure to take the short walk to the Horseshoe point overlook but leave your pole in the truck unless you have an ultra high capacity reel!
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] Thanks TD,