Another Great Trip To Lake Powell  -  May 16th, 2009 10:31pm

I just got back from whats beginning to be an annual trek to Lake Powell.  For the third Spring in as many years I find myself wiped out, sun baked, and grinning from ear to ear after the experience.

From the get go, this trip was a little different from the last few.  The stripers were boycotting the lower end of the lake so we decided to try our hand fishing for large and small mouth bass up in Last Chance.  This was quite a ways up the lake for our little boat, but luckily they had reopened "the cut" which dropped the two hour trip to just a little over an hour.

We worked our way up towards the end of Last Chance and started throwing various jigs and worms that the reports had hinted at working well enough.  We got a late start that day and it showed as the morning fishing was pretty slow.  My dad pulled a nice crappie and a solitary laregmouth out of one cove, but all I could manage was a guppy sized smallmouth that we put in the livewell for later use as bait.  Its possible that a little more time in the area would have paid off, but we couldn't keep ignoring the folks paddling their bassboat down the canyon forever.

When you see a boat that's conked out in Lake Powell you have a decision to make.  If you stop to help its going to take forever to tow them anywhere(the place is huge), but if ignore their plight you are almost certainly doomed to karmic vengeance.  We oped for the prior as its always nice to appear virtuous and spent the next hour or so towing the stranded fishermen to their campsite.  They were nice enough, and told us they'd been doing well the last few days on green and crawfish colored jigs.  They even gave us some and topped off our gas tank.  Unfortunately we had pretty much burnt the morning by then, so the remainder of our efforts back in the canyons produced only a tiny smallmouth or two.

The wind started coming up as the day moved on and we fished various rock piles and boulders where we could find shelter.  Eventually we hid back in Padre Bay at a place my dad calls the Cookie Jar.  Our luck turned and I landed my first walleye on a brown curly-tailed jig as well as a few smallmouth and a leech ridden catfish.  My dad also picked up quite a few smallmouth there.  Before the day ended we decided to try a few more areas but the wind had other plans and we had to pack it in just before sunset.

The next morning we opted for a different strategy.  The only folks at the fish cleaning station who found any stripers were fishing in Navajo so we went back there in hopes of finding a few ourselves.  There were signs of shad in the very back of the canyon, but all we could catch were a few very small stripies.  We went most of the morning throwing crank baits, anchovies, grubs, and anything else we could think of.  Eventually my dad managed to pull in a fat 4-5 lb stiper on a gray/white crank bait and I matched him on an anchovy.  Unfortunately that's all we could squeak out  and decided to move on and burn the remainder of our bait in Antelope.

It looked like the rest of the day was going to be rather uneventful until a fish hook decided it wanted a home in one of my my fathers fingers.  I had to watch in cringing horror as he used the worlds dullest pocket knife to carve a hole next to the hook and then smash the barb down and yank the hook out using a pair of pliers.  He finished this procedure by washing the hole out in the lake and applying some duct tape to the wound.  He then proceeded to lure a really nice smallmouth into the boat - his finger bleeding decoratively around him the entire time.

It may not sound like the best trip ever, and I'm a little wiped so my writings a bit off, but the experience there is always much greater than the sum of its parts.  The cool air, the warm sun, the post card worthy canyons; they make the journey worth the effort and keep me looking forward to my next trip back.