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"Bass Fishing at Lake Powell: An insatiable desire for more," by Rory Aikens
A wispy surface mist made the morning bass boat ride up Lake Powell seem surreal. Racing through the semi-transparent haze hanging just below eye level provided an exhilarating feeling of going at warp speed across the glass-like surface. No movie special effects can quite match such an experience.
The lake and sky almost seemed to be topsy-turvy as the rising sun stained long ribbon clouds with an orange paintbrush and the mist on the lake’s surface turned an orange tint in reflective response. Miles of rugged pink sandstone cliffs and weathered red-rock pinnacles reaching up toward the clouds in the bright blue sky looked like something out of an imaginative child’s coloring book.
The slight chill in the moisture-laden morning air was magnified by our speeding boat. We gladly slowed down to watch a spectacular sunrise while slipping on warm jackets and filling our cups with a robust Columbian brew. After a long, sweltering desert summer in Phoenix, it was luxurious to get reacquainted with full-body shivers being dispelled by warm jackets and steaming hot cups of strong coffee.
The Best-laid Plans
Our morning goal was to fish our way past the wide expanse of Padre Bay to the Dangling Rope Marina, then head to the famed San Juan arm of the lake for some of the best striped and smallmouth bass fishing in the West, perhaps the nation. We didn’t make our goals that morning. In fact, it was tough getting past Antelope Island: We had way too many invites to stop.
We were able to ignore the eruptions of a single bass chasing shad at the surface here and there. Believe me, that took a lot of willpower for a topwater addict. But when we could see a boil of multiple stripers and shad becoming airborne in surface melees right in front of us, it was no longer an invitation to be casually ignored.
You know the old saying about potato chips: You can’t eat just one. Well with stripers, it’s tough to catch just one. In fact, stripers get kind of jealous (or is it hungry?) and will often try to take the food away from other stripers. When you hook one, others come along and try to take that fish — your lure — away. The end result is they also get hooked.
Multiple stripers on the hook provide pole-bending ecstasy. The power of this sleek fish is something to experience. When the action gets hot, it’s possible to catch 10 to 20 stripers or more in a single spot in less than an hour. That’s world-class striper fishing.
Enter the Smallmouth
When the stripers quit biting, we headed to a chain of toadstool-like submerged sandstone reefs. There we cast bright chartreuse-colored Yamamoto curly-tail grubs on small jig heads and quickly burned them back. The reward was 2 pounds of bronze fury on the end of the line as a feisty smallmouth bass made its line-stripping run. What a blast. Today’s smallmouth bass at Powell are not the dinks of the past, but mostly 1- to 3-pound tiger-striped dynamos that will make you smile and test your equipment, especially when using light tackle.
As the sun rose high in the morning sky, the mist disappeared faster than last month’s paycheck. Morning mist is common during autumn. It takes time for Mother Nature to cool down 8.5 trillion gallons of water along 1,960 miles of shoreline.
In the autumn, the morning air is often 30 degrees colder than the water. By November, water and air will have a temperature “meeting of the molecules.” Until that happens, autumn fishing action along Powell’s 96 mysterious canyons, stretching out like long thin fingers, can be stupendous. Striped, smallmouth and largemouth bass and walleye all feed aggressively to put on body fat before winter conditions arrive. Sometimes, those feeding frenzies can be dramatic, with acres of water erupting with surface boils.
It always amazes me that this big lake is not filled to capacity with fishing boats each fall and spring. Quite often, you can catch so many fish that you have to rest because your arms hurt too much. Yet you might seldom see another fishing boat. In other parts of the country, especially on the Eastern seaboard, anglers pay big money for striper fishing that isn’t a fraction as good as the fishing at Powell. Go figure. Better yet, go fishing.
An Insatiable Desire for More
For most, Powell provides the fishing trip of a lifetime. For some fortunate few, a lifetime of such experiences has etched a permanent smile on the mind and an insatiable desire for more.
Wayne Gustaveson, a biologist with the Utah Division of Wildlife, has worked and fished Powell for more than three decades. His weekly fishing report, “Wayne’s Words” (wayneswords.com), is the ultimate how-to and where-to angling gospel for this popular high-desert lake that draws about 3 million visitors a year. To Gustaveson, the striper fishing at Powell is just about unbeatable. “This is by far the best striper fishing in the nation. The only fishery that comes close is Lake Mead,” Gustaveson says.
That’s appropriate: Lake Mead is the largest man-made lake in North America. Powell is the second largest. They are sister lakes separated by the Grand Canyon. Mead is in the low southwestern desert. Powell is in the high desert of the Colorado Plateau. At both lakes, you can see millions of years of the Earth’s geologic history etched and worn into uplifted sandstone cliffs.
Despite more than 30 years of catching Powell fish, Gustaveson still loves hooking into hard-fishing stripers and smallmouth. “To me, each fish I catch is as thrilling as the first. There’s nothing quite like it,” says the quiet-spoken biologist.
While fishing early in the summer, Gustaveson pointed out miles of tamarisk, tules and even sedges growing along Powell’s shoreline thanks to the Southwest’s prolonged drought. It may seem an irony that drought has resulted in plant growth, but indirectly, it has. Last year, Powell’s lake level reached its lowest point since the lake was originally filled. While the lake level was low, vegetation grew up in the fertile, exposed lake bottom. This year, Powell rose 30 vertical feet, flooding much of that vegetation and providing wet sustenance for acres of vegetation along the extensive shoreline.
About the abundant sedges and tules along the shoreline in the back of Rock Creek, Gustaveson says, “We typically don’t see such vegetation here,” then added with a chuckle, “I don’t think our fish quite know what to do with so much available cover.”
Gustaveson hopes that Powell will return gradually to its former robust lake level and rise about five or 10 feet each year to flood some vegetation and nourish other plants. Such a cycle will ensure good lake productivity and provide superb hiding and ambush cover for fish for years to come. The rising lake level did provide a significant shad spawn this past spring; how much won’t be known until the fall fish survey. But Gustaveson still has an inkling of what is going to happen this fall.
“I don’t think the shad base in the lower lake is sufficient to hold all the stripers. I suspect that a lot of them will migrate to the upper lake and the San Juan Basin where the forage base is super abundant,” Gustaveson predicted.
The Productive San Juan
The San Juan River has always been a significant water and nutrient source for Lake Powell. Experienced Powell anglers make the long boat journey of 50 or 60 miles up the lake to fish this tremendously productive stretch. However, visiting the upper end of the lake from Hall’s Crossing to Hite is another option, although it is not an option a lot of anglers take (at least not Arizona anglers). The Hall’s Crossing-Bullfrog area is popular for Utah anglers, especially those from Salt Lake City. It is also common to see a lot of Colorado license plates there.
Personally, I love going to Hall’s Crossing. The extra time spent on the road eliminates all the extra travel time (and gas expense) on the water traveling to the San Juan. Plus, there is a superb campground at Hall’s Crossing where I can charge up the trolling batteries for my bass boat each night, and I don’t have to worry about shore camping, with all that entails. If we run short of supplies (we always forget something), there is a store and marina right there. If we don’t want to cook, we get dressed up (that means putting on shoes and pants rather than sandals and shorts) and head to the restaurant at Bullfrog for trout almondine or a thick steak.
Another thing I like about the upper lake area: Most anglers in that stretch of lake primarily fish for stripers, leaving all the wonderful smallmouth, largemouth and walleye fishing to folks like myself. And I am more than happy to benefit from their angling oversight.
So go experience the fishing magic at Lake Powell. If you can’t make it this fall, plan a trip for the spring. Don’t miss out on this world-class fishing. Be sure to take along a camera; Powell is one of the scenic wonders of the world. Good luck, and maybe I’ll see you there.
This article was published in the September-October 2006 issue of Arizona Wildlife Views magazine. To subscribe or give a gift, order online or call (800) 777-0015.
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