Lake Powell - Water temperature (Wahweap Bay) 69-74 F, Lake Elevation 3,577.06 MSL (and dropping) as of 10/28/2024. Report courtesy of Wayne Gustaveson (www.wayneswords.net).

Fishing results have been great for the past month. Lots of fish have been caught from Wahweap to Good Hope Bay. Striped bass, largemouth and smallmouth bass have been the most prolific fish caught recently. There have also been good numbers of walleye, sunfish, and catfish caught recently. I like to fish for schooling stripers, so here is my report concerning stripers caught this morning.

Striper schools are found lakewide. The most effective way to find stripers is to graph the lake bottom while trolling or you can just watch the graph and cast when a school appears under the boat. Most recently, it has been very effective to graph the bottom between 30 and 70 feet while looking for shad and striper schools. Recently we have graphed the lake bottom in Wahweap, Warm Creek and Navajo Canyon. These are the closest canyons when launching at Wahweap. The graph typically displays the bottom and any fish traces that randomly show up. 

When the graph lights up with lots of fish traces, the best technique is to stop the boat and drop spoons to the bottom. The school we detected here was excitedly chasing shad. As we dropped spoons into the school, the stripers went crazy and we began reeling them in as fast as we could. Sometimes the school leaves within a few minutes and you have to search for another school. Today they were extremely cooperative and we caught 70 stripers in three hours of spooning in essentially the same spot where we stopped the boat at 7 a.m. Average weight was 2-4 pounds. Most fish were in decent physical condition, although there were a few skinny fish and some really strong big fish mixed in with the large school. Pulling big stripers off the bottom can really wear you out as you reel them up to the surface. It is my favorite way to fish in the fall!

These fish were very active and willing to chase our lures. They will slow down a bit when the air temperature declines beginning this coming Friday. But, as the weather calms following the storm, the fish will re-energize and spooning for active striper schools will continue. It has been a great year for striper fishing and expect that to continue as stripers continue to search for shad schools along the lake bottom into November.