Gear Fishing » Out of Area

     My wife has always wanted to do a night fishing trip, so we finally get the opportunity to go and the night just doesn’t go as planned whatsoever. The whole day my wife is so excited, but the weather is just crapping. Passing thunderclouds and wind all day. I told her we’re going no matter what.

     My buddy, Johnny is at the lake and giving me the early evening reports of borderline whitecaps, but he’s out there so I’m thinking its doable. We get to the lake about 7pm and its not too bad so we launch the boat. We head to the shallow island since the wind is pushing a little. Before I even drop the trolling motor my wife makes her first cast and hooks up. SWEET! She is happy, the wind died, everything looks great. Then, about five casts into it, the wind shifts, and I see white caps across the lake. Few minutes later the white caps are everywhere. CRAP! So I fire up the big motor and head toward the docks to try to find a spot we can wait it out. Not much better by the docks, and its not letting up. Then Johnny comes cruising in soaking wet from the ride back in. We all head for the docks. I was heading in to pick up my father-in-law anyway, so I tied up to the docks to wait it out. It gets worse…ok, Johnny’s getting of the lake now allong with every other boat, so I decide to pull the boat out too. This sucks!

     We get up in the parking lot and decide to bs and wait to see if it dies down. As soon as the sunsets, everything stops. YES!!! Ok, I go to check out my spot light…plug it into the cigarette outlet and it doesn’t work. Then we see smoke coming out of the boat…..OH Sh**!!! Get the extiguisher and in panic mode start ripping everything out of the way to get to the battery area near the motor. Smoke stops…no fire. The power wire on the outlet is fried, but no fire so we got lucky. Good thing that didn’t happen on the water.

      Anyway, we decide to launch the boat. I get my lights out to hook up and my transom light doesn’t work….F***! My wife is getting really pissed now. No spare bulbs in the boat either. By this time it’s about 930 and my father-in-law decided to save the day for his daughter and goes and makes a run to wally world for a bulb. We wait. He gets back with a bulb about 950 and we get everything squared away. Father-in-law is now out, since it’s past his bedtime, so it’s me and my wife.

     We launch and head out into the darkness. Stop back at the shallow island and fish for about 2 1/2 hours. I really wanted to try all the new baits I got for my b-day but, I grabbed a jig to start and never put it down. They were eating it good. Lost count of the number of fish quickly. The biggest fish was 4lbs. Headed in about 1am and found a citation warning on my window. Apparently my season pass is only good until 10pm. If you stay later you have to pay a camping fee. Whatever. Anyway, it was an adventure.

Our very good friend & #1 out of area contributor…Bobby D..

I just got back from 3 days of unbelievable fishing on Lake Powell.  I went down there to fish two tournaments with our local club Southern Utah Bass Anglers.  My partner and I for the Saturday tournament shared a hotel room and expenses, so we left at 3am on Friday to get to the lake at 6am for some prefishing.  We launched the boat soon as we got there and ran pretty far uplake through the cut to see what we could find and to form a plan for Saturday.  Basically everywhere we went we caught fish.  Mostly smallmouth bass with some largemouth mixed in.  After getting back to the marina around 4pm we called it a day and heading for our hotel room. 

On Saturday we decided that since the fishing was great everywhere, we would stay close in Wahweep and fish hard.  It paid off too.  We caught too many fish to count, but the trick was to find the largemouth, which we finally did later in the day.  Ended up culling out an early sack of smallies for a decent sack of largemouth.  Unfortunately we just couldn’t land our “kicker fish”.  I had a good 3-4 lb largie on and was getting him to the boat when it took a nose dive into a little twig of a tree and wrapped itself around and then as I tried to free it, it took another dive and snapped me off and took my favorite spinner bait with it.  My partner also lost a good fish later on a jig.  We ended up finishing in 2nd place, just 2lbs out of a winning sack. 

My highlight of Saturday was catching a nice striper with a rattle trap.  This was the first time I caught one of these, so I was pretty stoked.  On Sunday, I had a different partner and we did good, but the fishing was a little slower and was couldn’t find the bigger largemouth.  We finished in 3rd place with a nice sack of smallies.  Another first for me on Sunday was catching a walleye.  It was early morning and I was tossing around a jerkbait and I had it almost to the side of the boat when the walleye came out from the depths to dig his teeth into my lure.  Pretty cool to see the whole thing happen. 

This was a trip of a lifetime and Lake Powell is a beautiful place.  My only regret was not taking more pictures of the many fish I caught.  I was just too busy catching to pause for pictures, but I did get a nice shot of that striper….

Bobby Didier aka The Real D Insane