Lake Powell 2023

Fishing Time: May 5-8, 2023

Weather: Calm most of the trip, partly cloudy, T-70s

Moon Phase: Full Moon

Water Temp: Morning- Low 60s, Afternoon- mid to high 60s

Water Level: 3,528 ft amsl

Mudline: Muddy to Green stain was just south of Lake Canyon and the green stain to clear was just below the Rincon.  However, all the canyons were clear water, and the mudline wasn’t distinct in many areas.

Best Baits: Curly tail grubs in Christmas, green pumpkin, and white with sparkle were the best producers.  Crankbaits worked in some areas, and topwater bite was okay one evening.

Who Went: Bobber John, Josh Newton, Devin Duncan, Dunc

Lake Powell is currently sitting at a record low elevation of 3520 ft amsl.  Luckily, some ramp improvements were made last year, so launching a boat is possible unlike last year.  On arrival to the lake, I literally gasped.  Bullfrog bay is gone and the large open main channel looking towards Halls Creek Marina and Moki Canyon looks like a river instead of the big open water it used to be.

Once we got over the shock of looking at the lake, we sent the boat loaded with all our camping gear down the ramp and into the lake.  The boat started great, but then died.  Tried starting it again and heard the dreaded slow roll of a dead battery.  Quick call to Newton driving up the ramp and he was on his way to town for a new battery. 

Installed the new battery and it fired right up.  Went to turn on the gps/fish finder and nothing.  Must have damaged a connection while installing the new battery.  Took another hour troubleshooting then we were finally on our way.  Not our best start.

This year was extremely weird with the low water levels and high runoff.  The mudline which is usually way up north had already made its way south of bullfrog, so we were forced to go further south looking for the green stained water that in my experience, produces the best fishing.  We started to see the green stain just south of Lake Canyon.  There weren’t many canyons available to camp with the low water level, so we snuck into the first good canyon we found that kept us in the green stained water.  Iceberg Canyon became home for the next 3 nights. 

Iceberg Canyon is gorgeous and looked amazing to fish with the back of the canyon revealing hundreds of sunken trees that probably haven’t been visible for decades as they sat under water. Unfortunately, the fishing was poor all through the canyon and we had a lot of neighbors due to the lack of canyons available for camp sites.  The canyons were still holding clear water and I think that was the reason they didn’t produce as well as the main channel did on this trip.  We also saw many sunken boats on the trip that were exposed only because of the low water levels.  One boat was completely visible the day we got there but almost halfway submerged by the time we left 3 days later.  With the record breaking snow we received this year, the water level was coming up 1.5 feet per day while we were there.  Never seen anything like it and we almost lost our camp!

DAY 1:

The first night we fished the main channel finding some green stained water just north of Iceberg canyon and immediately found the smallmouth.  Not much size, but still fun with a hot start putting about 30 of them in the live well to filet later that night.  No other species were caught the first night. One frustrating part of the low water level was firewood.  There wasn’t any to be found within 100 ft of the shoreline.  We had to go on a wood hunt and loaded the boat with 3 nights worth of firewood.  We filleted all our fish and finished preparing camp for the days ahead.

DAY 2:

The next morning Bobber had an idea to run south down to Escalante Canyon.  It was a long run and once we got there, we were disappointed as the back of the canyon was very muddy water and the front of the canyon was clear water with mostly shear walls.  This was our worst morning of fishing, but we made up for it on the way back north finding a sunken boulder field in the main channel that was a smallmouth factory.  It was fun watching Devin lay into them with a deep diving crankbait.  We easily pulled 30 fish off the boulder pile within an hour.

That afternoon/evening we fished the Rincon and found some good-looking shoreline that reminded us of where we fish up north in Red Canyon.  The fishing was great, and we finally pulled in a couple different species including some walleye and crappie.  We kept the walleye and added them to our filets for dinner.  Newt had one good largemouth on, but it came to the surface and spit his curly tailed grub. 

That evening it was breezy and ruined the night fishing at camp. Dev and I still managed to catch some minnows along the shoreline and found some gnarly scorpions using the black light.  Before we went minnow hunting Newton told Dev to watch out for mountain lions.  He seemed fine, but when we were walking back in the dark, he told me he was nervous about seeing a lion.  I laughed and told him Newt was just trying to scare him.

DAY 3:

The last morning, we had another boat incident.  I was supposed to meet my cousins, who were also down there fishing, for a bass tournament at 9:00.  We made our way to the sunken boulder field for some fishing before the tournament and we did well on topwater and again on crankbaits.  On the way back to meet my cousins I noticed water coming in above the floorboard of the boat.  I instantly went into panic mode and thought we had lost the plug and were sinking.  I started driving towards Bullfrog and Newt was looking for my spare plug that I apparently don’t have.  Suddenly it hit me, I left the live well on while fishing the boulder field and it was overflowing into the boat!  Whew, that one had me nervous.

We met up with my cousins and made the tourney rules.  1-point for each fish caught with a 5-point bonus for big fish of the day (excluding stripers).  We began by fishing the Rincon and went on a decent run putting a dozen or so smallies in the boat.  After the Rincon we moved to the boulder field, but we may have fished it out that morning and only added a few more fish.  The rest of the morning we kept to the main channel hitting every nook and boulder field we could find and put another dozen in the boat.  At 2:00 we had a check in to see how each team was doing.  We were sitting at 25 and my cousins were at 19, however, they had a nice largemouth bass that gave them the 5-point bonus, so we reset the big fish and bumped them to 24 and went back out for the afternoon with the same rules and a new chance at big fish.

Not sure what happened after morning, but we went ice cold.  The weather got hot and there wasn’t a breeze to be found.  The fishing was as stale as the weather, and we couldn’t buy a bite.  We even resorted to trolling and still couldn’t put a fish in the boat.  We made a little run down lake and found some new shoreline and Bobber took the helm and finally started putting some fish in the boat.  Then Bobber went on an epic run and put a dozen in the boat by himself, including a nice largemouth.  His run re-energized the group and we all started catching again.

We made it to the final weigh in at 6:00 with 51 total fish and a decent kicker largemouth at 2.5 pounds.  My cousins came in at 39 fish with no kicker.  Dev was excited that he won his first bass fishing tourney.  We finished the night in the Rincon with beautiful weather and put more fish in the boat.  We also met a gentleman on a fishing kayak that made for quite the story.  Kenny pedaled over to us to say hi and immediately we could tell he was wasted.  He then proceeds to fall off the kayak and kept falling trying to drag it to shore.  Once he finally stood up, he was bleeding profusely from his legs.  We asked where he was staying, and it was over a mile away.  Reluctantly we offered him a ride back and he was all over it.  Immediately he jumped on the boat and asked if we had any hard liquor.  He then began telling us story after story as we dragged him and his kayak back to his houseboat.  He got a little overzealous with the sunscreen during the ride and I snapped a photo of him as he jumped back on his kayak near his houseboat.  Devin didn’t quite know what to think of this guy and we all got a good laugh about it.

That night was beautiful.  The wind was calm, and the full moon was out in force.  We started seeing catfish come in shallow near camp using our spotlights, so Dev and Bobber rigged up some rods and the slaying began.  You could literally watch them take the bait and some of them were not small.  They had a blast, and it was a great way to end the trip.

CONCLUSION:

Let me start by saying we caught a ton of fish on this trip.  The day of the tournament, which was our slowest day of fishing, I remember we seemed bummed that we didn’t catch more fish.  I reminded the group on the ride home that we probably caught a dozen or so fish that morning before the tournament, 51 during the tournament, a few more that evening, and then slayed a bunch of channel catfish that night.  So, on our slowest day of fishing we probably caught 80 fish!

That said, there was something missing on this trip.  We did catch some random walleye, a couple crappie, and one largemouth bass, but beyond that it was nothing but smallmouth.  Not to mention they didn’t have a lot of size with the exception of a few.  The grub was king this trip, and we didn’t catch much on anything else with the exception of a few crankbait and topwater bites.  The lack of canyons to fish was also tough.  Luckily our weather was amazing with little wind, which helped us fish the main channel whenever we wanted. Lastly, I think the large amount of incoming runoff kept the water temps lower than they should have been and made it hard to figure out any type of pattern for each species. It was also a brand-new area for us.

I loved having Devin there to experience fishing Lake Powell.  He was a bit bummed not catching largemouth bass, but overall had a blast and learned a lot about fishing and life, according to Bobber and Newt!  We got him on some topwater fish, and some decent crankbait bites.  I think his favorite part was the channel catfish bite the last night.