So, after trying to figure out a time to go to Lake Powell this spring, we finally went and had a great time. We went to the south end out of Page and launched at Antelope Point. Capt. Ray launches at State Line due to restrictions on guide services at Antelope.

Day one: We decided to get a guide (I have been to Lake Powell many times, and a few times specifically to fish, but never really piled in the fish like I hear about everyone doing) to learn some of the subtleties. It was money well spent. We went with Capt. Ray Young--about the nicest guy you would want to meet, and who was able to help me learn some of the more advanced concepts of finding, identifying, and fishing suitable structure and at the same time get very basic to help my wife (who doesn't do a lot of fishing) on things as simple as how to set the hook, etc. I would recommend Capt. Ray to anyone at all. We were specifically targeting smallmouth and Ray delivered.

For the first time in my life, I actually lost count on how many fish we caught. Many were very small--like REALLY small--but there were plenty of decent sized fish. Also, every once in a while you would get the odd striper coming into the picture. The 15 inch'ish stripers that are not in the schools seemed very, very healthy--nice and fat and pulled like crazy--did not want to give up. The bigger (I should say longer) stripers were clearly near death and just felt like pulling in a big stick. We caught a couple of walleyes and a blue gill and my wife had a large mouth to the boat when he came unbuttoned. We mainly fished watermelon or white unweighted senkos weedless or watermelon, or chartreuse single tail grubs on a 1/4 oz jighead. I also caught a couple on a Shad Rap R/S and a deep diving X-Rap.

Before we finished for the day, Capt. Ray took us to his "secret spot" for stripers so we could get some fish to take home. Pretty amazing how he took us to this spot and IMMEDIATELY we started catching fish until we decided that we had enough. Used anchovies down about 40 feet. We had a fish on from the time we put the first line in the water until we decided to leave. We caught somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 in about a half hour.

Day 2: On our own now, we went uplake and found a campsite in Grotto Canyon. I saw a little brush in the cove so while we were still setting up I threw grub next to brush and immediately caught a little smallie. We motored around with the electric and found some of the structure that we learned about with Ray and some of what I had read about and seen on WaynesWords.com. (In fact I think we fished the same rock that Wayne posted in his fish report!) We pretty much caught fish all day. What was a bonus is that we found one little spot where we go into some walleye and pulled out a total of 6 in about an two hours mixed in with our regular haul of small smb.

There was one larger, very dark backed SMB that we kept seeing following the smaller fish that we hooked and finally Ashley (my wife) hooked up with it on a slightly larger grub--it was the biggest smallie of the trip.

I did catch the biggest walleye (to my credit) on a deep diving x-rap (I had never caught walleye before). The walleye were all very thick across the back, very feisty and pulled really hard. From that same spot we also caught several bluegill (Ashley caught the biggest one--really pretty one--see picture) and several stripers. We caught the most on watermelon, chartreuse, and smoke single tail grubs, but also caught fish on the X-Rap, weightless senkos, and carolina rigged senko.

When we got back to camp and it got shady and calm, I started throwing a Pop-R from the back of the parked boat. I could see fish following it but no takers. I tied a small power grub on a 12 inch leader off of the back hook of the Pop-R and caught a mixed bag of blue gill and very small smallies--a lot of fun.

Day 3: We were only going to fish for a couple of hours and then head in. I fished a LC Sammy and had several strikes but could not hook up--probably my fault, and the fish seemed pretty small, but still still very fun to see them hit a topwater. Switched to grubs and started catching fish. Finally we decided to call it and we headed in. Picked up our fish at Capt. Ray's and went home.

It was not nearly as hot as I expected it to be and I learned that heading up lake is definitely worth the time and the gas as we felt like we almost had the Lake to ourselves. Great trip, can't wait to go again.