July 28, 2010
Lake Elevation: 3636
Water Temp: 82-87
F
It appears full moon during the heat of the summer in July cools fishing off. Slurps are still happening both night, morning and mid day but fish are finicky and hard to catch. The best feeding period is the last two hours of daylight. On calm evenings it is possible to catch 10-25 surface feeding stripers. If the pesky afternoon wind blows there are not a lot of fish caught.
Evan Carlson
Expect to see quick little pods of 5-10 stripers busting the surface and
then going right back down. If the schools are larger or the small school
comes back up a number of times then it is possible to catch more fish. The
southern lake is pretty quiet with only a few stripers caught per day. Catch
rate is more respectable in the San Juan and at Red Canyon in Good Hope Bay.
It is possible to find a resting school of stripers that will respond to
bait. Stripers favor a few deep resting spots and can be caught in good
numbers at depths of 30-70 feet. Find stripers on the graph, chum heartily
and then drop bait to the depth that stripers were seen. This action is
spotty as stripers really prefer to go in search of shad. They may be
resting in a deep holding area one day and be gone 3 miles up channel the
next.
Expect real boils to begin in mid-August after shad have grown larger.
Bass fishing follows the same pattern. Fish are deep and not very
cooperative. Little smallmouth are still shallow and will provide consistent
action, but larger fish are as deep as 35-50 feet. All of this will change
as surface temperature declines a few degrees and the full moon wanes. This
week best fishing will be found on calm evenings during the last two hours
of daylight.
Catfish and sunfish are not affected by full moon. They still provide fast
action for kids of all ages on live worms near camp.