Points 14 & 15: Hooking into Schools of Stripers in the Desert

April 27th-29th, 2025

For a few days I had the incredible privilege of going back to a childhood vacation destination with my family and taking out the cabin-cruiser boat that has been in the family for basically as long as I've been alive. This lake holds a very special place in my heart. The fusion of beautiful red-rock scenery, secluded beaches for camping and of course, great fishing- always made for an unforgettable experience. It's a sprawling and long lake about 180 miles long in what feels essentially like a flooded section of the Grand Canyon, with a main river channel dozens of side canyons that can also stretch for miles. The beauty here is unparalleled but I'd argue the fishing is even better. This lake holds a huge population of striped bass, so much so that there is no bag limit for these fish and anglers are encouraged to keep their catch every time. Reports of 100+ fish days

are quite common here.

Our journey began with de-winterizing (along with some much needed Spring cleaning) the boat and launching it into the inviting waters of the lake. We toured up lake a few miles before heading into a scenic canyon for some sight-seeing and possibly some fishing based on the vibes.

We were rewarded with incredible views and peering down into the depths around a bend a few large bass were spotted that prompted us to kill the engine and get our rods ready. I brought my fly rod of course, but felt that since these fish are typically deeper down I favored the tried and true method of fishing with anchovies. Within a couple of minutes my brother and I hooked up into our first fish simultaneously. Fishing was fast and easy in the ensuing hour or so. We quickly lost count of how many fish we caught as we were sitting on top of a large

and frenzied school of bass. All ranged in size from 18-23 inches. It wasn't long after we started to rack up a large number of fish before I decided to bring out the fly rod, stringing up a white-brown Bang-tail stream I thought mimicked the natural prey of these fish the most: the threadfin shad. I tacked on a large split shot as well in order to get to the appropriate depth as well. The experiment of trying to match the hatch paid off and several more stripers were caught on this method, including one that was noticably larger than the other fish, reaching a length of about 24 inches.

It was a blast getting out on the water again on familiar waters and catching tons of fish. The coming days we had similar experiences: journeying up-lake before locating a large school of fish followed by blazing hot fishing for as long as we liked.

Even more fun for me the purist as I was, was catching a large number of these fish on the fly rod. It was a new reel and rod setup and I couldn't have thought of a better way to christen the pole. I will surely be back for more of this amazing fishing later this summer as the heat starts to turn up and beach camping will be possible as well.

With catching dozens of these fish, including one approximating 24-25 inches, I was able to check off two more points off my Legendary Angler program: catching 2 or more striped bass of 17+ inches and one of 23+ inches. With those two points my grand total comes up to 15 points. Only 85 left to go.