By Loren Brooks
The rising water at Lake Mead, particularly the water in the Overton Arm, near marker # 18, has really improved the fishing for Striper this fall. The abundant shad that provide the bulk of the food for Striped Bass, seem to have come back this year, more than I can remember in years past.
If you fish for Striped Bass, it is a real treat to find a “boil”. A boil of stripers means good fishing for the angler, if he can get to the boil during the frenzy wherein the striper are chasing the shad to the surface, causing the water to look like it is boiling or bubbling. Seagulls feast on the left over shad which float to the surface. When you see seagulls diving into the water it is a good sign that a “boil” is taking place at that location.
On Tuesday, November 1, using a fishfinder, we spotted a large school of shad on the monitor, in 60 feet of water near “Sand Island” or as local fisherman call it, “Rocky Point”. We quickly turned the boat around and drifted over the shad and began to catch Striped Bass.
Boyd Brown from Robbin’s Nest, and I caught 16 Striper at that location using a “candlefish” or “dart”. Then we proceeded north and caught 8 more Striper up in the shallow water near the “weather station” (which no longer exists) trolling with anchovies, making a total of 24 fish for that day.
Then on Tuesday, November 8, at 11:45 am, Boyd, Don Cheney, and I got into a hot spot near Marker 18, and caught 54 fish in one hour. No one was near us at the time, or we would have shared the hot spot. We were hollering as loud a possible, “FISH ON”. About 1:00 pm, Bud, Junior and Doug showed up and said they had the same luck in the Overton Arm, catching 70 fish. They cleaned 50 fish for the dinner table. They were also using a lure which resembles the “Candlefish” to catch the Striped Bass. There were lots of smiles on our faces that day, and it became the talk of the park about this good fishing.
When my daughter, Carolyn, and her husband, D. Michael Nielsen, from Bountiful, Utah, got the news about the big catch, they came down to Overton on November 10, hoping to catch a big batch of fish. Now the pressure is on. Can it be done? Two times in a row, catch fish until your arms wear out pulling them in?
We rigged three rods with “darts”, but also brought three more rods and reels with leaded line just in case the fish would play “hard to get”.
That was not the case.
Referring to the moon charts, we had a good idea the fish would start biting around 12:00 noon. Stan and Jimmy Potter, got on the lake about the same time and were found trolling up in the 29 foot water. They had caught one.
Bill and Bob from Robbin’s Nest were also trolling with very little success. Verl and Deloy had trolled from Marker 18 without a bite.
We caught one trolling in 29 feet of water, at 11:50 am.
Then it happened! Carolyn spotted some seagulls diving in the water with some action on the surface indicating a “boil”. We quickly moved into the location which was only 50 yards away, and grabbed the three rods rigged with white Darts.
My gosh, it is hard to believe what happened in the next 25 minutes! We caught 34 Stripers in 25 minutes. We were hollering for every boat in sight to get over to us as quick as possible because the more boats in a boil the better the fishing. Carolyn and Mike and yours truly caught a total of 48 fish. Stan and Jimmy caught 21. Bob and Bill caught 27. Verl and Deloy got there late but caught 8 fish in a row. Some of the lures were homemade and some were replica’s from Ace Hardware, called 2 oz Chrome Chovy. We had painted the Chrome Chovy white to look like a “Candlefish” and it worked fine. We threw a homemade white mouse to Verl and he caught 7 in a row on that lure. I would estimate that over 100 fish were caught in that circle of boats in one hour.
I was a little hoarse from yelling ‘FISH ON”. Someone said they heard me from Overton.
