By Loren Brooks
With a weather forecast calling for high winds on November 30, John Ratliff, Ron Holms and I squeezed in one more day of fishing on Tuesday, November 29.
When we arrived up in the meadows of the Overton arm of Lake Mead, I made my usual call to anyone with their “ears on” to give me a report on their location and what action was taking place. We all use channel 5 on the radios. Stan and Pat responded by informing us they already had 18 striper.
They said the fish were biting between 9:00 and 10:00 am, then they quit. That’s true because for the next two hours, we only caught one fish now and then. Deloy and Verl waved us down with a report of catching three so far. Bob and Bill also responded on the cell phone reporting only three fish so far this morning.
I was bound and determined to catch a striper on a “Pointer 128” gray minnow, however this was met with negative results.
The old “anchovy” never fails, and John and Ron proved that by catching the first eight fish, between 12:45 and 1:30 pm.
I finally caved in and rigged up, playing “copycat”, and started catching fish. By 2:30 pm we had caught 28 fish. Deloy and Verl pulled in 15; Bob and Bill caught 20+ and some one down the line close to Echo, caught a big striper. Stan and Pat weighed the fish for them. It was 8.5 pounds. The people were from California (two women and a man). That will put a smile on your face.
Every fisherman has his own tricks. John and Ron, taught an old dog new tricks on this calm beautiful day, fishing in the meadows. The water temperature was 62 degrees, and we were catching lots of fish in 30 to 35 feet of water. We had several “doubles & triples”, and one time we had 4 fish on at one time.
We were trolling at about 1 mph, using banana sinkers close to the bottom. We pulled the 20 foot Jet Boat out at Stewarts Point and were back to Overton by 3:45 pm.
I talked to Stan and Pat who informed me that later in the day, the “Pointer” or a copy of the “Pointer” lure became red hot. In fact, Stan said a striper jumped out of the water and struck a lure that was hanging from his rod a few inches above the water line. He said that was the first time that has happened in all his days of fishing at Lake Mead.
So don’t give up on those lures. If the fish are hungry they might even jump in the boat for a bite of your sandwich.
