Secret cove yields striper haul

The sun was just lightening the eastern horizon as we made our way out of Boulder Harbor and Mike O'Donnell pointed his pontoon boat toward the northern tip of Saddle Island. That wasn't our destination, but it was a good waypoint along our route to Government Wash. With the water so low, Mike could easily see the whitewashed rocks against the dark water as he guided the boat around the point.

Joining Mike and I was his friend Bruce. As we pulled into what's left of the Vegas Bay arm of the lake, it was light enough for us to rig our rods and start fishing. Several fishing boats were already in the area, but nobody was catching much. Some anglers were still-fishing with cut bait, while others were casting lures.

We tied on top-water lures with hopes of finding striped bass feeding on shad. Mike and Bruce threw Jumpin' Minnows, and I tried a yellow and white shallow diver. With all the talk of striper boils, we were sure the fish would start hitting before too long.

We tested the water in several small coves and along the steep shoreline at Government Wash. Despite Mike's stories of striper boils gone by, we couldn't goad the fish into boiling for us. After flailing the water for a half-hour, we managed to get only a couple of stripers to swat half-heartedly at our baits.

After testing other areas without success, Mike stopped the boat and made Bruce and I swear an oath of absolute secrecy. Then he piloted us to a cove no one knows near a point with no name, where we saw some disturbance on the surface near the back of the inlet. What we saw were small and short-lasting striper boils.

Mike carefully guided the boat into the area where the stripers were boiling.

We waited until a boil began and started casting. Mike hooked up on his first or second cast. Bruce wasn't far behind. I hooked into a striper with the shallow diving lure, then opted to change to a Zara Spook.

The lure's fresh-out-of-the-package smell hadn't dissipated when my Zara Spook hit the water for the first time. As soon as it landed, a striped bass slammed the lure. We played tug of war for a couple of minutes before I laid the fish in the cooler. I tossed my new lucky lure back into the middle of a small boil, and a striper hammered it before the splash settled back to the water's surface. Mike and Bruce hooked up at the same time, so we had three fish on at once.

That's when my lucky lure suddenly took a turn to the dark side. Just as I reeled the fish within reaching distance of the boat, it suddenly and powerfully turned its head in an effort to throw the lure, but that didn't work. Instead, the fish broke the line and took off with my new not-so-lucky lure.

While I tied on another lure, Mike and Bruce continued to reel in fish.

At one point Mike's lure was popped hard by a fish that put up a really good fight. When he got the fish to the boat, it wasn't a striped bass at all. Somehow Mike managed to pull a largemouth bass from the middle of a striper boil.

As long as the boils lasted, the fishing was excellent, but it was all over less than an hour after it began. By then, there were more than a dozen stripers on ice.

Freelance writer Doug Nielsen is a conservation educator for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. His "In the Outdoors" column, published Thursday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NDOW. Any opinions he states in his column are his own. He can be reached at dougnielsen@att.net.