Stripers feasting on anchovies

Well, how’d you guys do today?” the man asked as he stepped up to the far end of the Echo Bay fish-cleaning station to look over the striped bass we had just stacked under the water faucet.

“Not bad,” he said, answering his own question. “Wha’d you catch ’em on?”

“Anchovies,” the three of us answered almost in unison.

“You them guys trolling with anchovies I heard about?” he asked.

I had heard about those guys too, a couple of fishing buddies who have been reeling in stripers by trolling anchovies somewhere in the Overton Arm. But it wasn’t us, and we explained as much. Then, having satisfied his curiosity I suppose, the old-timer continued on with whatever held his interest before Roger, Dave and I showed up to clean our fish.

We launched out of Echo Bay at about 6 o’clock Monday morning with Roger at the wheel of his new boat, a 20-foot Triumph outfitted with everything from a fish finder to downriggers. Its deck would later prove to be an excellent fishing platform.

A short ride from the marina, we each tossed a shad imitation behind the boat and began trolling our way past rocky points and submerged sandbars. This was my first trip afield since completing an eight-day stretch in the hospital, so I was glad just to be outdoors with a fishing rod in my hand. Even so, after nearly 30 minutes passed without a bite, I was growing a little nervous. Then, just as I was about to share with Roger some smart-alecky comment about his prowess as a fish finder, my rod tip bent over hard in the general direction of the vessel’s stern.

“Fish on!” I exclaimed after feeling the solid pull of the fish fighting at the other end of my line. It was the first striped bass of the day, but at only 12 to 13 inches in length, the little fish generated more laughs than congratulations from my friends — especially after Dave hauled in a plump, 23-inch striper a few minutes later. Those proved to be the only two fish we caught by trolling, but they weren’t the last fish we put in the live well.

Roger dropped anchor in 32 feet of water near the mouth of a shallow bay, a place that had provided him with good action in the recent past. Within minutes of dropping a cut anchovy off the port side, I was reeling in an 18-inch fish when another grabbed Roger’s bait and made a short-lived run for it. This happened again following our next casts, and then again. Within a five-minute span, Roger and I boated six striped bass. His last measured 21 inches.

“Now that’s a Dave-size fish, not a Doug-size fish,” Roger said referring to my first fish of the day. I responded by catching another fish, a Doug-size fish.

As the morning progressed, the striper bite faded in and out. There were times when it seemed we couldn’t keep fish off our lines, and times when it seemed the stripers packed up and moved. Thankfully those times proved to be relatively short, and by 11:30 a.m. we’d boated 41 stripers and one channel catfish between us.

Freelance writer Doug Nielsen is a conservation educator for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. His “In the Outdoors” column, published Thursday, is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NDOW. Any opinions he states in his column are his own. He can be reached at intheoutdoorslv@gmail.com.