Jig heads, swim baits, burros make for fruitful fishing trip

Roger pointed to the three animals sneaking through the brush at the back of the cove and said, "Those burros are a sign. There must be fish in that cove."

Voe and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and said, "Why not?"

It was just after noon Saturday, and we had been on the water since about 5:15 a.m. with only a trio of small stripers and one largemouth bass to show for our efforts. If the burros turned around our luck, so be it; the birds hadn't been any help.

We began the day by launching Roger's boat at Temple Bar. From there, we motored up lake to Gregg Basin, not stopping to fish until we were a mile or so below South Cove. At first we trolled, with each of us trying something different. I tossed out a white swim bait on a half-ounce jig head and within a couple of minutes had a plump striper by the lower lip. The fish was no more than 15 inches long, but it put an end to my slump.

A short while later, Voe tossed a dark jig with a heavy skirt into a small opening in some flooded brush and pulled out a hungry largemouth bass. At that point it seemed as if we were in for a great day, but more than a couple of hours passed before we caught another fish. Our search took us to the delta where the Colorado River dumps into Lake Mead. It was there Roger went for a swim in the 62-degree water after losing his grip on the retrieval rope of his shad net.

Now covered in a bumper crop of goose bumps, Roger pointed the boat back toward Temple Bar and decided to get serious. He caught a scrappy little striped bass, released it and immediately caught its twin. But that seemed to be the end of our luck. Despite our best efforts, we didn't pull a single fish from any of several coves we worked over the next couple of hours.

So why not give the burros' cove a try? After all, nothing else had worked. Not for a while anyway.

With Lake Mead's water level, the cove's entrance is divided by a small island that creates a narrow channel on its east side. As we trolled into the cove, a striper hit my white swim bait. Within a minute of putting that fish in the live well, Roger's bait was hit. He was fighting that fish when my rod tip again bent toward the transom. We had a double hookup.

During the next 30 minutes or so, the three of us pulled 12 fish from that cove before the action shut down. The fish seemed to be stacked up just outside of the narrow channel at the cove's entrance and toward the back of the cove. When things quieted, we anchored just outside the cove and quickly caught another five fish -- four stripers and a smallish channel cat -- on cut anchovies.

From there, we worked toward the Virgin Basin and caught several more fish before returning to the marina. Not a bad day, thanks to jig heads, white swim baits and three burros.

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 intheoutdoorslv@gmail.com.