I had a chance to hit the Colorado River for three days around Yuma with Larry Allen for some great top water bass fishing. Larry has been doing this for years and I have always wanted to hit it with him but am usually in the mountains by now. I’m glad I finally made it and will certainly do it again.
The routine was to be at the attack zone at first light. That meant getting up at 3:30 am, grabbing a cup of coffee at the local gas/grub and launch at Fisher’s Landing 30 minutes out of Yuma. Luckily we only had to motor upriver about 5 minutes and the bass were waiting. We were fishing during full moon so I’m sure it hindered our efforts some but you go when you can go.
The fish were all in post spawn and averaged about 2-21/2 lbs. The awesome part is they ate Larry’s Burglers and my Umpqua frogs fished right along the tulies. Everything was on top. The bite seemed to get shorter every day so we did some exploring of the river. It would take a long time to get to know all that is available down there but we found some interesting little lakes off the river and found a few bass and gills that wanted to play. You would motor into a small cut and it would wind around and open up into a lake. I am definitely going to have to learn my GPS to further explore it all.
After the am bite died we would head in and rest. The afternoon was spent fishing a lake about the size of Becker in our tubes and ‘toons fishing for lmb’s up to 10 lbs. Larry’s long time friend, Dickie Thomas joined us as well as his nephew, Brian. The lake was lined with tulies and again the same flies worked. Dickie and Larry got into some bass subsurface but I had much better luck with top water.
On his way in the last evening Dickie landed a solid 4 lb’r but no pic sadly. We never really landed “Old Moe” but Larry had a good 5-6 lbr on that was wrapped over a limb and he finally pulled the hook and I had one break me on the take using 18 lb tippet so we had our chances. Maybe next time!!??