The weather up here has been pretty ugly lately—-37 degrees wind and sleet last Wed. The weekend and next few days were 40-80% chance of rain. Time to head for Havasu again. I had always wanted to get into the spawning redears. For those that don’t know what a redear is it is a sunfish in the bluegill family but gets much larger and is a tremendous fighter, especially on light weight 3-4 wt fly rods. The state record is over 6 lbs. we didn’t find any near that size but found them almost a pound.
They spawn much like a bluegill…in groups with their beds very close to one another. They are an aggressive fish but are not that easy to catch, especially the nice ones. We caught most with small flies under a bobber. A few were caught with flies actually on the bed, much like we do for smallies and lmb’s. But most would not aggressively attack the fly on the bed itself.
Another great trip to Havasu. Last one this year. When I left Show Low going over it was 41 mid morning. Sunday it got up to 95 over there. This old man wasn’t really used to that anymore. Time to play in the high country.