BASS FISHING IN ARIZONA

We were casting for bass deep in a cove off Lake Mead. It was cold. The chill of a February morning was on us. I pocketed the stiffened fingers of my casting hand a moment, before making another offering to those whopping big bass you catch at Lake Mead during the winter months. Please don't get me wrong. You can catch big bass in the summer, too, but the first part of the year is the best for taking prize winners.It was my first trip to Lake Mead at that time of year for bass fishing. I was with Wally Blanchard, one of Arizona's top bass fishermen. There's a reason for calling Wally a champion. He has put his name among the top ten for more than twelve consecutive years in the state's big bass contests. Three years out of those twelve, he took firsts. Out of those three firsts, he took a top spot in a national big bass contest. You can't be a consistent winner like that without being a champion bass fisherman and without a place to do your prize-winning angling.

Lake Mead is that place! It pays off with big bass every year. It so consistently produces lunkers that many Arizona sporting goods dealers, who run big fish catching derbies in the spring of the year, make up a separate contest and provide extra premiums for bass caught at Lake Mead.

Wally has developed a definite technique for catching those finned behemoths of the Lake Mead depths and he was showing it to this writer. Briefly, you use a heavily weighted lure that is fished along the bottom, down deep. That's where the big ones spend the colder winter months.

After my thumb and fingers had limbered up again I made another cast to the broken shoreline. The lure sank to the jumble of submerged boulders and rocks and I began the slow, twitching retrieve that is part of Wally's big-basscatching technique. I felt the tap and set the hook.

Take it from me, it is quite an experience, hanging a near-nine-pound largemouth bass fifty or more feet down!

My glass rod arched under his weight. He had power, too, taking yards of line for the inches I got from him. But, big bass or whale, you can't beat that resilient pressure of a rod tip if it's handled right, and before long I had this prize winner up to where Wally could net him for me.

That Lake Mead lunker put me among the top ten in the bass contest for the first time in my life.

Winter, spring, summer or fall, Lake Mead seems to be always right for a bass fisherman.

It was early May, traditionally the time of year when you work a surface plug for bass. Driftwood Cove, above Iceberg Canyon on the upper the upper end of Lake Mead, was glasssmooth in the dusk of evening. The conglomeration of logs and floating debris and our boat was as motionless on the quiet water as if the scene had been photographed.

Ed Marshall was making his offerings from the prow. Dan Gish was in the center. I was casting off the stern. The atmosphere was electrified with expectancy. The feeling prevailed that Lake Mead was right that evening. It was!

Ed rifled a long cast to the back of a little pocket. The

ARIZONA'S Famous BASS WATERS

cup-shaped surface plug dropped neatly behind a floating log. Ed let it sit until the splash waves had long disappeared, then he twitched it.

There's something soul-stirring to a fisherman-when you're blurping surface plugs in a deep cove in the half light of evening. You're poised, tense, waiting for that sudden splashing, water-erupting strike of a largemouth bass when he hits your lure. And these Lake Mead bass are masters at creating suspense. They seem to delight in stretching your nerves wire-thin before they rise.

Ed's lure blurped twice on the off-side of the log. Then he moved the cupped head to the log and flipped it neatly over. It blooped again, throwing a bubble a foot high, gur gling musically. In this quiet, it was surface plug fishing at its best.

Suddenly (it always happens when you least expect it) the smooth water in Driftwood Cove spewed a gill-flutter ing, head-shaking bass. The surface plug was crossways in his jaws. He shook it like a terrier with a stick. Then, taking it in his teeth, this finned acrobat from the depths of Lake Mead put on his show for us.

It was on Lake Mohave, below Hoover (Boulder) Dam that forms Lake Mead, that Gene Reichmann showed 'em a lure! Whether Gene lives to fish, or fishes to live is debat-able. One thing is certain, this gentleman quit the fabulous Ozarks of Arkansas for bass fishing in Arizona.

Red Rock, about five miles below Parker Dam, is one of the fishin'est holes on the Colorado. Here bass, channel catfish and other fish are caught.

Lake Mohave is in its prime as a bass fishing lake. You can get action here as Gene did. Fishing out of Murl Emery's Searchlight Landing on the Nevada side, Gene caught ten Bass in ten consecutive casts. He hung thirty-six in an eve ning of angling. My friend, that is bass fishing at its best!

The lower end of Lake Mohave, from Eldorado Landing south is top bass fishing water. It is exciting to cast into this clear, clear, blue-green water, to start your retrieve and to see a formless shadow take on a definite outline and tor pedo your lure. You'll get a double charge out of fishing here on Lake Mohave. You can see them coming before you catch them. And, you can see them turn down your offering too.

But anywhere along the Colorado-at Lake Havasu, about half way between Vic and Corrine Spratt's Site Six and George Savard's Havasu Springs Resort-there is a stretch of fishy looking shoreline that I like.

Deep, deep coves. Tule-draped. Quiet water, with just a slight ripple along about sundown. For this, give me a spinning rod and an assortment of those light lures, and a nine-foot bass bug rod, floating line and a hat festooned with bass bugs. The spinning gear is for the points, thebrush-shrouded banks and to sweep the long reefs that run out into the lake. The bass bugging outfit is for the coves and pockets, the backs of them where the sunken logs and snags lie hidden, sheltering tackle-smashing bass. George Savard, bless him, introduced me to the pleasures of spinning for bass. This technique of fishing, originating in France and Switzerland and now adopted here, is a sporty way of taking this fine fresh water game fish. Spin fishing with light lures for those heavy Lake Havasu bass, there is a combination that will make you forget taxes, the wars, the high cost of living and that kink in your left hip.

Picturesque canyons, such as this, feed into bass fishing lakes of Arizona. This one, Indian Gardens, is popular with anglers who frequent Apache Lake.

We gilded the lily, George and I, by putting up a twobit wager for the first bass caught. I should have known better. George lives on the lake and I only visit it frequently. As soon as the money was down he wound up the motor and away we went to one of those mysterious coves that he knows so well. Before the boat lost its momentum, after the motor was shut off, he had one on, the leapin'est, fightin'est bass that ever took a lure. I can still hear him chortle as that bass turned him every way but loose. Every time I've seen George since, the first thing he does is slap a two-bit piece on the counter and reach for his fishing rod. I'll take his bass fishing on Lake Havasu, but no more of his wagers!

Bass fishing can be boisterous, as it was with Georgeor quiet and sedate, the game of a man who is steeping himself with pleasant experiences and unforgettable memories. Such was the trip with Doc Barnard. Doc is a portly fellow with a perpetual smile on his face and a laugh in his big heart. And why not? This guy will wheel his trailer into Lake Havasu Springs Resort just after the last of the ducks and geese wheel south over the Bill Williams arm of Lake Havasu. After a long lifetime of service as a surgeon he has only one objective in life, to live to enjoy more living.

It was in April-Doc and I were oaring a boat back into a protected cove on Lake Havasu. The water there was liquid gold in the sunset, the wind tickling it into brilliant laughter. He stood up to lengthen his cast, and plopped a bass bug right in the mouth of the pocket overhung with brush and weeds. It lay there. I rested on on the oars.

Then he popped it-twitched the rod tip. The bug's cupped nose threw up a bubble. Blup. Blup! BLOOP! The bug danced teasingly-like a luscious morsel of insect life trying to wing off the surface. Just how a bass times his strike . . . if a man knew, bass fishing wouldn't be so intriguing.

Doc was lifting the bug when the fish hit in a smother of foam, snapping the line and leader tight, bringing a throaty laugh from Doc and lighting his face with undis stilled joy.

Interesting as bass fishing can be on Lake Havasu, when you cross Parker Dam as you leave the lake you look to the Colorado River below. As you travel the road between Parker Dam and Earp, California and Parker, Arizona and see more of the river you will certainly want to fish it. These two towns, serving this fine recreational area, are across the river from each other, seventeen miles below the dam.

You will find friends here, at River Lodge, Tim Murphy's, Big Bass Lodge, Blue Water, Echo Canyon, Red Rock, Tommy Kinder's, Riverside, Jack LaMar's Sportsman's Park. These are all trailer parks and camps along that stretch of the river.

Fishing the river takes a technique of its own. It was there I learned to cruise up one side of the river and float back on the other, fishing it each way. Tommy Kinder showed me how to stand up on the stern seat of a powered motor boat and, with the motor throttled to idling speed, with one foot on the tiller, guide the boat and plug the shoreline for bass at the same time. 'Course you may fall out a time or two, but that is part of the game when you're a bass fisherman. Besides, there is a tradition that you must fall in the Colorado River before you can really count on having luck in catching her bass. This boating technique just hurries up the baptismal ceremony.

Jack LaMar is another crony of mine with another trick for surface plugging the shoreline of the rapidly flowing river. Ordinarily the ol' Colorado whips you along at a fast clip-too fast-because it doesn't give you time to work a surface plug in the pockets as you drift by. But Jack outfigured that problem. He attaches a length of log chain to the prow of his boat and lets it drag on the bottom. This keeps his boat parallel to the bank and slows down the drift to just the right speed, giving you enough time to give those surface plugs a workout in the likely looking places.

The banks of the Colorado are draped with willows and lined with bassy pockets, nooks, snags and undercut banks. As you drift by you can bloop a plug about three times. It's fast action-you get one chance at the gamesters, and by then you have three more places to drop your lure.

It has always been debatable whether or not the bass to be caught in the river are scrappier than in the lake. I have not yet settled the question in my own mind and keep going back to do more research.

If you would know more of bass fishing, on the river or the lake, inquire at Blue Water for Doc or Brick Childs. You'll find them, come fall, and up until May, in their house trailers somewhere along the Colorado River. They'll be devising new lures, making up rods, and trying out their gear on the bass fishing above and below the dam. Or, ask for Cal Lipe at Kinder's, or Johnnie Branson at Big Bass Lodge. These men know the fishing around there and will direct you to the best of it. Bass fishing is good on down the river, at Reyno's below Quartzsite, as it is at Cibola Slough. These fishermen's camps give access to a plug caster's bowling alley, in a sense, for you have ten targets for every plug you cast. Coves and bays decorated with garlands of waving tules give cover for thousands of largemouth bass.

The head of Martinez Lake-wonderful place is just below here. This lake is exotic, not to be compared with any of the other bass fishing waters in Arizona. The channel of the river is riprapped with banks of tules. But as you go along, these nodding green stalks furnishing hiding places for coots, tern, ducks and mergansers scurrying for cover as you near them, you will come to openings in the solid screen. River water flows mysteriously into and away through these verdant alleyways.

Jess Fisher at Martinez Lake Boat Landing has shown me a score of these watery passageways. And, when I really get tired of worldly things I hunt up a fishing buddy and we drift into one of these openings, to disappear for a day. The long tule-arrayed channels lead to hidden lakes, from there to another, and another, a literal maze of channels and backwaters in which you can lose yourself.

All of them are teeming with bass.

Hungry bass. Fighting bass. Sulkers.

Just in case the ducks wouldn't be flying that December day, Jack Denton and I took along our bass fishing gear. It was 'long about noon when we unloaded the guns and picked up the fishing rods. It was cold weather although the sun shone brightly and we put on deep running bass plugs. Every known fishing condition dictated we go deep for the fish. But Jack's first cast was long and high and his plug hung itself securely on a tule stump a foot from the water's surface. He jerked at it. The tule leaves rattled. He jerked again. The dry husks crackled and the plug danced in the sunlight.

And, there he was!

A bass hurtled his length out of water, smacked that fouled plug! We paddled over and took him off the hook where he'd hung himself on the tule stump, and we had our supper. No explanation is necessary to a bass fishermanyou just can't tell how this exciting game fish is going to behave.

Someone once said, "Allah does not deduct from the allotted time of man, those hours spent in fishing." Bass fishing accounts for more of it than any other type, and I'm figuring on lengthening my days here.

If the saying is true, the town of Phoenix is going to be full of old men running around with a bass fishing fishing rod in their cane hand, what with the Salt River chain of lakes: Roosevelt, Apache, Canyon and Stewart Mountain to the east, San Carlos Reservoir a little farther on, Bartlett and Horseshoe Lakes up the Verde River to the north, and Carl Pleasant and Frog Tanks to the northwest, all close to Phoenix.

Bass fishermen are continually blessed with miracles. One of these came in August, 1951. With three days' supply of irrigation water left in the lakes, the rains came and filled them up again. The agriculturists claim this an answer to their prayers, but I'll wager many a bass fisherman muttered a supplication to the Master Fisherman. He must have heard them too!

Now every time Ed Cox of Roosevelt Lake sees me he gives me a bad time, telling me how many bass he's seen around the refilled lake. Roosevelt is right near the top of my list of places to go the first time a friend comes along and says, "Let's go fishin'."

Apache Lake, too, where my son learned to rifle a plug into a pocket under the tutelage of Gene Reichmann, swarmed with spawn this last year. It's a consistent producer of prize winners for all fishermen. The rock slides and talus slopes of Apache are bass water! Big bass water! A fishing contest never closes without entries from this cliff-bound lake.

Canyon Lake, too, is now one of these unpredictable bodies of water. Within the last few years a new bass food has been introduced to the lake: crawdads. The rocky bottom is a-crawl with this natural fish food making these satiated Canyon Lake bass difficult to catch, so say the fishermen. But, with plenty to eat, look for a really big tackle-buster to be listed in the big fish derbies next season. Perhaps Dub Hud-son will hang one, as he did in Stewart Mountain Lake. Here in this body of water, only an hour's drive from Phoenix, and visited by thousands of people, boating, swimming, fishing, you would assume fishing would be poor. So thought a lot of bass fishermen too. That is, until Dub Hud-son and Wally Blanchard made a quiet little foray to see what Stewart Mountain Lake would yield. They even surprised themselves, with a stringerful of lunker bass that rivaled anything Lake Mead has ever produced. So, take this bass fishing Arizona has to offer you any-where you wish-on the lakes of the Colorado River, on the chain of lakes on Salt River, San Carlos on the Gila River, those two on the Verde River, Carl Pleasant and Frog Tanks on the Agua Fria-you'll find them all good, and bass fishing a fine exhilarating experience you can enjoy the year around.

INFORMATION AS TO LICENSES AND REGULATIONS

LICENSES REQUIRED: for fishing Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and the stretch of the Colorado River below Davis Dam and waters forming the mutual boundary between Nevada and Arizona: Non-Residents of either Nevada or Arizona must have a valid Non-Resident's Fishing License from either Nevada or Arizona, and in addition, a Colorado River Special Use Stamp issued by the other state.

Residents of either Nevada or Arizona must have a valid Resident's Fishing License from the state in which they live, and in addition, a Colorado River Special Use Stamp issued by the other state. License Fees for Nevada: Non-Resident $6, Short Term Non-Resident $3.50, Resident $3.50; for Arizona: Non-Resident $5, Non-Resident 5-day $3, Resident Warm Water Game Fish $1.50. Colorado River Stamp $2.

Transportation of legally caught fish by properly licensed fishermen may be made from either shore of the waters forming the mutual boundary between the states of Nevada and Arizona.

Bass Fishing Season is year long, and bass may be fished for day or night.

Possession Limit is ten largemouth bass, regardless of weight, for each licensed angler.

Transportation of legally caught fish may be made by anglers within the state in which they are licensed. Fishermen licensed in Arizona, or California, transport fish in the other state at their own risk. At this writing an agreement does not exist between the two states, but by mutual tolerance properly licensed anglers transporting legally caught fish are not questioned.

Possession Limit is ten largemouth bass, regardless of weight, for each licensed angler. Note to anglers licensing in California: check with local authorities on California's possession limit.

Licenses can be obtained from sporting goods dealers and from fishing resort and boat landing operators.

LICENSES REQUIRED: for fishing the Colorado River, Lake Havasu, Lake Martinez and the waters forming the mutual boundary between California and Arizona: Non-Residents of either California or Arizona must have a valid Non-Resident's Fishing License from the state from which they embarks. This permit allows them to fish only from the shore and to the channel forming the mutual boundary between California and Arizona.

Residents of either California or Arizona must have a valid Resident's Fishing License from the state in which they live. This permit allows them to fish only in resident waters and up to the channel forming the mutual boundary. Non-residents or residents of either California or Arizona desiring to fish from the opposite shoreline or to embark on fishing waters of the other state must have Non-Resident Fishing License issued by the other state.

License Fees for California: Non-Resident $10, Non-Resident Short Term $3, Resident 53; for Arizona: Non-Resident $5, Non-Resident Short Term $3, Resident Warm Water Game Fish $1.50. No Colorado River Special Use Stamp is issued between Calif. & Ariz.