Servant of the People (Tribute to Hoover Dam)

IN LAKE MEAD AND LAKE MOHAVE

would chug . . . burp . . . bllooop as we twitched our rod tips, trying to manipulate the floating lures in bassapproved fashion.

Suddenly the stillness of the cove would explode with a crescendo of noises. First the bass would splash heavily as it took the lure. Then we would yell and congratulate each other, mutter a few imprecations, maybe, if the heavy bass took too much line and swam too close to the drifting logs. And, then we'd laugh and shout again as we netted fish after fish and chalked off the wagers to be paid later . . . after the fabulous fishing was over.

It lasted a long, magic two hours.

It was only two days later, down the lake from Temple Bar, down past Monkey Cove, Mushroom Reef, Napoleon's Tomb on the Arizona side and below Sugar Loaf, the Haystacks and Hobo Point on the Nevada side, that I was fishing with Ed Williams and Cap Durham. We had passed up all the other bass fishing waters, to get into the head of Virgin Basin and on that odd, underwater formation known as The Gyp Beds.

What a place to fish for bass!

The water was glass-clear, the first week in May, and it slicked off in the lee of the boat so that we could look down into it twenty or thirty feet. It was something like being high up in an airplane and looking down on very rugged and deep-canyoned mountains, barren of all vegetation. Only, instead of birds soaring around the peaks, there were schools of bass cruising back and forth. We could watch our fly rod lures sink . . . the bass would swim over to investigate the mysterious and in-triguing bit of metal that flashed silvery and red and trailed a waving, tantalizing bit of pork-rind strip . . . then, when a particularly nice bass was interested we'd start our retrieve. If we did it just right, the bass would strike. It was selective fishing that day, and the best I've ever had quantity-wise.

triguing bit of metal that flashed silvery and red and trailed a waving, tantalizing bit of pork-rind strip . . . then, when a particularly nice bass was interested we'd start our retrieve. If we did it just right, the bass would strike. It was selective fishing that day, and the best I've ever had quantity-wise.

The best quality fishing I've had on Mead was in February, with Wally Blanchard, a prize-fish angler.

It may have been mid-winter elsewhere in the United States but, it wasn't raining on us! By mid-afternoon the sun was warm and we had shed some of our jackets and were hard at it, fishing lures of Wally's own design along the rocky ledges and off the points. It's tricky fishing, requiring skill and practice, but man, what fish you can catch, large bass that is!

So, really, any time you go to Lake Mead, whether you come in from the south and embark from Temple Bar Landing with all facilities, or use the campsites at Hualpai Wash, Salt Springs, Detrital Wash and Bonelli; or if you come in from the north through Grand Wash, Boulder Wash, Callville Wash having campsites, or the developed facilities at Beach Camp on the head of Las Vegas Wash and Boulder Landing near the dam, you'll have fishing. If you take time to get acquainted with the lake and some of its angling peculiarities, you'll have more than reasonable success, for Mead offers some of the finest largemouth bass, crappie and channel catfishing this side of the Pacific Coast. And, oddly enough, along in the early spring months of each of the recent years, an increasingly large number of rainbow trout have been showing up in the cove known as Hualpai Wash.

Quite a number have been caught on bass plugs! How the trout got there, and where they come from is anybody's guess. Observers have reported seeing the surface of Hualpai dimpling with rises, that only feeding trout can make. A true sampling of this fishing has not yet been made, because anglers on Lake Mead are usually equipped with bass tackle.

The really good trout fishing is in upper Lake Mohave: from Hoover Dam, past Willow Beach on the Arizona side, and down to Murl Emery's landing at Eldorado Canyon on the Nevada bank. There is twenty miles of trout fishing-water-extraordinary!

The fishery of Lake Mohave is unusual. The water drawn from the lower levels of Lake Mead through Hoover Dam drops into Mohave at 55-58°, just right for trout! This cold water moves down the lake until it meets the warmer water backed up by Davis Dam, and there a phenomenon occurs. The cold water flows under and the warm water flows over in a rolling motion, which brings up vegetation from the bottom of the lake. This natural barrier of a cold-warm water front is the line of demarcation between the trout and the bass fishing.

The lower two-thirds of Lake Mohave, another forty miles, is all warm water containing largemouth bass, bluegill, crappies and channel catfish and offering a quality of fishing equalled only by Lake Mead.

Searchlight Landing on the Nevada side is located just above a ten-miles-long-and-five-miles-wide basin. Originally this was Cottonwood Island, which is now submerged and is the principle spawning area for the warm water game fish in lower Lake Mohave. Katherine Wash Landing, one of the well-equipped landings is on the Arizona side and just a mile or so above Davis Dam.