Has anyone ever fished the Colorado River, specifically in or around the Grand Canyon?
Should be rainbows in there, although fewer these days from what I understand. What other species lurk in there?
How do you fish it? (Technique, tackle, colors, presentation)
Mostly looking for spin-gear tips, although good flyfishing info is always appreciated.
Thanks!
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I've been down it twice, both times in October. AWESOME rainbow fishing. Good fishing is from launch ramp at Lee's to Little Colorado, and some also below the Little C. if it's not running too high. Water often gets pretty muddy below it though. Also fish all the little clear side creeks that flow in. (Vasey's, etc.) There's several of them, most with trout. We had a layover day both trips at Tepeats, and wade/shore fishing there was great.
I just used dry flies, and large attractors like hoppers and crickets worked great. They ate 'em like candy. For spinning, I'd take some 1/4 and 1/8 ox marabou jigs in brown and black, and some dark tube jigs on 1/4 oz heads. Small /medium rapalas and other small plugs would work for the bigger fish too.
The first week of the trip (above the little C.) has tons of trout, and they seldom see a fisherman, so they're very agressive and not hard to fool. A completely different river than the Lee's to Dam stretch. The canyon was the easiest river-rainbow fishing I've ever seen this side of Alaska, and I wasn't even pulling up the really big fish with the dry flies. One guy fishing jigs and rapalas on our trip caught some 22-28 inchers, and a couple over 10 pounds and 30 inches. The fish on dries were 14-22 inches, and DUMB!
You'll love it.
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I grew up near the grand canyon, and my dad would take my bothers and I down in there several times every winter, mostly January and February because by the middle of May it was too hot for us, plus the spawn was during those months I believe. We hiked in on several different trails between Lees Ferry and Lake Mead including Badger Canyon, Rider, and North Canyon, but Badger was the one we went down most because you could go in and out in one day, it was about a 45 minute hike for us one way. We had a blast down there, we just used our regular poles with 6 pound test, and our bait was usually just worms and a white marshmellow. We caught fish all day long ranging up to 28 inches, but we lost a lot of fish on our 6lb test. On several occations a fish would take our entire spool out and then break our line. We also caught them on large roostertail spinners in browntrout color, and large spoons, and even on powerbait while we ate lunch on the beach, all the fish we caught were rainbow. The hike in there was enough to make the trip worth it without the fishing, we always saw desert bighorn.
Ever since they started doing the simulated floods down there, the fish have got smaller and skinnier. Basically all the floods did was wash all the moss and feed down the river leaving the fish (especially the big ones) without enough food, and they didn't have near enough dirt and debree in them to simulate a real flood and build the beaches, in fact they pretty much did the opposite of a real flood. Since they started those floods we only went down a few more times and caught only small fish and a few long skinny fish, the last time anyone I know went down was a few years ago and the fishing was about the same in the area of badger canyon which is about a mile or two downstream of Lee's Ferry.
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