Monster Friday

[TubeDude]

[cool][size 1]After being fishing-deprived for over two weeks, I woke up at 2 AM Friday with the thought that there was absolutely nothing in the world more important to do than go fishing. TubeBabe could not make that same rationalization work for her (work slave), So I gathered up my gear and went solo.

I opened my garage door and found that there were clouds, a breeze and a smell of rain. I asked myself "WHAZZUP WIDDAT?" Hey, this is Arizona. This being the "monsoon season", I figured it was a localized "cell" and would blow by quickly. As I made the turn onto the freeway, I had to turn on the windshield wipers. I didn't get to turn them off until an hour later, when I had finished driving the last 12 miles on muddy roads, with downpoars and washouts along the way. I waited in my car for another 45 minutes for the rain to decrease to the point I could launch my Fat Cat without being more wet on top than on the bottom.

My targeted spot was the "washout pool" below Horseshoe Dam. The lake has been mostly dry for over three years. It was an early victim to the drought, And, now, when there is enough runoff to make it a lake again, they let the water run downstream to Bartlett Lake. Something about a flycatcher (bird) nesting in the weed growth left by the dry lake, and they can't disturb it. It was one of my favorite float tubing lakes before, but now...A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT. See the pic below.



The river bed has greened up a bit, due to the recent brief rains. It was running clear until the rain Friday morning. However, the sudden downpoor turned the river chocolate and dropped the temperature in the pool below the dam to only 75 degrees...from the warm, clear 85 of two days earlier.



Since I was already there, I decided to fish it...for the first time in about three years. The lack of water runoff from the lake had silted in all of the formerly great rocky bottom habitat that had made this a great fishery. The formerly 40 foot deep "scour" hole was now only 7 feet of water over silt. No more big flathead cats from this hole. The deepest spot I could meter was barely 14 feet. Most of the rest of the entire basin ranged between 4 and 7 feet deep.

I found lots of fish on my sonar screen, but they were largely inactive in the cold runoff water. A few anglers fishing from shore, with bait, all sat with unmolested rods. I managed to seduce a couple of skinny largemouths of about 10 inches...and this one (below) that looks like it measures out on my apron at about 12 inches. Note the color of the muddy water.



Bouncing a bait bug in the outflow also picked up a few small cats, but nothing exciting. By 8 o'clock, the runoff was getting even darker and the few biters shut down all together. I packed up my gear and headed downstream to Bartlett Lake...the recipient of all the water formerly held by Horseshoe...and likely to be somewhet clearer. I was on the water by 9:15 and there were only a couple of boats and PWC's on the whole lake. In the next couple of pics, there is a blur in the middle...no doubt the result of getting some crawdad oil on the lens of my camera.



The water was calm, and 85 degrees. I was seeing few fish on the sonar, so I resorted to bottom bouncing a bait bug in the twelve to fourteen foot zone, on the flats where the banks come down into the lake in the picture.

I quickly started getting some "bitty kitties"...small cats from 10" to about 14". They were fun on my newly made medium light baitcasting rods I was trying for the first time. I tossed back the first few, but ended up keeping about 8 of the fattest for a Saturday "Kitty Krispies" fry...with some new corn.



Note the bluish colored bait bug in the fish's mouth. This is one of the new "hot" colors I have been using for "finesse" fishing in the summer. It uses an ultraviolet white body and UV Krystal Flash tail...on a rainbow sparkle glitter head...with eyes. It really lights up in clear water and gets a lot of reaction bites. That turned out to be the only thing I could get bit on with the cats, although most of them contained pieces of the small crawdads they were hunting in the shallow rocks.

There were also lots of the ubiquitous green sunfish. Here's a pic of one that may make the C & R record book. As measured on my float tube apron, it came out an "honest" 18".



Okay, so I fudged a bit on the front measurement. These little guys are a favorite bait for the flathead catfish. I plan to go back soon and harvest a basket full of the little guys and then serve them up after dark, on heavy tackle, to see if I can get into it with some of the big boys in the lake. There were several last week between 20 and 50 pounds.

The sun came out just before noon, and so did the water skiers and PWC. After being run over and used as a slalom pylon for the Nth time, I departed hence. Actually, the first PWC that buzzed me shut down the fishing. I did not get another bite for the next hour...and just got tired of dealing with bow wakes and idiots.

Not a banner day for either quantity or size, but a heckuva lot better than working...or pretending to work while dreaming about what it was I was doing on the water. GOT MINE. [/size]
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