More tales of Buck and 2R's

[Garry2Rs]

My neighbour and I were on Mittry Lake Reservoir, about 20 miles north of the city of Yuma AZ, this morning.

 

This man-made lake is totally surrounded by walls of west-coast bulrushes called Tules...pronounced Two-Lees. There are also plenty of cane beds, stands of Bamboo and assorted scruffy Palms.

 

Dividing the lake into canals and bays, are islands or ridges of these materials. Some are solid, but others have waterways through. The solid walls can be 20 or 30 feet thick. There are huge shallow bays on one side of the lake. The balance of the lake is a series of interlocked canals. Between the walls of cane and the main channel is a muddy ledge that can be from 0 to 15 feet wide and is about 3 or 4 feet deep. Then the bottom drops quickly into the channel which is anywhere from 8 to 11 feet deep.

 

Today, we were experiencing heavy winds, out of the north at about 20mph. These winds were churning up the shallow water and had reduced clarity to somewhere between murky and muddy.

 

As we headed into the main canal, I started casting a shallow running, square billed, crankbait in my new favourite pattern, Sexy Shad. I backed this up with a lipless Red-eye Shad in the same pattern.

 

Although the sky was clear, I reasoned that the waves caused by the wind, and the roiled water, would make the Bass feel confident enough to stay up in the shallows. I positioned the boat in deep water, angled away from the wind, so that we were pushed down the canal with the bow toward the deep side.

 

We fired crankbaits at an angle toward the weeds, retrieving back over the shallow ledge, the drop-off and into deeper water. On the wider shallow flats there were new green weed beds, and that's where we were ripping the rattle baits.

 

About mid-morning, around these weeds on the shallow side of the drop-off, I hooked up with a good fish.

 

There were numerous good looking weed beds here that could now cause me grief, so we moved the boat farther out into the deeper water.

 

After a couple of minutes I was able to lip this 3lb 4oz Large Mouth.

 

 

For the next two hours we tried similar areas without success. By noon conditions were deteriorating. The wind was dropping, the chop was dying and what had been a cool morning was getting hotter by the minute. We headed back to the ramp.

 

It was only one fish, but, I was pleased with the outing. I've been away from Arizona since last March and this was my first fish, from this lake, this season. Smiley

Garry2R's

Fishing is my favourite form of Loafing!

Edited November 25, 2009 by garry2rs

[Joey]

Ya, I hate when the weather gets hotter by the minute like that

 

Nice bass Garry, love your reports. Nice to see the different scenery.

 

Joey

[HTHM]

Why the heck are you wearing a sweater?????!!!!!!!!

[Garry2Rs]

With that high wind it was cool on the water this morning.

By noon it was over 70 and life was good again...grin