Smallmouth Bass in Lake Havasu

The small mouth bass fishing, at Lake Havasu, quite simply is impressive. In two hours, we caught five and lost three, ranging from one to three pounds. It is another reason for coming here.

The morning stated early as I got out of bed at 3:40am, ate some food, took my drugs and drove to John's, to get bait and go small mouth fishing. I hadn't fished the day before as Renita and I had a honey do list day in which I took the truck for an oil change, changed the trucks fuel filter at the rv park, and Renita did the laundry. So when I had a chance I called John and he said the small mouth were biting,(He had gone out that morning and ran across a fishing buddy, named Doc. He had watched him catch four in a few minutes).

Anyway John told me that we needed to be at the dock early, so that we could net some threadfin shad, so I got to John's at 4:15 and we went to the dock. I was surprised to see so many people there so early. John said it was actually not many. We walked out, John put his bait net out, and we started to pull the net for bait. It turned out that the baiting was really slow. It took an hour to get a dozen shad, all about 4-5 inches long. It was really neat as we could see a lot but they were pretty quick and avoided the net. I did get to watch a man snagging bait. He would then throw out the bait while it was still on the snagging treble, and dang if he didn't catch stripers. He caught four while we were there.

We left the dock and drove to the park near the bridge. It was still dark as we tied on hooks, put a shad on, hook behind the dorsal, and cast out. The rig was really simple, a hook and a split shot two feet up the line.

Nothing happened for a bit, however the fish were hitting something on the top as we waited. About sunrise, John had a fish pick up his shad. It ran as he free spooled, and after a long time he set the hook and landed a nice small mouth bass. As he posed for a picture,(John is kind of upset with me for posting pictures of him with small fish. He is afraid his son Heath will see them and think that's all he catches),my line took off. I waited a long time, set the hook, and was rewarded with a nice smallie, about three pounds.

The morning went too fast. We even got a double. I had to laugh as people were walking by, jogging, boating, and we were catching really nice small mouth. An outstanding morning with a great friend and guide! Clear skies.