Fortuna Pond Largemouth Bass

Fortuna Pond, outside of Yuma, Arizona is a small lake or large pond that has some nice size largemouth bass in it, especially given the relatively small size of the pond. It is Community Fishing Water and stocked with trout during the winter months.

There is camping around the lake, campers range everywhere from people living in their cars to snowbirds in giant land yachts. The pond itself is heavily fished by locals and visitors. A lot of people fish here. Like other places in the Arizona desert, the sunrises and sunsets can be spectacular.

But we are here to talk about largemouth bass. Like many of the other Colorado River system lakes in the winter, when it’s hot, it’s hot and when it’s not, you usually wind up with nothing. All of the local bass fishermen I’ve met here release the fish they catch. Take a photo, throw the fish back. That’s what we do as well. Hope the parade of selfies doesn’t look like I’m bragging too much, but it’s hard to catch fish here.

I fished Fortuna Pond at least a half dozen times without a bite before I caught this bass late in the afternoon. My first Fortuna Pond largemouth bass, I definitely had to work for it.

Thanks to the hapless stocked trout, the bass in Fortuna Pond seem very well fed for the middle of winter. Largemouth bass from other nearby lakes are not nearly as chunky as the Fortuna Pond fish.

This was my best day ever so far at Fortuna Pond. I caught this fish early in the morning just after crawling out of the sleeping bag.

I fished on and off during the day, and right before sunset, I caught another pretty nice bass. Two nice largemouth bass in one day; that’s my personal best so far at Fortuna Pond.

The next day, I fished all day and managed to squeak one out right at sunset. It wasn’t a huge fish, but that’s four largemouth bass in three consecutive days, which doesn’t sound like much, but for Fortuna Pond, I would say that I was pretty darn lucky.

The following day, I was hoping my success would continue, but I didn’t have a nibble. Back to reality at Fortuna Pond.

The day after that, a lot of recently dead largemouth bass started to show up. It’s bad enough not catching any fish, then 8-10 lb. dead fish show up, not a good thing. Did not have any fishing success.

The next day, when I started fishing in the morning, while the wind was calm, I noticed the sheen from an oil slick. I’m not sure if this is some kind of natural deal or external pollution, but I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with the dead bass.

We really enjoy Fortuna Pond. It is a perfect place for us to hang out while we wait out high wind or need to work on gear. I’m really stoked to catch the bass that I have so far, because, like I mentioned earlier, this is not an easy place to catch fish.

We have just come from Fortuna Pond. Unfortunately, there is some kind of oil spill. AZ Game &s Fish was by earlier in the day to take a water sample. We haven’t been around long enough to know if it’s natural seepage, but it doesn’t seem likely. Have to wait and see.