We are running out of time on location here so it’s all out kayak fishing time on the lower Colorado River. The fishing conditions have not been favorable for months and, as far as sportfishing goes, the trend is down. Alarmingly down. Now, each kayak fishing trip here is valuable because there is a real chance that they will be the last ones. We’ve personally witnessed the salmon disappear on the Columbia River, to see the largemouth bass gone from this part of the Colorado River is way less of a stretch.
Due to the extremely cold water and the desert wind that increases in duration and intensity every year, this is the first time we’ve been able to go fishing in almost five months. In the past six years, that has never happened. Not even close. On top of that, the Colorado River itself is under tremendous pressure. The need for Colorado River water is far greater than there is water. The water flows at maximum capacity, that’s why it’s so cold. The water was at the bottom of a huge reservoir not that long ago. The river water levels go from maximum to empty in a very short time.
On the first day of fishing, we headed to one of the places that is connected directly to the main river. This spot gets extremely shallow when the water is low, but never runs dry(yet). We haven’t been there for months and did not know what to expect.
We’ve caught a lot of nice bass here fishing at night, but we didn’t have any luck this early morning. As the sun started to light up the eastern sky, I managed to get this nice largemouth bass.
Catching a nice fish early in the day, we were hoping the luck would continue after not fishing for so long. As it got light, we got a look at the Colorado River backwater. There was very little action at a place normally bursting with wildlife. Hardly any birds, almost no bugs and no largemouth bass. We didn’t get any bites and didn’t see any largemouth bass. In this shallow backwater, you usually see way more bass than you catch. There’s not much vegetation in this desert environment, but it looks like milfoil has killed most of the “natural” vegetation and taken the largemouth bass with it. The whole lake looked dead.
After six hours of fishing, I managed to catch another decent bass. This fish was in stumps of dead reeds in about a foot of water.
Even though I caught two nice fish, after seven hours of fishing, that’s not what I would call great fishing and we were concerned about the condition of this Colorado River backwater. With more calm mornings in the forecast, the decision was made to head to another spot.