After a change of venue, we had a good day of kayak fishing under tough conditions. We’ve been having pretty good luck at the spot we’ve been fishing, which is the closest spot, but the fish there are not very big. We headed to a spot where the fish are bigger, but there is a lot more paddling. It has cooled off but still very hot baking on the kayak in the desert.
The day started out pretty good when I caught this dark largemouth bass just as the sun was coming up, that’s why the photo isn’t the greatest. I’ve caught a couple of these dark, almost black largemouth bass here. Not sure what the deal is.
Another day of perfect kayak fishing conditions.
This is more of a “big game fishing” kind of spot, meaning you may catch some bigger fish, you’re probably not going to catch a lot of them. After I caught the dark bass early in the day, I wasn’t exactly hauling them in. I caught a few smaller fish and had a lot of short hits.
I was thinking the fish might be done biting for the day when I had a good hit and big fight with a largemouth bass that swam into a huge clump of river seaweed. Not too much of a fight with a three pound bass and ten pounds of seaweed.
This was the biggest largemouth bass of the season so far so I was pretty stoked. Things only got better a few minutes later when I caught another nice largemouth bass. This fish also swam into the seaweed and it was not an action packed battle.
Going from an average at best fishing day to catching the two biggest fish of the season so far in less than an hour. That’s how it is around here, you don’t catch them until you do.
Now for the “tough conditions” part of the story. As I mentioned, both of the bigger bass that I caught became entangled in river vegetation. I call it “seaweed” out of habit, but I think it is milfoil. I’ve seen it before in another Colorado River backwater that is now dead for fishing. This super dense underwater vegetation took over most of the river making it unfishable.
Milfoil kills just about everything around it, I hope that’s not the case here. I’ve been fishing here a number of years and I have never seen plant life like this here.
From a distance, it looks great. When you look closer and see the fluctuating low water levels and now the river is choked with seaweed, you really have to wonder about the condition of the Colorado River.
Even though I caught the two biggest largemouth bass of the season so far, there was not much action because the fish were tangled in seaweed. To make up for it, here are some GIFs from last week, where the fish were smaller, but there was more action.
Stay tuned for more kayak fishing action!