Fishing Report: Colorado River waters
The striper bite is continuing here along the Colorado River. Below Davis Dam is producing the best catches so far.
The Community Park area is a great spot as the area has been opened up and is now more accessible for those “used to be hard to go to” fishing hot spots.
The casino area is seeing some striper action, but mostly is the 1 to 3 pound range. You will want to make sure of a good not and fresh line as there are some larger fish surprising our anglers. Anchovies for the stripers is still being the best bait of choice. Our local angler Mike Merritt has a limit of stripers with one of the larger ones at 7.74 pounds and 29 and 1/2 inches. Mike was fishing from his boat to land these line sides.
While Christy Anderson was fishing from shore using anchovies to land a nice 2.22 pound striper at 19 and 1/2 inches, she was in the Sunshine Peninsula area.
Up on Lake Mohave, the catfish bite is doing OK, so shows Kris Moore (above) with a nice 5.2 pound channel at 22 inches He was bait fishing from his boat near the dam. Some of the other spots are farther up on the lake near the power lines. The striper bite hasn’t started to take off yet. The smallmouth bass and largemouth bass are being a little elusive but the smallies can be found along the shelves fishing plastics or spinner baits for them and the largemouth bass bite is not great, but OK.
The Topock Marsh is your go -o spot for both largemouth bass and channel cats in the marsh. It’s a good bet to try white or green spinnerbaits. These colors work well in that area.
We have some trout news: Our Game and fish dept will be stocking rainbow trout (see AZGFD editor’s note below). This was done with the prompting of our abatement department manager to help with the caddis fly population. These rainbows will be of catchable size, and we are getting a bunch of them around the first part of September. Our federal hatchery, the Willow Beach National Fish Hatchery, will start stocking in October. I hope to have an update when once they have a schedule. The hatchery has a new manager and he is working with his crew on the details of the stocking of trout for our area. Hope this helps for now, and thanks for all of your support and we will see you soon to share that catch. Now go catch a fish.
Rusty at Riviera Marina can be reached at 928-763-8550
AZGFD Editor’s Note: From I-40 Bridge to Davis Dam, trout are stocked weekly by the USFWS Willow Beach National Fish Hatchery from October through March. Additional trout will be stocked in September and April with funding from Bullhead Pest Abatement. With an abundance of blackfly and caddisfly larvae available for the trout to feed off of, not only can you catch the recently stocked fish, but older holdover trout should be growing quickly here. Trout are stocked at Davis Camp and Community Park and Rotary Park during the fall. Many anglers prefer to fish for the holdover trout away from the stocking locations.
