George Washington's Birthday

I visited some family on my Dad's side this weekend and got my hands on Grandma's family tree. Included on this side are former Mayor of Portland, Or, Bud Clark and the eldest traced relative, George George. Born 1650 in Wales.

George George?

Anyway, I had Monday off and went fishing all day. I decided to spend the weekend exploring the urban scene like my previous post discussed. I started Sunday night at a canal on Alma School Rd. near the 202/Red Mountain Fwy. It sucked. No signs of fish and depressing scenery. Went to Dobson Ranch and met up with Friendly neigbor, Scott, to hit pond 7. As usual, Scott caught one fish and I caught zero. We have fished together 4 or 5 times, I think, and I have consistently been skunked 1-0. Lots of bites here and there, but the little buggers shake loose a lot. It seems like they are swimming right at you and there's no way to get a good hook set. Here's Scott's fish from Sunday:


The next morning, Monday, we headed back to pond 7. A front had come through and fishing was slow. The upside was that I finally got to reciprocate the results for once. I caught one bass to Scott's zero.

This seems to be the size of bass we catch and see so far. The box is 13" across and the handle is 4.5". I figure the bass is 1 year old. All the bass I saw were on spawning beds. The one I caught wasn't spawning, I assume. A full moon just passed, so we have a while for the next group to spawn. I saw 2 bass on a bed that were 15" or so. But all the rest were small. I can't believe they are beddin' in February. The spawning and weather are just like Oregon in May.

After Dobson Ranch, I went and got a fishing license and then decided to swing by the ASU Research Park. The scene was about the same... cold wind from the front and all the fish were spawning.

I caught one bass about an inch smaller than the one from Dobson Ranch. I did see quite a few big bass on beds there. A couple were really big.


I met a guy fishing there that does a lot of bass fishing. I got some good information from him:
1. The canals suck. He agreed with me that there are a lot of better places to go.
2. The algae that killed a lot of bass in the resevoirs (I talk about it in a past post) also killed fish in town that got water from certain canals. Dobson Ranch and the lake in Tempe that I mention in that old post both had a huge amount of fish killed the last couple of years. They have both been restocked, which explains why there are so many little bass in the Ranch.
3. Tempe Town Lake has a lot of big bass in it and they are biting right now. The marina has big lights that stay on all night and attract fish. The guy I met has also hiked above Tempe Town Lake to the pond I wanted to fish... It's shallow and all muddy with no fish.

After making a loop of the pond there, I decided to go check out Tempe Town Lake. Once I got going, I decided to go east and explore. I would rather go to TTL in the evenign. I ended up driving out to the Bush Hwy and out to the Salt River where it runs from Saguaro Lake to Granite Reef Dam where it goes into canals. From where I parked, I walked up stream towards some riffles and pools.
It was muddy, smelly, and shallow. Near some trees and a little deeper water I caught this sunfish.

I hiked further upstream to see if there were any deeper pools. Because of mud or overhanging trees, I had to trudge through the sand up on the bank above the river.

I went pretty far and found nothing better. On the way back down to the car, I heard some splashing and walked towards the water... It was a big steer running across to the opposite side.

Back at the parking lot, the river goes around a bend and gets narrower and much deeper. I went down for a closer look and saw a lot of deep pools and rocks to fish around. Right where I walked up to, there were two big bass -- biggest bass I'd seen all day. They were on a spawning bed like everywhere else. It was getting dark, so I only fished around there a little bit. I saw 5 or 6 more bass and they were all at least 2lbs. One of them was close to 18 or 20 inches. The one I caught was smaller than the other ones I saw (of course!).