Hat's Off To Havasu

Lake Havasu on the Colorado River is a fantastic place to visit – it has great fishing, beautiful views, plenty of places to stay and play -- and the London Bridge.

London Bridge - you can drive your boat right under it!

The London Bridge

In the 1930s, the construction of Parker Cam created Lake Havasu. During World War II an R and R camp for the armed forces was built on a peninsula. A developer named McCulloch bought 26 square miles of desert (the current site of Lake Havasu City), and in 1968 he bought the London Bridge and had it dismantled and shipped to the desert.

By 1971 the bridge had been re-assembled at Lake Havasu, and the land under it was dredged out to form a channel, turning the peninsula into an island connected to the mainland by the London Bridge. Today you can drive your boat under the London Bridge, and the shores of the channel are a popular place for boats to beach.

Fishing Is Excellent Here

Havasu has excellent largemouth and smallmouth bass fishingyear-round, with daily high temperatures averaging from 64F in January to 109F in July. Fair skies are almost a guarantee – Havasu generally receives less than four inches of rain per year. At maximum pool, Havasu is over twenty-six miles long and covers over 19,000 acres. Both of the river ends of Havasu – Bill Williams in the south and the Colorado in the north – have an abundance of thick tules that stretch for what looks like miles and miles.

Spring

When western anglers talk about Havasu, the name Roy Hawk usually comes up sooner rather than later – he’s made a name for himself fishing tournaments out West, and especially on Lake Havasu. “Havasu is best in the spring,” he says, “when the fish are up on beds”. In the spring, Roy fishes the shallows and bays, and the pockets up in the river. When the fish move off the beds, he says, they often move out to the planted structure or grass beds and rocky points.

Planted Structure

There is a lot of planted structure in Havasu, and that structure has vastly improved the fishing. Much of that structure is clearly visible from a boat. Hawk’s favorite man-made habitat is brush bundles, the lower-lying ones. They deteriorate, so you have to hunt for the deeper ones with your graph. The artificial habitat started going in during the mid '90s, and one of the ways they help is by giving the fry a place to hide.

Havasu has rocks, coves, bulrushes, river areas, and just about any other kind of cover and structure to fish that you can think of!

The backs of coves and pockets in the river provide some of the best fishing in the spring. Sight fishing with tube baits and also throwing buzzbaits and topwater lures over weeds are two of the best producers. Jerkbaits on secondary points also produce plenty of bass, and so do rattling lipless cranks, spinnerbaits, and shad-colored Senkos.

Dean Farrell Likes The North End

Dean Farrell, an Arizona tournament fisherman, likes to fish the north end of Havasu in the Colorado River, especially in the spring, because if the river bite is on, that’s where the tournaments will be won. Dean says that swimming in current all the time makes the river fish bigger and stronger. Farrell asserts that the fishing in the river end is good off and on all year long, but particularly good when the water is up. When the water is low, it can be difficult to get into the backwaters.

The smallmouth in Havasu spawn earlier than the largemouth do, and they also spawn in deeper water. When the water temperature reaches about 58 degrees, locals start to look for smallmouth beds in at least ten feet of water. These beds are easy to spot because they are as much as three times bigger than a typical largemouth bed, and they are go clear to the rock, making them very easy to spot in the clear water of Havasu’s main lake basin.

Keep Your Eyes On The Graph

The main lake basin is good place to start this time of year – Dean likes the Pilot Rock or Steamboat area, then south toward the Bill Williams. The river areas actually warm up first because the water isn’t as clear. Fish the primary points with a Carolina rig, drop shot, or Tokyo rig. The bass stage on those points in fifteen to twenty-five feet until they move up to spawn.

Deb Blanchard

A good old-fashioned split shot rig is another great way to catch bass in early spring – try the humps and reefs around Site Six and long main-lake points in about twenty-five feet of water. When you’re fishing these long points you can be fifty yards or more from shore. Keep your eyes on the graph to make sure you stay on the structure, and be patient.

If The Weather Is Clear —

If the weather is clear and calm, go with finesse baits and fish very slowly. Once the fish go into the active pre-spawn mode, you can start using crankbaits, jerkbaits, and other reaction baits. The largemouth bass are more likely to spawn in the backwaters on shallow sandy banks. You can easily miss the entrances to these backwaters, and if the water is low you may have to pole your way in. Your best bet is to cruise the banks slowly and watch for the small channels that will allow you access to the backwaters.

Mohave Valley resident Mike Baldwin likes the coves near the north end of the lake when the largemouth are spawning, and he’ll fish a Pointer 78 (a shallow jerkbait), but fairly slowly. There are man-made brush piles in this area that hold fish, he says. From the Arizona Channel to Blankenship is the first area where the largemouth will spawn, he says, and there is a series of coves going up this area. He also fishes the rocky points along the way.

Summer

In the summer, Roy Hawk throws crankbaits and topwater and just covers water until he finds the fish. Once he’s had some interest, he’ll slow down and throw a Texas rig or a weightless Senko. Green pumpkin and smoke colors are his favorites. He fishes a lot of evening and night tournaments this time of year, and catches most of his fish on crankbaits and topwater baits in those tournaments.

Mike Baldwin Fishes Here Year Long

My buddy Mike Baldwin fishes Havasu all year long and he loves to throw spinnerbaits along the tule line in summer and on through the fall. He also does a lot of flipping this time of year, to root out those bass that are tucked deep into the shade of the tules. The problem with fishing tules at Havasu is that there are literally miles and miles of them.Mike fine tunes his tule fishing by searching for the spots along the tules that have darker water. Dark means deep, and the bass love to use those little deep holes near the tules – this water is four feet deep or so.

Dean Farrell says that another good summer technique is to fish the rocky banks in the Colorado, throwing crankbaits and spinnerbaits along the shore, and following up with jigs and worms. Good colors include anything with red on it, along with white and pink for crankbaits and spinnerbaits, with darker colors for worms and jigs.

All Is Sight Fishing

Dean says that his experience is that all the fishing at Havasu is sight fishing, no matter the time of year. He can usually see the bass down in the water, and the trick is to get them to bite without scaring them away. He keeps a 6-inch purple and red worm tied on at all times, on light line. When a bass comes out of the tules and hits his jig or his spinnerbait without taking it, he tosses that little worm in.

Lake Havasu has good weed beds until cold weather causes them to die off. They start growing early in the year, but sometimes they get so thick that they block off access to the backwaters by late summer. Try throwing topwater lures over those weeds in summer. Walk the Dog baits are particularly popular over the weeds and often produce explosive results. Havasu in the summer can be incredibly crowded with pleasure boaters, but nighttime is usually a lot more mellow and the fishing will be better.

Fall

Fall is a fantastic time for fishing on Havasu, and it starts around October. The number one choice for bass at Havasu in the autumn is a buzzbait – you can throw it all day long this time of year, along with rip baits and topwater plugs. Flipping in the Colorado is another go-to technique this time of year. Water level has a lot to do with it – if the water is high, you can fish the river, but if it’s low most anglers stick to the main lake area.

The backwater areas in the Colorado are fantastic areas to fish, but in the fall they can be tough to get to because of water levels and the weeds that haven’t died off yet. Narrow trails through the tules lead to beautiful pools that are impossible to see from the channel, and these quiet pools often hold the biggest fish in the lake.

I’ve poled through to some pools that were unbelievably gorgeous, with vivid turquoise water that is so clear and bright it looks fake. In places, the steep red rock walls and the thick tules make it seem like you’re in another world. Even the boats racing down the channel sound like they are miles away. It can be a risk, but it can pay off if you have the nerve.

Crankbaits: A Fall Favorite

A Havasu guide told me that the fish go into these backwaters in the fall and hang out there until the water temperature reaches the '50s. He loves rattling lipless crankbaits this time of year in the backwaters – a blue and chrome one is his favorite, and he says the fish “just inhale it to death!” Rip it as fast as you can, then stop it. The bass try to rip the rod out of your hand when you stop it, he says.

Roy Hawk also favors crankbaits in the fall, and he says the crankbait bite can be amazing, sometimes with cast after cast producing a nice fish, with a mix of largemouth and smallmouth bass. You can often find active fish like this, and when they do slow down, he switches to a light Carolina rig with a 5-inch Yamamoto grub or a Yamamoto Stretch 40, which is like a Senko with a curly tail.

Winter

Lake Havasu is a gorgeous place to fish. Wayne Crowder and John are fishing shallow here -- in winter!

Hawk says that in the winter things slow down tremendously on Havasu, and small baits like a Yamamoto Grub or Ika, or a Spro Phat Fly work very well, especially for smallmouth. He loves to swim that little Phat Fly bucktail jig and his favorite colors for all baits this time of year is shad or green pumpkin. Fortunately, winter is short on the lower Colorado river, and by February things are picking up again, so when it is winter in most of the country, it’s early spring on Havasu.

Wayne Crowder caught this bass from offshore structure at Havasu in January.

In the early part of the year the lower water level forces the fish to come out of the tules, so fishing improves in the Bill Williams River. In fact, the cold-weather fishing is so good around the Bill Williams that it can get crowded. Flipping black and blue or pumpkin jigs along the edges of the tules in this area is a good way to catch bass.

Fish Backwaters Now

This is the time of year to fish those backwaters because they warm up first, especially in the Colorado end. A Havasu guide once told me that you can fish shallow all year long on Havasu because it is basically a river and the fish don’t go deep as a rule. Jigs are fantastic baits in January and February – throw them right to shore and work them slowly down to about ten feet, concentrating on rocky areas, tules, and points. If you can get into the backwater areas, you can pitch jigs around in there, too. Once the water starts to warm up, tube lures will start to out-produce the jigs.

Havasu Is An Ideal Destination Lake

There really isn’t a bad time to fish Havasu. With so many different types of structure and cover, Havasu can be richly rewarding if you’re willing to put in a little work. Fabulous weather and great fishing make Havasu an ideal destination lake.

More articles on Lake Havasu