Some Arizona Flyfishing

[JagDaddy]

Spent some time last weekend at Chevelon Lake about a hour from our place on the Moggollon Rim (Mo-gee-on). I took off on Fri mid morning and came home late Sat evening, putting in a quicky hammock camp near the trail head above the lake and commuting in on foot for the fishing. It's a crunchy 4 mile Jeep ride to the trail head with a relatively steep 3/4 mile hike to the reservoir on a good enough trail.

It was my first time up there so I didn't take a canoe. I'm going too next time, the lake would fish much better from a boat and a canoe would open up some nice lake side camping. The bank varies from rocky and steep to low and brushy, tough but not impossible to bank fish :- ) It will need to be a light camp and I'm definitely going to make some pads for my portage yoke haha

Fishing was decent, the lake is known for its big browns, but I caught all rainbows. They were willing and I caught quite a few on a weak size 18 blue wing olive hatch in the evenings and a dry and dropper rig during the day. Cicadas are starting to come off now so I fished a cicada on top and a size 20 Copper John down. Took fish all day about 50/50 on top and dropper fly. AZ is the only place I've ever fished a cicada hatch haha Sort of like the big salmon fly hatches in MT, when they hit the cicada they really got after it!

I need to get more focused on the browns and get my streamer game on to get them out of cover, but the native rainbows were fun :- ) Apparently the browns come out of the deep water in the fall and that's the best time to get into the big ones on hatches in the feeder creek. I could have stripped streamers deep for browns, but didn't get to it, the rainbows were fun.

I got some typical AZ mountain spring weather, snow, hail, sun, rain and wind coming though in regular intervals haha I took a 9' 6wt. and fished though the conditions :- ) If one waits for 'good' weather in the mountains, you won't get much fishing.

AZ has a surprising amount of quality fly-fishing on streams and lakes, that I haven't tapped into yet, but I'm leaving bruised and bleeding lips this year haha Heading up to the White Mountains to hike into a section on the Little Colorado River by Alpine, AZ this weekend and going put the canoe in on a small lake on the second day.



Sometimes I have to remind myself I live in a desert haha My son fished the Bighorn's in WY the same weekend and it was in the 70's at 7k feet



The view from the top of the trail head



A view from down on the lake



Scruffy native rainbow, I didn't keep any this trip, I planned on fishing till after dark and getting into camp late for a quick dinner



....another, I caught some bigger and some smaller and got tired of taking pictures of them :- )

 

[Wyo George]

Very nice location and it's hard to have a bad day when you're catching fish! Thanks for sharing.

 

[JagDaddy]

We raised our kids in Sheridan, WY and fished the heck out both sides of the Bighorns and over around Cody. My son goes to college in Powell, fly fishes alot around Cody and into Yellowstone. My wife and I moved up to Bozeman, MT after the kids were released into the wild. Bozeman is the Mecca for western fly fishing IMO. We had our Hyde driftboat and a whitewater cataraft up there with us and probably fished 150 days a year haha

By the time we ended up in the White Mountains of AZ I was needing a break :- )

 

[GearFreak]

Nice fish & Scenery.
I have never been successful at catching browns - too smart for my novice attempts.

 

[JagDaddy]

Nice fish & Scenery.
I have never been successful at catching browns - too smart for my novice attempts.

I hardly catch browns unless I target them specifically and fish them hard :- )

IME big browns eat meat and biologist say they generally only feed every 3 or 4 days. Once they feed they sit out. When they are feeding they are mostly nocturnal, so it's a first and last light focus in shallow water next to their cover and since they are hunting baitfish or crawfish, it's a #6 up with heavy tippet operation. All these things bring browns to my net, but fewer fish overall. The bottom line for me is I don't do very well with browns if I don't focus on them and when I focus on them it's to the exclusion of about everthing else :- )

I like fishing them though, it seems there are a few hogs in about every body of trout water I've ever fished.

Once the splashy mid morning and early evening hatches come off I'll change out leader and fly and chuck into deep pocket water till as far after dark I can manage or fish the pre sunrise pockets next to camp before it's light enough to cook breakfast.

On MT and WY rivers we would float after dark on moon lit nights, good tmes and hog fish :- )

 

[Alan Gage]

Looks like a great place. I looked up some of the rim lakes and, at least from the maps, it looks like most are more easily accessible than Chevelon, is that correct? I assume the lakes probably see high usage in the summer and not so much in late fall/winter/early spring? At around 7100' I'm guessing in winter it actually feels a bit like winter? Good hiking trails in the area?

Always looking for new places to explore...

Alan

 

[JagDaddy]

Chevelon is tougher than many of the rim lakes and your exactly right about it getting less traffic. I also like the look of Chevelon Creek it runs though an area that's also pretty rugged.

If you were thinking of a Rim and White Mountain trip make sure you don't miss the excellent fishing on the Apache Rez, it very good fly fishing by any standard. They do a good job managing theirs resources over there. It's $9 a day and you don't need an AZ nonresedent licence.

 

[GearFreak]

On MT and WY rivers we would float after dark on moon lit nights, good tmes and hog fish :- )

We only have a couple of native brook streams everything else is stocked Stillwater. I FF from a jon boat - more stable than the canoe. Casting and rocking the prospector just felt too tippy, add wind and it was a frustrating day.

6wt+ rules out here but a bunch of guys fish for channel catfish using 10wt. It' s not my thing but they have fun.

MT or WY would be a bucket destination for sure one day.

 

[JagDaddy]

We only have a couple of native brook streams everything else is stocked Stillwater. I FF from a jon boat - more stable than the canoe. Casting and rocking the prospector just felt too tippy, add wind and it was a frustrating day.

6wt+ rules out here but a bunch of guys fish for channel catfish using 10wt. It' s not my thing but they have fun.

MT or WY would be a bucket destination for sure one day.

There's a lot of AZ folks that find good sport warm water fly fishing :- ) I've never done it myself, but getting on a small large mouth bass lake and working the gaps in the weed beds sounds like fun.

I have fly fished small mouth bass on rivers and it was a good time working crawfish patterns in the riffles.

I pretty much fish a 9' 6wt for everything these days. I went though the 'quiver of fly rods' thing, but almost all my fishing is backcountry so I need general pupose. A good case could be made for a 5wt, but I prefer a 6wt for heavy streamers and two fly rigs. When it comes to small streams, I mostly roll or side. I've used short 2, 3 and 4wt's on small water, but I don't backcast anyway on tight water and missed the rod length for pitching into pocket water and mending in riffles.