Report by: Chris Smith

Monday, July 5th, 2010

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Today’s Fish rating
Upriver: 8.0
Walk-In: 7.5
Key: 1 = Go fish somewhere else
10 = Rent a helicopter and get here now!
Today’s Weather: Sunny, Hi 96 Lo 61

Crowd Rating
Upriver: 2.0 No Crowds
Walk In: 1.0 No Crowds
Key: 1 = Sleep late and fish where you want.
10 = Very crowded, get up early

Fly Fishing: Brian & I (the Wine Guys) just got back from a tremendous two day fishing trip to Lee’s Ferry and, of course, stay at Cliff Dwellers Lodge. Brian spent the entire trip wade fishing and landed 40 rainbow trout (13-17 inches) the first day and an additional 30 on day two. Believe it or not, our hook up to catch ratio was 1 fish landed for every 3 hooked! That means, between the two of us, we actually hooked over 100 quality rainbows our first day out!

These fish are large, hard fighting rainbows, resulting in many pulled hooks prior to getting the fish to the net. Many of the fish hooked jumped 4 to 6 times and could not be pressured and brought to net quickly on 6x tippet. Additionally, the fish were aggressively taking both our nymphing (scuds) and dry dropper rigs (real fun on a 3 weight rod).

After comparing notes on the drive home, Brian and I agreed this was the best fly fishing we’ve experienced at the Ferry in the last 10 years. Attached are a few of the pictures of the trip I thought I’d pass along. It is truly unbelievable that we were basically the only anglers out on the river while we were there, experiencing what is undoubtedly some of the best rainbow trout fishing in the continental US, right here in Arizona!

Terry & Wendy, it was great to see you while we were there. Thanks, as always, for the hospitality! Our meals, service and lodging at Cliff Dwellers was, as always, first class! Sunny and the new cooks in your restraint were great (please thank them for us)!

Walk in: This area has been fishing very well.
Report by: Chris Smith
With the new flows that started the 1st much has changed with the conditions at the walkin. Low flows there are now as high as the previous high flows making the conditions very different. I would only suggest going to the boulder field early in the morning as you can very easily get stranded in the really high flows if they sneak up on you. The good pocket water only seems to be there in the morning now anyhow so it’s not like you are missing out on much. I have actually been trying some new spots though further down by the Paria Beach just below the confluence of the two rivers. There is a little rock fall that creates a big eddy just above the beach area, and there are tons of sippers stackin up right there, in fact you can practically sightfish to them. It is mostly smaller fish there (8”-12”) but definitely a blast if you bring a 2 or 3 wt rod

Tight Lines,
Chris

Spin Fishing: Was reported as great this weekend, the lure of choice is still the panther martin in gold and black.

Anglers are also using large glo bugs, and bouncing them off the bottom.
The jig has been a fun one too, seems the black ones are working best when the cast is toward the shore. T

• If you have some news you would like to report about fishing lees ferry, the walk-in section or up river please e-mail your report to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Attn. Lees Ferry Fishing Report

• We would be happy to have your input, and pass it along.

Fishing Synopsis and Forecast by Terry Gunn 6/6/10

As the recent weather has changed from cool to hot so has the fishing. New water flows began June 1 and the ramp rate (rate of rise or fall) is a very slow rise all day. This is perfect water for wading and apparently the midges and black flies like this water as well and there are more bugs in the air and on the water than I can remember seeing. There are so any bugs that they are almost a pest. I have been loading my passengers and getting away from the dock as quickly as possible to escape the pesky black flies that swarm around. We are lucky that none of our insects are of the biting variety. The bugs have really got the fish into a feeding mood and we have been experiencing good fishing all day long. The flows during the week are great with the water starting out at 7,000-cfs and slowly rising throughout the day to a peak of 11,500-cfs sometime in the early evening. The weekend water rises even slower and the fishing on Saturday and Sunday has been as good as it gets; we rated the fishing yesterday at 8.5 and this might be a bit on the conservative side. I expect the current conditions and the good fishing to continue for the rest of June.

The Walk-In area should be about ready to get hot as well and the best news is that being 16 miles from the dam the water rises even more slowly and much later in this section of river. There are times that this section of river fishes as good or better than upriver. That time may be getting close.

The river is in great shape. The bottom of the river has been carpeted with a thick layer of algae for the past several months, more algae than I can remember seeing in years. This bodes well for the current and future conditions on the river. The algae are the foundation for the aquatic food base and a good crop of aquatic vegetation turns into a good crop of scuds, worms and midges. The fish are in great shape and growing. We are catching all sizes of fish which is indicative of a healthy river and fishery.

The first of July we are in for a big change when the flows increase dramatically in volume; this is when we get out of our waders and begin drifting heavy nymph rigs. The increased flow starts moving the scuds and worms around and the fish start feeding really heavy. July and August usually provide the most consistent and best fishing of the year and the fish are in the best possible condition (fat footballs) of the year. As an added bonus the cicadas will start singing around the first of July and by the first week or so of July the fish are beginning to key in and eat the cicadas as they fall out of the trees and into the water. This is the most reliable and exciting dry fly fishing that Lees ferry has to offer.

Fish Behavior 101. Why fish eat and why they don’t.

“Any man who claims to understand fish is a fool.” TG

“When you are guiding; some days you will be the dog, other days you’ll be the tree.” TG

Fish are weird; there is just no getting around it. One day they are jumping in the boat, the next, they are nowhere to be found. Some people say that this is what keeps bringing us back to the stream, that this uncertainty we call “fishing” makes us more competitive. After all
these years I do understand a little about fish and I would like to share some ideas on why fish are happy one day and not the next.

First and foremost the fish have to be present in the area of water that you are fishing.

Fish are not always going to be in the same spot. This is especially true at Lees Ferry where you have water that fluctuates on a daily and monthly basis. A spot that is stacked with fish at one flow may be a “fish desert” at another level.

FOOD and SHELTER: the two things that determine the location of fish.

If there is no food present there is no reason for a fish to be in a specific location. However, if you find the highest concentration of food, you will always find the highest concentration of fish, assuming that this concentration of food has been present long enough for the fish to locate it.

At Lees Ferry we have two different feeding plots (each with hundreds of sub-plots). The first is PROLIFIC MIDGE HATCHES. Midges hatch throughout the year; however, by far the largest hatches occur in the spring. The lifecycle of a midge is very similar to a butterfly; the adult midge’s sole purpose is to make babies. In a nut shell, this is how it works. The adult midge mates with other midges in a swarm, then the female lands on the water to lay the fertilized eggs, she stays on the water for a second or so then flies off the water and then lands again to lay more eggs (this is a survival mechanism which helps protect her from being eaten by a fish). The eggs slowly sink and eventually hatch into a larvae (think of a tiny caterpillar) the midge lives as a larvae for a long time, living in the algae and mud. Then though some miracle of nature the midge larvae get a call to pupate in mass, (think of a butterfly chrysalis). As they pupate the midge slowly floats to the surface. The size and color of the midge pupae varies with the specie and with 50 different species of midges inhabiting Lees Ferry we have a large variety of sizes and colors of pupae. When the pupae reaches the surface, the midge hatches through the husk and the adult midge crawls out, dries his wings and flies off to repeat the entire process.

Fish do feed on adult midges but mostly on the carcasses of dead midges that accumulate in back-eddies. The importance of a midge as a food source occurs in the emerging stage. When midges hatch they often do so in mass numbers and for long durations. The fish know this is happening and move into the riffles to feed on the emerging midges.

WHY DO FISH MOVE INTO RIFFLES TO FEED ON MIDGES?

Midge pupae are small, anywhere from a size #18 to #30. It takes a lot of midges to sustain a Lees Ferry trout; however, if you were to measure the midges as a percentage of total biomass, they far exceed all other food sources combined. Riffles are areas of river where the water transitions from very shallow to slowly deeper water. Do not confuse “points” with riffles, they look similar, however, the water on “points” transitions from shallow to deep in a short area. Fish move into the shallowest part of the riffles to feed on the CONCENTRATED MIDGES.

Imagine if you had a thousand midges in a column of water that was 3-feet deep or 6-inches deep, the midges are going to be much more concentrated in the 6-inch deep water. This is why we often tell people that they are wading in areas that they should be fishing.

The other kicker to midge hatches is water volume: as the water flow increase the midge hatches decrease. This is something that I do not understand but I know it to be true. So the best midge fishing is always in lower water flows. If I were to put a number to it I would say the best midge fishing is in water less than 14,000-cfs. This is why in the spring, (March, April, and May) some of our best fishing is on the weekends when the water is at the lowest level of the week. We often see good midge hatches in September and October, but not the swarms that happen in the spring.

The other situation that makes fish eat at Lees Ferry is HIGH WATER FLOWS. Anytime the water flows are high (above 16,000-cfs) food is dislodged, moved around, and transported by the current. Here we are talking about WORMS and SCUDS. High water flows normally occur 4 months each year, the 2 hottest months, July and August, and the 2 coldest months, December and January. This is all about electrical demand and high demand equals high flows. There are exceptions and high flows can occur at other times if there is a high lake level in Lake Powell and high runoff into the lake. This happened 1983-86 and a couple of other times in the 90’s. The best fishing periods at Lees Ferry has always been preceded by periods of higher than normal water flows. In high water the fish will concentrate in the rifles and the tail out of the riffles to feed on the drifting food. In addition to the riffles, feeding fish can be found though long runs between riffles. This is the time of year that the most productive fishing is usually from a drifting boat as opposed to wading.

WEATHER. Any change in the weather can shut off fish feeding. I cannot explain why this happens, however I guarantee you that it is true. I was in Placentia, Belize last year fishing with noted guide Eworth Gartbutt. A cold front was pushing through (it dropped to a frigid 78 degrees) and Eworth said “Terry, you realize that permit fishing and a north wind do not go together.” I thought to myself how fishing is fishing no matter where you are in the world.

Impending weather change make fish at Lees Ferry not want to eat. It might look like a normal day, the sun may be shining and not a breeze is blowing but a storm is on the way and the fish know it and for whatever reason they decide to take the day off from eating. I saw it this in the spring when I was fishing with a customer that I have fished with for 2 decades and the weather that day was a classic cold front, it was windy, cold, and spitting rain. My client is a good stick and at the end of the day he had landed 2 fish and his companion had landed 3 fish and they were all smaller fish. The next day started cold but warmed quickly due to the cloudless day and bright sunshine. They landed more than 30-fish including a 19-in football and several fish that were in the 18-in range. If they would have only fished the one day that might have concluded that the fishing at Lees Ferry sucks or that we are “blowing smoke” or overrating how good the fishing is. That actually happened with one trip last month when a couple of guys had a similar experience fishing with me one day with a cold front pushing through.

So poor weather makes for poor fishing most of the time, however, there are exceptions and I have seen some great fishing on days the wind is howling and the snow is flying. I can’t explain this but I can tell you that more often than not, a change in the weather will affect fishing in a negative way.

Lees Ferry Fishing Tips: I have been using 6 and 7X fluorocarbon tippet and feel that the lighter tippet results in a much higher success rate than say 5X. Anglers might argue that they break fish off on such light tippet but my argument is that in order to break a fish off, you first have to first get a fish to eat your fly and you are going to get more eaters with lighter tippet than heaver tippet.

When wading the riffles you need long dead drifts. There are 2 types of drifts; perfect dead drifts and all other drifts. Perfect dead drifts catch fish at Lees Ferry; all other drifts don’t catch fish here. You get a dead drift by mending the line, then throwing slack line on the water. If your line is straight from your rod tip to your indicator or you move your indicator during the drift, then your drift is not perfect and will not catch fish. The key to success is to stay over fish, get the flies down to the bottom, and get a long, perfect dead drift.

The turning point and the beginning for the recovery of the Lees Ferry fishery occurred in 2005 when Lake Powell had the first above normal snow-pack and runoff year since 1997. Last year we had almost exactly the same conditions. The above normal winter snow pack and runoff into Lake Powell in 2007-08, stirred up a tremendous amount of nutrient laden sediment that had accumulated at the lake mouths of the Colorado River, San Juan River, and the Green River. Lake Powell elevation increased 43-ft. and the rivers flowing into the lake mixed the sediment and nutrients into the lake water. It usually takes several months before we see this mixing affect. The increased nutrient load in the lake and river is evident this spring by the dramatic increase in aquatic vegetation and aquatic organisms throughout the river.

The high flow experiment, 4/08, was basically a non event as far as the fishery is concerned. It came and went with few visible changes to the river or the fishery. For more details and to see my complete comments go here: http://coloradoriverconservancy.org/

For details on Lake Powell conditions and snow-pack, go here: http://lakepowell.water-data.com/

For a real time graphic view of water releases and ramp rates go here: http://waterdata.usgs.gov/az/nwis/uv?09380000

The AZ Game and Fish Department has detected whirling disease in a very small percentage of Lees Ferry trout that were collected for a random sampling. More recent samplings have turned up no sign of the disease, which may mean that it was a “one time” exposure, where the disease was not established or that the disease is present but at a very low prevalence. Anglers should still use caution in cleaning their equipment both before and after they have fished here or in other waters. For more information visit: http://www.whirling-disease.org

Glen Canyon Dam / Lake Powell

The unregulated inflow volume into Lake Powell in April 2010 was well above the volume forecasted at the beginning of the month. The forecasted unregulated inflow for April 2010 for Lake Powell was 650,000 acre feet (66% of average). The actual unregulated inflow to Lake Powell during April 2010 was 930,000 acre-feet (94.5% of average). This isn’t necessarily an indication the runoff volume this year will be larger than expected, but is more an indication that the runoff is occurring earlier than expected. The May 2010 official runoff forecast (April through July unregulated inflow volume) for Lake Powell is 5.2 million acre-feet (66% of average).

Because the inflow volume to Lake Powell during April 2010 was greater than expected, the elevation of Lake Powell at the beginning of May 2010 was about 2 feet above what was originally projected in the April 2010 24-Month Study. The May 2010 24-Month Study, with the new initial condition and updated forecast conditions, now projects the peak summertime elevation of Lake Powell to be approximately 3634 feet above sea level (about 66 feet from full pool). The peak will likely occur in late July or early August. Releases from Glen Canyon Dam during the month of May will fluctuate each day for power generation between a peak hourly average release of about 12,500 cfs, during the morning and afternoon and a daily low hourly average release of 6,500 cfs during the late evening and early morning hours. The release volume scheduled for May is 600,000 acrefeet. The release volume projected for June is also 600,000 acre-feet and this will be confirmed in late May. In addition to the daily fluctuation pattern, instantaneous releases from Glen Canyon Dam also fluctuate to provide approximately 40 megawatts of system regulation to maintain stable conditions within the electrical generation and transmission system. This translates into momentary release fluctuations of about +/- 1100 cfs above or below the hourly average release rate. These momentary fluctuations for regulation are very short lived and typically balance out over the hour. When an unanticipated outage event occurs in the generation system, reserve generation at Glen Canyon Dam can also be called upon up to a limit of 88 megawatts (approximately 2400 cfs of release) for a duration of 2 hours or less. Under normal circumstances, calls for reserve generation occur fairly infrequently and are for much less than the limit of 88 megawatts. Based on the April 2010 official forecast, pursuant to the Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and Coordinated Operations for Lakes Powell and Mead (Interim Guidelines), the April 2010 24-Month Study, with 8.23 maf projected as the release volume for water year 2010, projected that the water year ending elevation of Lake Powell would be below the 2010 equalization level (3642 feet above sea level). This condition did not meet the criteria for an April adjustment to equalization for the remainder of water year 2010 (see Section 6.B.3 of the Record of Decision). Therefore, the release volume for water year 2010 will be 8.23 maf and monthly release volumes for the remainder of the water year will be scheduled to meet this annual release volume.

Upper Colorado River Basin Hydrology

In the Upper Colorado River Basin during water year 2009, the overall precipitation accumulated through September 30, 2009 was approximately 95% of average based on the 30 year average for the period from 1971 through 2000. For water year 2010 dry conditions have persisted. Estimated percentages of average precipitation for the months thus far in water year 2010 are as follows: October 85%, November 40%, December 130%, January 100% and February 100%, March 90%, April 120%. The overall estimated precipitation percentage of average thus far in water year 2010 for the Upper Colorado River Basin is 95% of average. The Climate Prediction Center outlook (dated April 15, 2010) for temperature over the next 3 months indicates that temperatures in the Upper Colorado River Basin are expected to be above average while precipitation over the next 3 months is projected to be near average.

Upper Colorado River Basin Drought

The Upper Colorado River Basin continues to experience a protracted multi-year drought. Since 1999, inflow to Lake Powell has been below average in every year except water years 2005 and 2008. In the summer of 1999, Lake Powell was close to full with reservoir storage at 23.5 million acre-feet, or 97 percent of capacity. During the next 5 years (2000 through 2004) unregulated inflow to Lake Powell was well below average. This resulted in Lake Powell storage decreasing during this period to 8.0 million acre-feet (33 percent of capacity) which occurred on April 8, 2005. During 2005, 2008 and 2009, drought conditions eased somewhat with net gains in storage to Lake Powell. As of May 10, 2010 the storage in Lake Powell was 13.90 million acre-feet (57.2 % of capacity) which is still below desired levels while the overall reservoir storage in the Colorado River Basin as of May 10, 2010 is 32.87 million acre-feet (55.3 % of capacity).

Check out: www.kutv.com/content/outdoors/default.aspx

I have had some people that are fishing on their own (unguided) tell me that they are having a difficult time catching fish. The fishing has changed from the peak of 2000 and many people are not adapting to the new conditions. The current fish population is lower than it was in 2000 and there are not fish “everywhere” in the river like there were several years back (this is probably the reason that we are seeing better conditioned and larger fish today). Just because you might have been successful in one spot on the river in the past does not mean that particular spot is always good. There are many times of the year that the water flows, or conditions are not right to hold fish at “famous” spots such as 4 mile or Dam Island. It is often challenging, even for a good guide, to stay on top of where the fish are and what they are eating; but we do have the advantage of spending a lot of time on the water.

Lees Ferry Anglers - Fly Shop Specials:
“GIFT CERTIFICATES AVAILABLE!!”
*****CLOSEOUTS******
PATAGONIA- Women’s Stretch Jacket was $315.00 now $175.00
Call for all current sale items as they change quickly.

Cliff Dwellers Lodge:
Our lodge has rooms with cable TV (20 channels), in-room coffee, and the basic amenities. Choices of rooms are ONE king-size bed, TWO doubles and TWO queen-size beds. Also our group unit we call the HOUSE, sleeps six with two baths, dining area, kitchen, patio with a view, and cable TV. Rates vary with season. We are excited about the cool fall season and have some great “black board” specials planned. Patio dining is available. (Enclosed in the winter months)

Meet the Guides:
THE GUIDES AND STAFF OF LEES FERRY ANGLERS have thousands of days on this water, and over 100 years combined fish-guiding experience. Captains’ Terry Gunn, Jeff English, Skip Dixon, Rick Smith, Natalie Jensen, J.D. Miller, Luke Blaser and Tom Jones make up our guiding staff. Lees Ferry Anglers is proud of our fly-fishing guide team! Wendy Gunn, Ted Welling, Chris Smith, and Kris Stoudt work in the fly shop to provide you with the best customer service in the industry.

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Lees Ferry Anglers
HC-67 Box 30
Marble Canyon, AZ 86036
Toll Free 1-800-962-9755
Direct 1-928-355-2261
Fax 1-928-355-2271

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Terry Gunn
Lees Ferry Anglers Fly Shop, Guides, & Rentals
Cliff Dwellers Lodge
http://www.terrygunn.com
http://www.leesferry.com
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800-962-9755