Patience rewarded on bass fishing trip to Lake Mohave

The sun was just peering over the mountains on the Arizona side of Lake Mohave as we pulled onto the launch ramp at Cottonwood Cove. After a few rather long and stress-filled weeks at the office, a fishing trip was just what the doctor ordered, and I was really looking forward to this one.

Reports out of Lake Mohave said the bass fishing had been off the charts as late as last week. My friend Tim Myers and his partner, Jesse Milicevic, placed second in the Feb. 11 American Bass Tournament at Cottonwood Cove with a five-fish bag that weighed in at 18.3 pounds. First-place finishers Joseph Raftery and Doug Jones weighed in with nearly 19.2 pounds. That's almost 4 pounds per fish.

"If bass fishing is that good, even a converted trout angler like me should be able to catch a bucket mouth or two," I thought as Tim regaled me with tournament fish stories. Then somewhere along the line, Tim made the mistake of inviting me to go fishing on Lake Mohave sometime.

"How 'bout Monday?" I replied.

So, with the sun coming up on Presidents Day, we launched the boat and motored past the breakwater. Joining us was Tim's son Matt.

Initially, we focused our efforts in an area where biologists with the Nevada and Arizona wildlife departments have created artificial fish habitat. For me, this was like coming full circle, because my son constructed and submerged some of that structure for his Eagle Scout project. Tim and other members of the Nevada Bass Federation provided transportation and labor for the project.

We worked the area with various plastic baits, but managed to get bumped only a couple of times between the three of us. That was disappointing, because I have seen underwater video of fish using that structure.

As we worked our way from one spot to the next, it became apparent that the action had slowed considerably in the wake of last week's passing cold fronts. Though the fish weren't too excited to join us in the boat, the slow action gave me an opportunity to learn more about working and reading various types of bass habitat as we moved from one location to another.

The key to winter bass fishing, Tim explained, is working the bait slowly and putting it as close to the fish as possible, because they aren't particularly aggressive. He said to let the bait sit there for a while and give the fish a chance to pick it up.

We had been fishing for more than two hours when Tim suddenly reared back on his rod and set the hook. The fish had been hanging out along the left edge of a steep rock face and couldn't resist the plastic worm Tim presented on a drop shot rig.

Then, just as suddenly, Matt set the hook on a fish that had been lying alongside the right side of the same face, and this one was a nice fish. Tim estimated its weight at about 4 pounds.

Just around the corner, Tim caught another fish, but the action shut off just as quickly as it had started. Another 45 minutes passed, and I had yet to catch a fish. We returned to a small inlet where a tree growing from the side of a ledge reaches out over the water. Though we had fished here earlier in the day with no success, Tim was sure fish were in the water below the tree.

He was right. On my fourth cast, I felt the bump that I had been looking for and set the hook. A plump 2-pounder had picked up my bait just as I pulled it past the tree. It wasn't the biggest fish of the day, but it was just what the doctor ordered.

Freelance writer Doug Nielsen is a conservation educator for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. His "In the Outdoors" column, published Thursday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NDOW. Any opinions he states in his column are his own. He can be reached at intheoutdoorslv@gmail.com.