April 2024 Lake Mohave

Event Overview: The Midweek Bass Club's recent tournament at Lake Mohave showcased a transformation in the lake's reputation, largely due to the introduction of smallmouth bass. The tournament featured challenging conditions with varying weather but yielded impressive catches, thanks to the adaptability and expertise of the participants.

Conditions and Tactics: Anglers faced a mix of calm and windy conditions which influenced their fishing strategies. Most successful anglers adapted to the clear and deep water by focusing on smallmouth bass on beds, utilizing reaction baits like spinnerbaits and jerkbaits during windier periods. The clear water necessitated careful approach to bed fishing, with long casts and subtle techniques proving effective.

Acknowledgments: The tournament was well-received, with participants praising the organization and camaraderie within the Midweek Bass Club. Special thanks were extended to the volunteers and club members who ensured the smooth running of the event.

Conclusion: The Midweek Bass Club tournament at Lake Mohave not only highlighted the evolving fishery with significant catches of smallmouth bass but also demonstrated the high level of skill and adaptability among its anglers. The successful use of varied techniques and the strategic shifts in response to the conditions reflected the competitive spirit and expertise of the participants.

Winning Team - Joe Michels and Angelo Messina: Joe Michels, paired with Angelo Messina, a seasoned angler and former AZ Bass Nation director, captured first place. Michels arrived at Lake Mohave prior to the tournament, targeting post-spawn smallmouth and spawning largemouth. Despite initial challenges in locating largemouth, Michels adjusted his strategies, focusing on smallmouth bass which appeared smaller due to the lake's clear and deep water conditions. By tournament day, Michels and Messina managed an impressive 20.82lb catch on the first day, including a near 5lb largemouth which provided a critical advantage. The second day continued to be fruitful, though more challenging, resulting in a commendable final weight and securing their victory.

Second Place - Gary Martlage and Sean Ballard: Gary Martlage, fishing with Sean Ballard, also experienced success, finishing a close second. Despite mechanical issues, the duo excelled in bed fishing, utilizing Ballard's keen sight to agitate and catch bedded smallmouth with effective baits like the goby. Their consistent performance across both days highlighted their skill and strategic fishing.

Other Notable Competitors:

John Hilland and Joe Edget: Focused on bed fishing, they leveraged long-distance casting to spooked bed fish, adapting to the clear water conditions that allowed fish to see anglers from afar. Their strategy paid off with a total weight of 19.10 lbs, emphasizing the effectiveness of their approach.
Charlie Macintosh and John Schramer: Targeted areas below the famous Mohave Bowl, finding success with a variety of baits including swimbaits and hula grubs on beds in shallow flats. They finished with an 18 lb bag, thanks to strategic moves and effective bed fishing.
Mark Hedstrom and Jeff Stone: Achieved fifth place with a combination of jerkbaits, senkos, and innovative drop shot techniques. Their adaptability to fish deep waters and northern bed fishing areas was key to their success.

Joe Michels

I have never been to Mohave in all the years I have fished in Arizona bass tournaments. Back in the day, it was notorious as a lousy fishery. The introduction of smallmouth bass has changed all that. I enjoyed fishing with Angelo Messina, a 21-year Air Force veteran. If I recall correctly, he ran the AZ Bass Nation for 6 years and knows how to catch fish!

I arrived at the lake the Thursday before the tournament. I planned to fish post-spawn smallmouth and find spawning largemouth. When I arrived, the lake was glass, so I did some sight fishing for the largemouth. I purchased a map that indicated the locations of tules in the backs of coves, and I started on a tip from John Hilland about fishing in the coves north of the famous Mohave Bowl.

I ran up and started looking in the backs of coves. While I didn’t find any largemouth beds the entire time I was there, I did find smallmouth beds. I found more empty beds than occupied ones. I estimated I saw about 2lb smallmouth, which is not enough to be successful, much less win a tournament. I decided to catch one smallmouth that I thought was maybe 2.25lb, and when I caught it, it was over 3.5 lbs! My initial size assessment was so far off because the fish were bedding in deeper water than I thought. The super clear water makes the deeper water seem shallow, and large fish look smaller. Once I calibrated my notion of the bass size, I realized I was seeing some extraordinary-sized smallmouth. My trolling motor spent much time at high speed as I searched for beds.

Friday was supposed to be windy, but it was glass again at first light, so I made the run again. I expanded my search and found more beds. I began to figure out where the smallmouth were bedding on what type of substrate. That made a difference in finding beds.

Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday were windy. Finding beds was difficult, if not impossible, so I switched to reaction baits.

Before I go into that, I need to share that I believe the smallmouth were still in the spawning stage, indicated by water temps between 59 and 62 degrees the first few days early in the morning. I had tried topwater with zero success. That was the second wrong assumption, the first being that I would find largemouth beds. I never did.

In the wind, in clear water, I threw two baits: spinnerbaits and jerkbaits. Both worked well enough to catch up to 4lb smallmouth, but the bite was not steady.

I fished into the wind and covered water, trying to find feeding bass. Instead, I was catching one here and one there, off of beds I couldn’t see. This made me think fishing the spawning bass was the way to go.

I continued looking for more giant largemouth and kept working the tule beds. Bass could be caught in the tules, but they were far from aggressive and not big enough. This was the last indicator to fish for bedding smallmouth.

The weather on Monday was to be calm with light winds, perfect for spotting beds. Thus, we found and marked beds. We were ready for Tuesday.

We ran north to our marked fish, and by 8:30, we had 18.5 lbs. We never culled a bed fish then, but we both dumped a fish. We decided to look for more beds, and while doing so, the wind picked up, and I moved to throw a jerk bait. I worked the jerkbait cast after cast everywhere we went. Then, along a no-nothing bank, I stuck a huge fish. It would make sense that it was a smallmouth, but it never jumped. I thought for a few seconds that I had hooked a carp, but I was surprised when we saw it was almost a 5lb largemouth. That was the fish that separated us from all the other teams that were on the same size smallmouth as we were. With that fish, we had our day one total of 20.82lb bag.

On the second morning, we ran to the same area of the lake and attempted to catch a fish that was 4lb plus fish we had tried to catch the day before. But that didn’t pan out. Our day didn’t start as fast as the day before, but by 8:30, we had a good limit, and by 9:15, we caught our bag of the day.

Fishing was more crowded on the second day so we had to continue to find more fish. We found a huge smallmouth locked on a bed, but it would not bite or react to anything we tried. We went back to the first fish of the day; it was there, but it remained skittish and uncatchable. That is what we found on the second day; many fish were skittish. We also saw new beds in the area we fished the day before, so I guess they had arrived and made a bed but were not interested in guarding the nest.

In the end, we squeaked by for the win. I could not ask for a better two days of fishing.

Here is a link to Prefishing Mohave Part 1.

Here is a link to Prefishing Mohave Part 2.

This is a link to Tournament Day 1.

This is a link to Tournament Day 2.

I want to thank all the club volunteers for their work in making this club run and the tournaments flow expertly.

Gary Martlage

I fished Mohave with mixed emotions. First, I had to get paired with another angler, as my trolling motor quit. The good news, I ended up with Sean Ballard, and got to fish out of my old Champion 203 I purchased back in the early 2000's!

Sean and I traveled north of Cottonwood Marina, hoping the wind would cooperate for us the next 2 days. We found smallies on beds. The first day we were culling by 8am, and actually quit fishing by 10am, marking beds for the 2nd day. Sean is a great bed fisherman; he can see a nat on a fly's rear at 50+ yards! If he couldn't catch the fish on the first couple of casts, he irritated the fish enough that I could cast to it with my "secret" bait (goby) and land it!

On the 2nd day, our fishing was interrupted early, as his motor acted up, and would only idle...after being 30 miles from weigh-in. We fished anyway, and had our 2nd limit by 9am. Lucky for us, we ran into Joe Micels, and bribed him to haul me back to the scales with our fish. Of course, Joe never hesitated to do this, as he has always been a great friend of mine for 25+ years!

Losing to team Joe by less than 2ozs was a great way to wrap up the derby. Thanks, again, Joe! As I have said in the past, Midweek Bass has the best all-around anglers than any club in AZ!!

John Hilland

Congrats to Joe and Angelo with a big two-day win. I had the fortune to be drawn with Joe Edget, he is a great fisherman, knows how to run a boat, and was very accommodating. Great experience!

Joe and I met Monday morning to pre-fish and see what we could find. I had fished Mohave only once before this tournament. With the wind looking to stay down I decided to make the run north and look around. We stopped and looked around Arizona Bay, we saw a few bed fish and threw reaction baits all morning picking up a few here and there. Later in the morning we ran further north and started on some banks that had small rocks and a sharp break-off heading to deep water. On the breaks, we did see some beds with what we thought we bigger fish, so this was our plan for the next morning.

Tournament morning we made the run north and started on a few bed fish we had marked, luck would have it and we had a limit in the live well by 8. AM. We spent the rest of the day trying to find the same type of bank culling a number of times getting us to 19.10 for the day. Most of our fish that day came on drop shot with a small minnow-type bait.

On day two we made the same run and went directly to a fish we had seen on a bed that was really spooky and couldn't get to bite on Tuesday. We stayed back and made a few fan casts to where we thought the bed was, She took the bait within about two casts and we were on our way. Wednesday the bed fish would move off the bed as soon as they saw a shadow from the boat, we learned they would come back if we stayed off the bed and made long casts back in the direction of the bed. This worked out well and we had another limit in the boat. The rest of the day we flipped deep into reeds trying to find that big largemouth and fished deep breaks for roaming fish we had seen in the GIN CLEAR water. We were able to pick up a few fish on jigs and Joe hooked up on one in the reeds that didn't make the cut.

On our way in we saw a big flag waving on a boat just ahead of us. Greg and Mitch were dead in the water and had a good bag they needed to get to the scales. After a few minutes, we had Mitch and his fish in the boat and headed for the weigh-in.

I enjoyed fishing new water, this lake is huge with some quality fish. Joe was amazing and a huge help getting our fish out to the main river while I was on the scales, cleaning up the boat, and an all-around great guy. Thanks, Joe.

Hope to see everyone at Alamo next month.

Joseph Edget

Congratulations to Joe Michels and Angelo Messina on their 1st place finish. Also, congrats to Sean Ballard and Gary Martiage for 2nd place. What a great tight finish for this two day tournament. In the end, only 0.38 lbs. between 1st to 3rd place.

John Hilland, Thank You! I had a great time fishing with you as your co-angler. Your hospitality and faith in me as your co-angler was very rewarding to me as a new member of Midweek Bass AZ. I hope to fish with you again soon.

Having never fished Lake Mohave before, I met John on Monday to pre-fish this massive body of water. We headed out fishing coves and main lake points only to find empty beds and a lot of roaming fish. We covered a lot of water only to find the same pattern. After several hours, we found only a few fish locked on beds and discovered something about the roamers. The roamers were bed fish that we were spooking off the beds. Lake Mohave is so damn crystal clear these fish can see you coming from a hundred feet away.

John decided to sit off several of the beds and we watched the roamers circle around us and when ready, they would move back in on the beds. Bingo! we had our pattern. Find the beds and cast to them from as far away as possible.

On tournament day, I got to see a lot of Lake Mohave in a flash. At the start line, John pushed his hot foot on his Skeeter to the floor and we took off at 60 mph going 30+ miles up river.

My go to setup was the drop shot. My best bait was a 6th Sense, Party Minnow(green pumpkin shad). The smallmouth just inhaled this bait. The only problem I had was I only had one pack. So, I fished half the pack the first day and saved the others for day two. The flick shake and jig with craw trailer were my backup baits.

I also want to give a special shoutout to John Hilland and Joe Michels for their true seamanship and boating etiquette in going to the aid of our fellow tournament members that had boating engine problems. First class act guys.

Charlie Macintosh

Congratulations to Joe and Angelo on their victory with the only 20+ lb. bag of the tournament!

I drew John Schramer as a partner. Though I had not met John prior to the tournament, I had high expectations having seen his name associated with good tournament results.

Neither one of us had fished Mohave prior to this tournament. When John joined me on Monday, we picked up a few fish in the lower end of the river then headed north of the bowl to check it out. We found fish in both areas but decided to start the tournament below the bowl.

On Tuesday, John picked up a good fish quickly while fan casting a swim bait, then we mostly settled on bed fishing. We worked through perhaps 10 fish culling up until we had our bag fish for the day at 10 am. Fishing slowed for us after that and any others we picked up did not help. At 1 pm Monday we dedicated our remaining time to look for fish for the next day. We found some beds and other good areas. We were optimistic going into day 2.

We began Wednesday morning rotating through several of the areas we found on Tuesday and put together about a 15 lb. bag. We each missed a good fish on swimbait fan casts and eventually just started covering water. We spotted an area that looked like it had potential and found a couple more beds. The first fish did not help us, but the second bed had a good one. I stuck it with a hard hook set, but she came off on the way to the boat. Within 10 minutes I stuck her again and we landed a 4.5 lb. fish. We moved to another area that we knew had already been fished by another boat, but we found some beds with fish and John was able get us a final upgrade to bring our bag up to 18 lbs.

Baits I used included a 3” swimbait which was effective for fan casting, a 3.8” Keitech swimbait and a 5” Hula grub which I used for fishing beds. We targeted flats for beds which were typically in less than 10’ of water, although we caught bed fish as deep as 20’ of water. Roaming fish could be found at drops to deeper water near spawning flats.

John was a great partner and is an excellent angler. I was lucky to be paired with John and had a lot of fun fishing with him. Thank you to the club officers and tournament crew for another enjoyable event!

5th Place

Mark Hedstrom and Jeff Stone

35.28#

Mark Hedstrom

I was teamed up with Jeff Stone. He is a great stick. I had found some fish on jerkbaits and senkos in practice, with a few 30ft plus drop shot fish. Jeff practiced with me the day before the tournament and we were throwing weightless senkos and flick shakes near the backs of coves. I couldn't get up to the north end of the lake in practice because of a bad back and couldn't make it up there. The first day of the tournament, we stayed midlake and towards the dam. We caught all of our fish on drop shots mostly, and some flick shake worms. I have a 4 inch worm that isn't made anymore and Jeff would testify that this worm and color were what the fish wanted.

I used a 3/16 oz drop shot weight for the fish we caught deeper than 30 ft. I had caught 3 or 4 fish deeper than 30ft. we came in with a decent weight for the first day considering we didn't go up north. The second day we went up north and bed fished most of our fish. Jeff was using craw imitation baits and I used my 4 inch worm drop shotting. I did catch 2 of our keepers drop shotting in 35ft of water. We both fished clean both days, and had a great time. I suggest Lake Mohave again soon!

Jeff Stone

What an awesome 2 days on that lake. First congradulations to the winners. I would like to thank Mark for showing me how to fish that lake. All the tips and pointers I can use in the future.

Our first day we fished from the power lines, then headed north. When they say it’s a team event ,it sure in the hell is. There was a couple of times where I missed setting the hook and missing the fish and Mark was right behind to get him, and a time where it wouldnt bite Mark’s bait and I came behind him and BAMM, I smashed him.

We used a variety of different baits on both days. The first day we had over 16 lb. and we both agreed we were still in good contention. The second day we headed north up to cottonwood marina and started southside. Started picking them off one by one. We had a good bag by 8:30 and tried to keep culling bigger ones.

We ended the day with the big bag for day 2 with 19.04 lbs and a combined weight to edge in for a 5th place. The baits we used were a variety from jigs to drop shot, grubs and of course my specailty FLICKA SHAKE. Thanks agin Mark. You were a GREAT CAPTAIN. Hope to see you all at alamo.

**First Big Fish**
**Doyle Wofford and Keith Weidert**
**5.03#**

No Report

**Five Pound Fish**
**Kirk Krogman and Steve Ferguson**
**5.28#**

The biggest fish was a 5.28lb. small mouth caught on the main lake in 3’ of water on a long rocky point. It bit on the second jerk of a Smithwick suspending rouge, clown color.

March 2024 Lake Pleasant