Lake Havasu's big redear sunfish on the fly
Desert city guide gets hooked and offers fly-fishing trips for trophy sunfish
LAKE HAVISU CITY, ARIZ–The boys at Bass Tackle Master informed me it was a lovely day on August 1. At 106 degrees, things had cooled off considerably.
Better than the daily 120-plus temps of the prior weeks, they said.
The heat difference was lost on me, but I could relate, in a way. It’s probably like trying to explain the difference between days of 40-below cold and 25-below in a Fairbanks, Alaska, winter. You have to live it to appreciate it.
We found less common ground on my next request. I was on a fly-by trip with a fly rod. I’d be in town less than 24 hours, and wanted to catch some of the lake's renowned giant sunfish.
The initial look on their faces said it all, but they gave me the best guidance they could.
Fly fishing, I tell ya, it gets no respect. No respect at all.
Type the word “fly” into the Bass Tackle website, and the most relevant fly-related item that pops up is the Bug-A-Salt Fly Gun, the Model 3.0, with enhanced features to increase the odds of killing shots on the wing. (I want one!)
Kidding aside, while this genuine hook-and-bullet bass fishing and gun shop for everyone from bass pros to family parties may lack enthusiasm for long skinny rods and fat panfish, it’s owned and operated by guys who know Havasu better than anyone.
They spent plenty of time advising this fly-by angler on places to try if I wanted to venture out independently. They set me up with a fishing license and gave me names of local guides to send me on my way.
Most of the guides were gone for the season. The first one I called was fishing for salmon in Oregon.
But guide Ron Ratlief is a local and, to boot, was thinking about offering fly-fishing trips. He said he even had his own first fly rod and reel on order.
We met at sunrise the next morning in the Bass Tackle parking lot. He said he told the boys inside what we were up to. The response, he said, was, “Good luck with that!”
Have to admit, their incredulity was warranted. It was a bit of a long shot.
As my first Route 66 fly-fishing pitstop on the way back to Tulsa after Santa Monica Beach and Malibu State Park, Havasu suited my rule of being at most 45 minutes off the main route and an easy one-day pitstop.
Longshot that it was, it won out over the option to turn east at Needles, Calif., and follow they true Route 66 through the Havasu National Wildlife Refuge to Catfish Paradise and Topcock Marsh. It’s known as a prime birding area and also has catfish, largemouth, and tilapia.
It made me somewhat guilty of I-40 by-passing the true Mother Road, but I remained within my self-assigned corridor, and, well, I wanted a shot at a giant Havasu redear sunfish, even if it was the first week of August and 100-plus degrees.
Ratlife, as Ron’s Fishing Guide Service, has eight years working the lake. He said he spent a day in June watching a Louisiana fly fisherman catch big redear and a coupe of smallmouth bass on poppers and it was so much fun he had to look into doing it with other folks. He also said his most enormous sunfish of 2023, on standard tackle, was well over 4 pounds. His personal best is a 17-incher that went 4.87 pounds.
I’d never caught a sunfish over 10 inches or over 1 pound. Oklahoma’s state records are under 2.5 pounds in all categories. Smallmouths would have been fine, too, but I had to see these big sunfish, that was the main thing for me. I can get smallmouths at home.
March and April are the primary spawning months for sight-fishing Havasu’s big redear, and Ratlief said he and other guides are keen on encouraging catch-and-release in the deep, clear Colorado River waters.
Ratlief said most guides are booked solid a year (or more) in advance for the springtime months. A fly fisherman showing up spur-of-the-moment for sunfish on the first of August was just a little odd, but I love being the odd one. If we could pull this off in August’s triple-digit temp days, imagine what prime time must be like.
Repeat spawners of most sunfish species can be found later in the season, and Ratlief said 2023 was an odd and delayed spawning year anyway. A big wash of snowmelt rushed down the Bill Williams River in the spring, dirtied that arm of the lake, and kept the water temperature low. That probably helped for that June trip, he said.
He was willing to give it another look on the first of August because he’d seen some spawners a few weeks earlier.
A clear and comfortable 88-degree Sonoran Desert sunrise led us onto Havasu for a short run to our first fishing location. We essentially had the big, quiet lake all to ourselves. Ratlief said that was a stark difference from what the city sees during Spring Break and early summer.
I pre-rigged two rods the night before, both with floating lines. One had a 7-foot leader with 20-pound-test butt section down to 4-pound-test tippet with I’m-not-exactly-sure-what in between. I tossed the smallest double-barrel popper I had with those. The other was a purchased Rio 9-foot flourcarbon 5X (4-pound-test) with a Wilson’s Bully Bluegill Spider, green with black legs.
A light breeze intermittently created a soft roll on the water, and we essentially had the big, quiet lake all to ourselves. The passing lake ferry from Havasu City to the Chemehuevi Reservation and Havasu Landing Resort and Casino gave us a little roll at one point.
We had a slight worry for the first hour. The fish Ratlief saw a few weeks earlier were nowhere to be seen, and I could not coax any unseen fish off of shoreline, with the popper or a spider. I tired on an olive woolly bugger for a short time as well. Aside from a few nibbles of tiny sunfish, the spot looked empty.
A short run up the lake changed all that.
A young coyote with ears raised like oversized satellite dishes over its head paused with curiosity on this new shoreline, and we chuckled at a roadrunner that chortled and dodged about, probably chasing an elusive lizard. The shoreline life matched the aquatic life, as Ratlief said he spied some sunfish at the edges of nearby reeds.
“Cast over to that grassy point,” he said.
Surface impact rings of the little popper barely spread before a nice 8-inch bluegill slapped that popper and broke the ice for us. But what lurked below caught our attention even more. Girthy readear sunfishes cruised to and from the open water toward the reeds, and at least one pair of fatties guarded a nest where the reeds grew thin.
Redear on the nest, about 7 or 8 feet deep in crystal clear water? That was perfect for a No. 10 size Bully’s Spider.
The first cast with the spider hooked a redear just like Mr. Wilson instructs. I let the wobbly little spider slowly sink for a count of 10 as I watched the tip of that floating line for any indication of a strike or that the fly reached the bottom.
Note: The water was deeper than I thought and on subsequent casts I counted down 12 to 14.
One gentle lift of the rod tip and a strip to keep the line taught brought the fly halfway back to the surface. That second descent came with a barely perceptible turn in tip of that floating line and I stripped the line to set the hook.
Got ‘im!
Now, granted, I didn’t have a lot of stripped line on the deck, but I was more than happy to let that line slide through my fingers and allow the drag on my reel to aid in finishing that first tussle around the reeds. Better safe than sorry.
Fighting on the reel; that’s not typical for catching sunfish.
Several readears slid into my hand over the next hour, none less than 10 inches, some pushing 12 or 13, just your average Havasu sunfish, no record-breakers but all personal-best size for me in the sunfish category.
We wrapped up by 10 a.m. I’d already landed more big sunfish than I deserved, and that pretty morning was quickly melting away to a 106-degree lunch hour.
It was time to move on from Havasue toward home, but I’ll be back to look for a dinner-plate-sized sunfish again one day soon–preferably during cooler weather.
The day after I left, Ron texted a photo of his new fly-fishing rod and reel, and he posted fly fishing as a new service offering on his Facebook page.
“You bring your own rod, reel, and tackle. One fisherman per trip, complete front of the boat. I provide the boat control and locations, and I’ll be your net man,” it reads.
We wrapped with a cruise back into town, under the London Bridge Robert McColluch brought to his town envisioned in what used to be the middle of nowhere.
The fishing alone is worth a special trip, or can make for a mighty fine Route 66 pitstop if you can plan it out. I can vouch for that, if not for the redear, then for the largemouths, smallmouths, or stripers in fall and winter months.
Love this one. Years ago iI fished Pelican lake for Bluegill that grew up 4plus pounds with Thom Green . They had a winter kill and I wasn't successful but there were skeletons all over the shore that were huge. The locals said the got up to 5 pounds. My favorite fish for the fly rod is bluegill. I would love to give these a try.