TRAVELINGWITHTOOLS

October, 2018:

It got pretty cold in West Yellowstone and I finally had to face up to the end of my Montana adventure for the year. I started south towards warmer weather, but lingered on the Teton river in Idaho for a final week, and twice had pipes freeze in my motorhome. It had been dropping into the teens at night, and even though I’m pretty sturdy and don’t mind sleeping bundled up in the cold, the plumbing protested. I honestly had not planned out what I was going to do beyond the Madison river at Bakers Hole, and it was time to decide.

I spent part of my youth in the San Diego suburbs and have traveled the Southwest a fair bit over the years. I am not particularly a fan of the desert. I remember a Boy Scout outing that had us hiking 20 miles across the Otay Mesa… 10 year olds on a 20 mile forced march across the desert… that’s how I remember it anyway. Rattlesnakes and scorpions. Cactus and dirt. Buzzards circling overhead. Fun.

Growing up as the son of a naval officer, I lived on the coasts, San Diego, Hawaii, Rhode Island.  The ocean was always a stone’s throw away. We spent one Summer in Idaho Falls when Dad was stationed at a DOE nuke facility (nobody ever explained to me why), and I fell in love with the Tetons when we went to tour the area.

So water and mountains, forests and rivers… The desert is typically lacking these features that I love. And yet, one of my most powerful memory of the Southwest is from 1989, when I was driving across the country as a young man, looking for what to do next… It was December and I had been in Colorado, camping around Pikes Peak somewhere, when it became too cold to tolerate. I was forced to head south, and I remember it was cold right up until I got to Yuma, AZ on the Mexican border. I parked somewhere next to a lettuce field and stripped to my shorts, and laid in the sun on the black roof of my 1971 Volvo, baking like a lizard on a warm stone. It was beautiful.

At Rainey Bridge on the Teton River in 2018, I decided to head to Arizona to get warm, I could figure out what next after the chill was off.

I spent over a week without fishing, just lazing in the sun and walking the sandy washes. I explored a bit and played with the dirt bike in the sand, relearning how to relax and let the bike be free underneath me. I researched online what fishes were in the Colorado river below Hoover Dam, and it turns out that there is quite a lot to target. Big striped bass, largemouth and smallmouth bass, plenty of panfish and catfish. And carp.

Lake Havasu can be difficult to access without a boat, and cheap or free camping spots on the water were hard to find.  I spent a couple of weeks at a BLM site called Standard Wash south of Havasu City, but was sidelined by a foot injury that made hiking around impossible. On a scouting ride to the lake, I did see predatory fish slashing at baitfish (out of casting range of course). However, the noise of open-piped 427-powered speedboats put a damper on peace and quiet.

After spending some time around Quartzite, I found an ideal campsite next to the river, south of Ehrenberg and spent a week catching bluegill and small bass. I used the float tube a couple of times to kick up and down the side channel I camped at, lazy water and lazy days. It was late November by then and I made myself a Thanksgiving feast right there on the water.

I covered a lot of ground that winter in Arizona. Kingman, Oatman, Topock, Havasu, River Island, Quartzsite, Ehrenberg, Yuma (Mittry Lake and Fortuna Pond), Freeman, and Indian Breadrocks outside Tuscon. Then I burned across New Mexico to Texas, where I spent the next four months trying to catch redfish on the fly… but that’s another story.

I’ve since spent more time in New Mexico in the winter months, and I think I prefer it to Arizona. But the fishing on the Colorado and its related waters is probably better than the Rio Grande. If for no other reason than that the Rio Grande north of El Paso dries up entirely every winter. Though there are some huge carp to chase in the pools that remain.

Here’s some imagery from that time spent in Arizona in 2018…

Do you have a favorite spot to winter with your motorhome or RV? Share it with us in the comments below!