Fishing Trip to Roosevelt Lake, Arizona

Robert and I heard that Roosevelt Lake was up to 96% full and the bass were biting so we couldn't resist checking it out. The lake hasn't been this full in quite some time so we were pretty excited.

I decided to take our old camera instead of my new one because I didn't want to take a chance on getting the new one wet. I could just kick myself in the butt for that decision. We saw so many things that I just couldn't zoom in on very well with the old camera.

After forking out WAY too much money on a fishing license and a day pass for the lake we finally made it on the water around 8:30am.

We headed straight across the lake to the other side where there is brush to fish in. We had heard that this was the best spot for bass.

We found a cool little cove where we ran into a Great Blue Heron who was also busy fishing. If I'd had my own camera I could have zoomed in much closer.

We also saw lots of American Coots floating around all over the place.

The coves on this side of the lake are just full of brittlebush (yellow flowers related to the sunflower) and lupine or lupin (blue/purple flowers). The mountains were so beautiful.

 
When we turned around we could see Roosevelt Lake Bridge and Four Peaks mountains in the distance.

I believe the next picture is of a Western Grebe. These guys were all over the center of the lake in big groups.

Robert caught the first and the most fish. We ended up catching around 17 bass today but some were in the slot limit (13-16 inches) for largemouth bass and had to be thrown back. We got a few that were just over the 16 inches and a couple that were below the 13 inches. We also caught 1 small mouth bass.

After we caught our first couple of fish we saw these two weird looking birds just kind of minding their own business. And, of course, we had to interrupt them. At first I had no idea what types of birds these were until I did some online investigating here at home. These are actually a pair of cormorants. I had no idea that Arizona had these. When we got too close they decided to high tail it out of there.

Roosevelt Lake is surrounded by towering saguaro cactus.

After the bass biting slowed for the most part in this cove we decided to head to the next little cove. As we rounded the corner we saw these really strange and huge white birds.

As we got closer Robert mentioned that they looked like pelicans. I've never heard of pelicans in Arizona but I checked it out on the Internet when I got home. To my surprise, they really are a species of pelicans. They are called American White Pelicans and they are so cool. Did I mention they are huge!?!

"Which way did they go???"

And, of course, when we got too close with the boat they all flew away.

Around 3 or 4 o'clock we started back to the dock to load the boat up and head for home.

We had an awesome day fishing on the lake and seeing all the wildlife. Like I said, Robert caught the most bass. I did catch a couple of bass, a lot of underwater trees, and a sunburn, so I guess I didn't get skunked.