Fishing in the Grand Canyon?

[Connor Donovan]

TPFR'ers,

Have any of you floated the Grand Canyon on a commercial or non-commercial trip?  If so, I would love to buy a few rounds of beers at the next Beer tie and hear all about it  - especially if you brought a fishing rod along with you. 

Not that this will be the focus of the trip but I've read some things about trout both big and small and my favorite fish of them all ....drumroll please.... stripers.

Thanks in advance! 

Connor

[Connor Donovan]

Bumping this to the top.  

Any TPFRers ever fish in the Grand Canyon?  Or above Lees Ferry?

Would love to hear about it if you have.  If not, I'll be sure to post a trip-report when we get back.

Thanks!

Connor

[Dalton Terrell]

I believe that Dan Davala hiked down the Grand Canyon on his honeymoon and did some fishing. I remember him saying that it was the coldest water he had ever wet-waded.

Shoot him an e-mail, or we can try to send him here to respond.

Dalton

[Daniel Davala]

Good memory Dalton, that WAS the coldest wet wading I have ever done!  Melody and I spent six days backpacking the Grand Canyon back in April of 2007.  It wasn't our honeymoon (that was Antigua), rather just a trip we did with a good friend who was turning 40 and wanted to accomplish the goal.  

We stuck to the "corridor trails" on that trip, and spent two successive nights at the Cottonwood campsite, right along Bright Angel Creek, which is where I had the best fishing.  Bright Angel Creek tumbles down the from springs along the North Rim (in fact, all of the water used by the park on the South Rim comes from the North Rim via a crazy network of pipes if I recall correctly).  Anyway, the Dry Fly fishing in Bright Angel is still to date the coolest small stream experience I have had.  I only fished a #14 orange stimulator the entire time and brought more 10-14" wild rainbows and browns to hand then I could keep track of.  They seemed to be in every likely lie and moved a good distance in the cold clear water for the dry.  Most seemed under-nourished though, with heads disproportionate to their long, lean bodies - a product of living in the desert environment I suppose.  

I'll post a little more tomorrow as I think of additional details that may be helpful (like carrying HALF the weight I did on that trip!).  Just wanted you all to know I saw the post in the meantime - I still follow the forum daily, it's kind of like reading the paper for me up here!  

Dan

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[Bamboo Ed]

Hi, last summer I did a float trip from directly below Glen Canyon dam to Lee’s Ferry. Saw lots of big trout. I had planned to fish that day but couldn’t figure out how to be in two places 100 miles apart at the same time.

On the stretch you put in with a motor boat at Lee’s ferry and motor up and fish down.

There are three good campsites on that stretch. No one was one then when I was there.

You can rent a boat for not that much money.

There is also guided fishing. Can’t remember the names but there are 2 lodged near Lees Ferry. I think they also offer the rental boats.

[Connor Donovan]

Thanks the for the replies guys!

Dan - I'm hoping we can spend some time fishing Bright Angel if it/we isn't/aren't too cold.  We'll be making a pit stop there on day 10 of 28 of our rafting trip.  And assuming we can nail the pull-ins, also hoping to hit a few of the other streams and their confluences that may hold fish too.  Did you poke around some of the other tribs within a day's hike from the Bright Angel?  

Ed - thanks for posting about the rental motor boats.  I was hoping to get chance to motor up river to fish some before shoving off but looks like we'll be crunched for time once we arrive at Lees and can't swing it.  But hopefully I'll be back to do it again at some point in the future!

I'll make sure to post a report when we get back at the end of January.  

Connor

[Daniel Davala]

Sounds good Connor, looking forward to the report and pictures - the Grand Canyon is an incredible place, and one we plan to hike again in a few years once the kiddos are ready for it.  I recall that just prior to my trip, it was park policy to remove non-native species from the park if natives were demonstrably impacted.  So, there was active effort to thin or eliminate Trout from the Colorado River throughout the park due to the threatened status of a native Sucker or something.  That said, a wild population of Trout had long been established up Bright Angel, and no impact to natives was documented there, so they were allowed to stay.  The park service built a weir at the mouth of Bright Angel where it enters the Colorado to prevent Trout in the Colorado from spawning in Bright Angel, but the Bright Angel population remained intact. 

So, I can't speak to the current status of Trout in the Colorado.  But, if you have a chance to hike up Bright Angel, do it.  You'll want to get well above the Bright Angel campground and Phantom Ranch, but after that, there is nothing along the creek but the trail.  Even if you don't wade you should find some nice areas to rock hop, etc.  General purpose patterns should do, this is like small stream fishing and the fish are opportunistic as such.

I did not hit any other tribs while we were there.  The hiking kicked my butt, especially because I carried quite a bit too much on that trip, so I was more than content to fish along Bright Angel and found plenty of fish accordingly.  

Have an awesome trip!!

Dan

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[Connor Donovan]

Got back from the Grand Canyon trip last week.  Ten of us put-in on December 30, 2017 at Lees Ferry and took 28 days to float 280 miles to Pearce Ferry.  Didn't get to fish as much as I expected both personally and I think as a group.  There was just too much going on and a lot of other cool things to do but do have a few things to report.  

Lees Ferry as a fishery seems pretty bad ass, a high volume, desert tailwater.  While we were there, the water temps leaving the dam were in the high 40s with flows ranging from 9,500 cfs to 17,000 cfs depending on time of day.  Although we didn't lay eyes on it, the stretch from the dam to the put-in seems relatively flat and very clear, much like the boat ramp at Lees Ferry. We saw fish rising throughout the afternoon while we rigged boats at the put-in and saw many more at twilight at the Lees Ferry campsite.  Didn't get to wet a line here but sure did see plenty of fisherman launching and motoring upriver or walking up to wade for the day. Hell, we even saw two dudes in waders with rigged rods, taking out at the boat ramp that had hiked down near horseshoe bend and pack rafted down. 

Once we launched, the first few miles we did see a few fisherman along the right bank fishing soft spots in some of the runs.   On the first day, one guy on our trip landed a small rainbow on a mepps spinner somewhere around the Navajo Bridge.  At camp that night, Shear Wall, we saw a pod of about a dozen healthy rainbow swimming around in an eddy at the furthest downstream side of the camp.  Over the next few days as the water changed from clear to more of an emerald green we would see an occasional rise along the banks or spot trout in the upper portion of the water column feeding.  

One thing that become quite apparent during these first few days, and that did not help with the amount we fished, is that the most difficult part of safely and efficiently navigating downriver were the eddies.  They were real ass holes.  With such strong current from the start of the trip to the finish, each eddy we saw was raging and at times had foot tall waves moving upriver.  If you got caught in one, you'd spend the next several minutes fighting to get out, or if you caught one while running a rapid, you'd need to highside to prevent a flip.  Thinking about it now, I would say that it felt as if half the water that flows through the Grand Canyon actually moves up river.   Needless to say, trying to fish from the boat was interesting.  Always on your toes to avoid eddies, you always needed the boat to have momentum as to track in and with the current which meant you couldn't really present a lure or fly with any real shot of enticing a fish to bite.  You'd make the cast, have your lure in the strike zone for about three to five seconds, then the speed of the boat would drag the lure until it was out of the water as you went to make the next cast.       

Over the first ten days, we stopped at a few tributaries, including Nankoweap Creek, Little Colorado River and Clear Creek but didn't fish them.  At Nankoweap, I think Alex had some luck fishing the main river and I saw some moving shadows at the mouth of Clear Creek.  Other than that, the first time I put my rod (8'6" 5wt) together was at Bright Angel Creek at Phantom Ranch (river mile 88) on day ten, where we picked up a friend that hiked-in.  He said on his way down he passed guys shocking and seining the stream upstream from Phantom.  They had worked there way up there from the ranch removing trout in the name of native endangered chubs.  Knowing that these guys were around, I mailed some postcards and poked around the stream below and around the weir, the furthest points from the shocking team with no luck.  Great looking stream though.  If we had more time to kill at Phantom I would love to have gone upstream in hopes of passing the shocking team but oh well.   

We camped at Granite camp RM 94 on night ten.  I made a few casts with the spinning rod at camp, standing on one of the boats, and had three small trout follow my spinner to the boat on back to back cast but no bites.  I love seeing little ones chase lures.  Reminds me a lot of the Shenandoah and it's many small bass.  

The next time fishing crossed my mind was several days later at river mile 134 where on a day hike, we were deep in a hidden valley walking up Tapeats Creek.  We had left camp (Racetrack) to lay eyes on the Thunder River Springs, where the Thunder River shoots out the side of the redwall and cascades down into Tapeats Creek.  It's the only place in the lower 48 that a river flows into a creek.  Probably two miles from camp, already having gone up and around the section of creek that flows through a canyon and after our second creek crossing, I popped my head over the edge to look at the creek.  I spotted a few very nice rainbows in a eddy of a deep pool, facing downstream and a few others sitting in the main current feeding. Another twenty yards up creek, I poked my head over again, half a dozen sizable trout scattered.  Another ten yards up creek, poke over, another half dozen scattered.  In total disbelief that I didn't have a rod, I stopped checking the creek for fish.  I just couldn't handle it.  We finished the hike but we took a different route back to the camp that didn't take us near the creek.  We crossed it one last time, near the confluence with the main river, heading back to camp but didn't see any fish.  The next day, at the base of deer creek falls at river mile 137, our group made some casts into the base of the falls and also at it's confluence with the river but no luck.  

I think its safe to say, from river mile 137 to 280, fishing really didn't cross our minds.  We did stop at a few more tributaries but all were very small.  I had read reports of stripers in the lower section but we never got around to poking around for them.  I also had read of holdout trout around a few springs in the lower stretch that we never investigated.  Just too much going on.

I'm hoping to have a full trip report with more photos in the coming weeks but did want to post a "fishing report" of sorts in case anyone else does this trip in the future.  Throughout the 19 months of planning, I did acquire a few books on Arizona Fishing which said that Lees and the upper Stretch of the Grand are the jewel of AZ trout fishing.  And as much as I wish I could say, we fished the hell out of the place, we didn't even scratch the surface. 

Generally speaking though, I couldn't imagine a better way to go through such a beautiful and interesting landscape; slowly. Between the amazing weather and views, the adrenaline from the rapids, enjoying the sandy beaches, the plentiful amounts of delicious food, time with great friends on the water, tromping up, down, and through side canyons, starring into our nightly campfire or up at the most vivid display of stars I've seen in a very long time, and the fact that we lived out of a frigging boat for 28 days, this was truly the trip of a lifetime.  

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[Connor Donovan]

Here are a few more photos.

[tperkins]

Those photos are amazing! Looks like you guys had a great time. Thanks for sharing.

[Bamboo Ed]

Very cool, trip of a lifetime!

[Andrew R]

A+ report, sweet pictures, good to have you guys back in the DC area. See you next Monday at Beer Tie.

Andrew R