June 19, 2025

Report June 19. 2024

The last couple weeks have seen a significant improvement of the fishing at Lees Ferry.  Instead of 0-7 fish per rod, most days anglers on my boat are hooking 8-15 fish.  Drifting seems to still be the most effective method and covering lots of water is still important to success.  The last few days dry fly and midge dropper rigs have been as effective as the deep water nymphing techniques that we have been employing for months.  Today we even had a few fish try to take the dry.  This rig is a large buoyant dry fly like a Chubby Chernobyl with one or two beadhead midges fished below it.  The fish are in excellent shape. very fat and healthy and we had several break off 5X tippet in the last few days.  It is June and it is hot, but if you are willing to brave the heat, this is the best fishing we have seen all year.

Report May 19, 2025

The good news is that the fish that are being caught are in great shape, fat and healthy.  The bad news is that there just aren’t many being caught.  Three to seven fish per rod is about what can be expected.   And it is entirely possible to get doughnutted. Drifting and covering large pieces of water is still the most effective method.  Wading and casting woolly bugger with a sink tip line is also effective.  The water is falling hard throughout most of the day and falling water ALWAYS puts the fishing off. It will also strand your boat, so keep an eye on it.  With June coming up (flows generally change on the first of the month) maybe flows will change to rising water during daylight hours, but with more and more power being produced by solar, increased hydro power production by Glen Canyon dam at night and the associated rising water may become the norm. San Juan worms and the usual varieties of zebra midges are the go to’s fly wise.  A new fly that seems to be working well (whatever that means) are the various Perdigon jig flies usually used in Euro nymphing.  It has been fun to play around and see what works, but no clear favorite has become evident. 

With low Lake Powell levels, it is a sure bet water releases from Glen Canyon dam will be warming.  At this point it is unclear whether bypass flows through the jet tubes or river outlet works will be implemented to keep the river cool enough to prevent small mouth bass reproduction.  This was done last year and the lower temperatures and higher dissolved oxygen kept water quality much better for trout than the summers of 2022 and 2023.  The lower trout numbers we are experiencing now are due,  at least in part,  to poor water quality during those summers. This is a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” situation.  These flows were implemented to disadvantage the smallmouth bass that might be a threat to the Humpback chub downstream.  They were not implemented to help the trout, which they did. We can only hope that someday they will send a tiny bit of water through the jet tubes when needed to improve water quality below the dam when needed.

Also of importance to the fishery is that the current political winds are threatening to possibly curtail most of the monitoring efforts in Glen Canyon.  Last year Arizona Game and Fish shocking programs, in place for 30 years, were ended.  The USGS still runs three trips in April, June and November, but these are threatened.  It is important that these continue or we have no quantitative data on what the fishery is doing. No data means no decisions can be made that could help the fishery.  Tough times.

Report April 27. 2025

Weather was a factor this week with fast moving dry cold fronts and the associated wind making already difficult fishing that much tougher.  Drifting is still the only game in town.  There seems to be more fish moving into spawning gravel and the fish we are catching seem to be in very good condition.  

Report April 17, 2025

The fishing has improved quite a bit in the last week.  Reasonably skilled anglers are hooking 6-10 fish per rod and a few few are doing better than that. Have had the first double digit day for a single angler. But, the fishing is not easy!  Beads, Zebra midges, Perdigon midges are all effective.  We hooked a few on San Juan worms the other day.  Fish are still deep and fishing from a drifting boat is really the only way to go.  Targeting deep, slow seams and the deep, slow bottoms of riffles and runs seems the best tactic. Search out and fish even the nondescript little seams.  They are good for a fish or two! I wasted 2 hours the other day trying to fish the riffle at Prop bar without a single take.  I have been most successful with very long leaders, 12-14 feet and an AB split shot.  Others have been successful with shorter leaders.  I think this is a function of not only depth of water fished, but also velocity.  A fish is more likely to travel a few feet to eat a midge if the water is slower.  These are variables to play with.  Also, the weather wins.  This time of year, warm sunny days are where it is at.  These springtime fast moving low pressure systems flatten the fishing.  

Report April 10, 2025

Fish, for the most part, are still in the deeper water and only accessible from a drifting boat.  They just have not moved back into the riffles in any numbers.  Warm sunny days are seeing some significant midge hatches, so hopefully fish will make the move out of the deeper water soon and allow us to get back to wading the river.  But it hasn’t really happened yet, fishing from a drifting boat is still the name of the game.  Read last weeks report on how to rig for this.

Catch rates remain about the same, usually around 4-6 fish per rod for most anglers. Dave Trimble from Lees Ferry on the Fly had one stellar day last week spin fishing with 24 fish boated with three anglers.  Beads were the best producer for him that day.

Report March 27, 2025

Fishing has improved over the last couple weeks, but it is still tough.  Generally speaking fly fishermen can expect 4-6 fish a day per rod, but it is still entirely possible to get shut out if the planets do not align and you don’t do it all right.  By the planets aligning I mean mainly weather.  Warm, sunny, calm days find some decent midge hatches and increased feeding activity.  The usual suspects, zebra midges in all the variations will work.  When the typical spring low pressure systems move through with wind and cloudy conditions, fishing drops off. Doing it all right means mainly fishing from a drifting boat, in the right areas with long leaders (10-13 ft.) and the proper weight. Long rods (10 ft.) are great for this technique because one can control such a long leader.  Tough to do with a 9 ft. rod. Beads with a San Juan worm or zebra midge dropper are a good combination. Fish have just not really begun to move into the shallow riffles that can be waded, but with good midge activity, this should occur soon. Wooly buggers and a sink tip line is one thing that will work wading.  You need a 20-24 ft. sink tip (Rio 200 grain 24ft. tip) and you need to be able to throw it 50+ ft.  This is all about covering water and the longer the cast the more water is covered.  Areas with slow water where you can cast, strip, take two steps, repeat for 200-300 ft. are good.  Think Four Mile bar, Eight Mile bar, Duck Island, front of Prop Bar.  This will also work from a drifting boat.

Fish that are being caught are for the most part healthy. The condition of the fish indicates we should have a good spawn, which is definitely  underway and is definitely needed.  Please keep this in mind when handling fish.  Get them unhooked and back in the water ASAP.  If a female drops her eggs, you failed. Go sit in the corner until you learn how to behave.

Report March 11, 2025

March 2025 is proving to be a lot like March 2024 as far as the fishing at Lees Ferry. In a word, it is tough.  Most fish are still holding in slow deep areas such as eddies, especially in the zone where the water starts to break out of the eddy and head downstream.  These areas are deep and very difficult to fish.  Think lower part of Long Bar about halfway to Ferry Swale Camp, the eddy at Nine Mile Camp or the slow tanky water below 4 Mile Bar riffle.  Nymphing has been a bust for me, so I’ve turned to fishing black, green or brown Woolly Buggers on a 200 grain 24′ sink tip line with a very short (3-4 foot) leader.  We are at the front edge of the spawn and there are a few staging fish holding at the bottom of the trough at 4 Mile Bar.  Fish should start moving into the gravel soon.  The last few years the spawn has not been robust, but with overall fish numbers down and condition factor up, we can reasonably hope for a decent spawn this year.  This activity normally peaks around mid-to late April.  

Report: January 16, 2025

Happy New Year!  First day on the river in 2025 and it was about like you would expect it to be at Lees Ferry in January: cold, quiet and tough fishing.  Upside is we had the river completely to ourselves.  The name of the game was throwing buggers both wading and from a drifting boat with sink tip lines.  The half dozen fish we hooked were all healthy and in the 14-16 inch range.  A beautiful day and a reminder that fishing isn’t always about numbers.

2024 Year End Summary:

The 2024 season was, in a word, challenging. As March began, anglers got the sense
that something was wrong. By March we should have been seeing fish move into deep
and shallow water spawning areas, but we did not. Fishing was also not picking up as
is typical and the most successful anglers were fishing from a drifting boat in order to
catch just a few fish. Then the Arizona Game and Fish electrofishing data came in.
Indications were that between October 2023 and the spring of 2024 the population had
declined around 30%. The warmer than normal releases and low dissolved oxygen
from Glen Canyon Dam in the summers of 2022 and 2023 had finally caught up with the
fishery. The mechanics were simple enough. When water temperatures increase, so
does the metabolic demand of rainbow trout. They have to eat more. However warmer
water does not translate into more available food, that stays the same. The fish were
simply not able to put on the weight, achieve the condition factor, that would allow them
to get through the tough winter months and they died.

However, as the summer progressed, anglers figured out how to catch fish. Again and
again and again they figured out how to catch fish. It seemed that everything you
figured out, a technique or an area to fish, would work for a few days or a week, then
crickets. Adaptability was the name of the game all summer and occasionally a good
day was had, approaching or even exceeding the Arizona Game and Fish goal for the
river of one fish per angler hour. But there were a lot of tough days out there. The fish
that were caught began to look in good shape. This was great to see for obvious
reasons, but also because it could be a harbinger of a decent spawn in March-May,
something that we sorely need.

There are a couple other significant outcomes for the season. In mid-summer the
Bureau of Reclamation began releasing water through the bypass or jet tubes to cool
the river below the dam. Note that this was NOT done to protect the trout fishery from
another summer of warm flows . These flows were implemented to disadvantage small
mouth bass in the river below the dam and prevent them from spawning and potentially
impacting Humpback chub in Grand Canyon. This has never been done before and
these flows greatly increased dissolved oxygen, cooled the river significantly and
increased nutrient levels in the river.. Now we just have to convince all the players that
these types of flows should be considered when the trout fishery is threatened by warm
releases or low dissolved oxygen.

Secondly the decline in the fishery spurred the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive
Management Program’s Technical Work Group to form an ad hoc group to investigate
ideas to help the trout fishery recover. I believe this was a result of anglers attending
and participating in the public comment portion of the TWG meetings. At this point, this
is really our only forum, but it does appear to get attention. Updates on the management
of the fishery will be posted here or sign up for updates by emailing
leesferryconcernedanglers @gmail.com

Most guides, myself included, are done for the year. Time to chase deer and elk and
doves and ducks. Keep Lee’s Ferry in your thoughts and prayers. As significant
changes become evident in the cold water fisheries of the West, the importance of
tailwater fisheries where we can have some control over water quality, is more evident
than evera