Hunter Education Instructors Lake Mead fishing trip!

[Capt. Don Martin]

Being a volunteer instructor for the Arizona Game & Fish Department, and teaching Hunter Education, can at times, be a thankless job.

 

I know cause I've been an instructor in this program for over 20 years!

 

This year I had an open weekend so I offered any instructor in Region 3 the opportunity to go on a half day fishing trip on Lake Mead to rest and relax, and maybe catch a few fish.

 

There had been some stripers boils seen in the past few weeks, so I thought there would be a good opportunity for some of the instructors to get in on the action.

 

Taking me up on the offer was long time instructor Jay Chan, John Schmidt, and volunteer assistant Laura Borden..

 

We would fish for a half day out of the Striper Hunters jet boat, which an electric trolling motor on the front.

 

We left the dock at around 5:15 a.m. and headed to the place where we often see a lot of striper boils.

 

We looked around for a few minutes but saw NOTHING!

 

At sun up, we headed down lake to see if we could find some largemouth or smallmouth action in Hualapai Cove.

 

 

During out trip down lake we saw a herd of 13 wild cattle that live on the lake short about 3 miles from South Cove.

 

 

We started off using crankbaits and I got lucky when I caught a decent striper.

 

 

Laura then caught the next fish, a largemouth bass, then Jay got into the action with a nice bass.

 

 

 

John Schmidt connected on a largemouth too with a crawdad looking crankbait.

 

 

As the morning wore on it got hooter but we still caught some nice fish.

 

 

 

Laura caught her first ever bluegill on a tube bait, my Lake Mead favorite, a Canyon Plastic oob tube

 

.

 

Jay Chan got the largest largemouth of the day!

 

 

I got lucky and caught a dandy smallmouth, our best of the day!

 

 

Laura ended up catching another real nice largemouth on that oob tube!

 

 

We ended up with 17 fish in 5 hours of fishing. We got two stripers, 1 bluegill and 14 bass.

 

 

Lots of fun fishing with this bunch and I sure appreciate all they do for the Kingman Community by their service in the Hunter Education Program.

 

On Friday, August 14, we will be taking out Maya Kaufman and her dad Larry. Maya was our Top Honor Graduate from our class in August 2014.

[Big Browns]

Great job Don! You da man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hoghntr]

Nice! I did not know smallies were in there.