IN SEARCH OF HAVASU’S WORLD RECORD REDEAR

By Gary Turner

The sun was just cresting the mountains and the moon was low in the west as Capt. Ron Ratlief, of Ron’s Fishing Guide Service, and I began fishing for redear sunfish on Arizona’s Lake Havasu. This trip has been on my bucket list for years. I just never made the time, which is ridiculous considering Havasu is pretty much the Holy Land for bream fishing. Havasu is a large Colorado River reservoir on the Arizona/ Colorado border. In recent years, the lake has produced a series of world-record redear sunfish, with the current mark standing at 6-pounds, 4-ounces.

Havasu’s freakishly large redears are due to a plentiful food source of invasive mussels that have infiltrated the system. The lake also holds some enormous bluegills, which I came to find out over two days fishing with Ron and a third day with my buddy Zac Mickle. You could feel it was going to be a hot one—over 100 degrees— as the cool morning air evaporated with the sun. After all, Havasu is an oasis in the middle of a desert. We started the morning sight fishing coves. Havasu’s water is as clear as the Keys, and I half expected to see bonefish swimming by. We searched several coves and saw lots of fish, including bluegills, carp, catfish, giant gizzard shad, tilapia, green sunfish and small stripers, just to name a few. We also found some redear sunfish, our target species, but they were small, a pound or less, and we were looking for big ones!

We moved to plan B and headed to deeper water. Havasu has the most man-made fish attractors and brushpiles I’ve ever seen. There might be a bunch in South Carolina’s Santee, but you would never see them. The crystalclear water makes everything visible, and as the sun got higher, we could see even more. We saw structure clearly in 18 feet of water with large redears on it. I dropped a night crawler on a jig head down, and BAM! I had a good bite! We landed a nice redear heavier than two pounds and continued hitting deeper brush, where we saw some big ones and caught a thick 14-incher that was pushing 3 pounds. After several other fish in the 1 to 1 ½-pound range, Ron suggested we move back to a cove for a few last casts before heading in. In the cove, I got hammered by a good one, which upon landing was about the same size as the 2-pounder from earlier, but it looked more like a bluegill. I was thinking it might be a hybrid between the two species, which was later confirmed.

If you like bream, you need to check out Havasu. It is a beautiful lake in the desert with some giant redears and bluegills. I might not have caught a world record this year, but I’ve already booked next year’s trip.

Check out Gary Turner’s fishing adventures on his YouTube channel at youtube.com/ @FishingWithGary.