Lake Mohave trip March 2024

[FSH 210 Sport]

Work in progress.


Alright!

Just got back from a great two and half week trip down to Lake Mohave. I haven’t been there since the late 80’s when my Dad was living there.

First days hop was 500 miles.

On the first day I passed by my closest lake and the road widening project that starred a couple of weeks ago. Apparently the twisty bits of this part of the road was too much of a challenge for some of the rally riders…












As you can see the lake is still frozen over at this time.








I wound my way down through the Black Hills and then passed through the Thunder Basin Grasslands which was quite a site to see, as well as passing by the Thunder Basin coal mine, I’d never seen an open pit coal mine before.




















This first day was 500 miles to Little America Wyoming where I spent the first night. This place is awesome in many ways, it is an old school motel built in the 1950’s with great clean and affordable rooms. The old diamond shaped keys have been changed out to the card reader type but most everything else is the same.

Little America: The Middle-Of-Nowhere Hotel On I-80 That's Also Its Own Town

I had crated up everything that I could before I left to make it easy to get all of the expensive toys into the motel room at night.





While I was driving through Thunder basin it was raining and 25* so I ended up with about 2” of muddy ice on my boat… so much for the clean boat I left with.



The main restaurant is open for lunch and dinner and did not disappoint.



There is also a grill over at the travel center that has fresh hot food 24/7.

In the lobby…



Day two on the road was a 650 mile hop and started out brisk at 18*, then dropped to 4* as I passed through Evanston. I stopped and Mickey D’s to get a breakfast sammich and the first breath I took as I got out of my truck made cough LOL! Then it was on the road again. Side note, I left home with my winter bra on the front of my truck and didn’t take that off until I got down to Cedar City. Notice all of the traffic on the road.. that would change in a few hundred miles.















Those are some of the ski runs of Park City.





Billiard table smooth and an 80 mph speed limit.. I stayed at 70 max the whole trip.






If you have never traveled down I-15 from Cedar City UT, this is the Virgin River Gorge.. you pass through the very tip of AZ here.



















Late in the day I arrived in Las Vegas, I grew up in So Cal so I’m accustomed to city traffic, but the traffic in Las Vegas is psychotic! Holy smokes!!! I got through that and arrived at the three bedroom two bath house with a massive three car garage I rented in Bullhead City. A very nice place indeed! The house is owned by my friends neighbor and I got a killer deal on the house, $100 a night.




The first night I got to enjoy something I had been missing for a long time, In and out burger! A #1 and an extra cheeseburger with a chocolate shake…



In the morning my friend Hector came over early and we enjoyed, what he called my angry coffee LOL! I’m not used to full size coffee makers and I made that first batch pretty strong, it tasted great but it was definitely rocket fuel! A couple hours later I went to breakfast with Hector, his wife, her cousin and the cousins husband over at the Golden Nugget on the Laughlin Side of the river. Hector had some sort of cool guy fast pass card for the Golden Nugget so we walked past the line of waiting people and got seated straight away. NICE! After breakfast Hector and I left his wife, cousin and cousin in law at the casino and Hector showed me around Laughlin and Bullhead…





I saw this at the casino swag shop…




The next day I spent fixing the sprinkler pipe I tripped over and broke, went to breakfast with Hector and his wife up in Kingman. What a bugger that was to fix! I also rigged all my rods and reels, and rigged the boat up from its “travel” configuration.







Monday dawned clear and about 55*, this was the day I had been waiting for, to run my boat in low elevation albeit 500’ above sea level. I will open by saying that I truly wish my boat ran like this at home, I had installed my OEM impellers before I left and the engines made so much power it cavitated the impellers when I slammed the throttles forward from a dead stop. Another test launch and just a fast application of full throttle, the impellers did not cavitate and the boat launched so hard it was incredible.. after letting it top out at 40.5 mph I started a wide turn and had barely any speed drop off. That top speed might seem a bit off but I have about 500# of stuff on my boat including the full live well which is 216# by itself, so I’m happy with that speed. Best cruise was 27-28 mph at 3.1-3.2 mpg, pretty good. I tossed the boat all over the place having a ball. Lake Mohave is infested with Quagga mussels, a gift from Europe, because they are filter feeders the water is swimming pool clear, when I was there it is not uncommon to see down to 25’ or a little more.

Katherine Landing









This was at Cottonwood Cove, about 22 miles up lake from Katherine Landing where I put in at.





Day two on the water and I was out fishing, I took the house owners girl friend Rochelle with me as she had wanted to go out fishing. About 30 minutes into trolling and FISH ON! I thought this must be a striped bass and when it got relatively close to the boat I was sure when it made a run away from the boat and tore off a good portion of line before I got it back to the boat, and Rochelle using Uncle Greg’s lucky net got it into the boat! A 10# 4oz Striper.



As it would turn out this would be the only fish of consequence for the remainder of the trip. Rochelle and I fished until past sunset before making a run back to Katherines landing and the fish cleaning station. Rochelle was a fantastic guest on the boat!

Later in the week I went over to Don Laughlin’s Riverside Casino in Laughlin NV to go to the car museum that is on the third floor. There are a few cars at the street level but many more cars are upstairs. There were quite a few cars in that collection that I had never even heard of, some really cool old cars, some pretty darn advanced for their time.

























Not faster than bullets though Clyde..











Check out this stud muffin!




























One of the super cars of its day..












continued…

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

Had to make another post here as I found out one is limited to attaching 100 files..

























Look at this death trap LOL!





Green Hornet?





There were book shelves with lots of vintage magazines and such…


Look at those people having fun!!!







This one includes a huge 6.5 gallon fuel tank!!!




You don’t see these around much anymore!



More vintage candy…









On the same day I went to the Don Laughlin museum there was a gathering of Edsel owners in the parking lot…




































All original Chrysler town and country I believe..








I also made a trip out to Oatman which is an old mining town about a hour from Bullhead city. Last time I was there was in the late 1980’s when I was out that way quail hunting.. that place has not changed much, and there are still plenty of donkeys there looking for hand outs.












A popular









I was told this old girl is 26…


My friends Hector and Tony were salted to come into town and go fishing for a few days, so the next day on the water I spent the next couple of days looking for fish on the finder and exploring the lake. As I was cruising up lake towards Cottonwood Cove a small sea plane, think Jimmy Buffet, came cruising past me about 50’ (if that) off the water). Pretty cool! Not too far up lake the lake gets very wide, probably pushing 5 miles wide, I decided to stop and take in the view and take some pics. Some movement caught my eye and there was a Canadian Caribou Super Scooper practicing water scooping in this area, I’d never seen that in person, pretty darn cool!

I searched a lot of coves and the main channel and didn’t mark hardly any fish, but I did see some great sights and cruised up as far as mile 36.







The distance from Katherines landing to Hoover Dam is roughly 60 miles, but that last 8 miles is off limits to boats with more than 65 hp Tuesday through Saturday from Labor Day to Memorial Day and that section of the river is closed to all boats year round Sunday -Monday. Memorial Day through Labor Day that section is open to all boats except Sunday - Monday. The only reason I can figure on the 65 hp restriction is for noise. The other days of closure is for the kayakers. A lot of people put in at the base of Hoover Dam and make a day trip down the river to Willow Beach.

Finally the day had arrived that my friends Hector, Tony and I had been waiting for almost a year and right after Tony arrived we lit out for Willow beach by road as that was the faster option since Willow Beach was 52 miles up lake. While the three of us would have been fine with a roughly two hour drive up lake, we got a late start and that would also mean leaving two hours before sundown to make it back to Katherines landing before dark. A local tackle shop owner called the Willow Beach area the Fedreal Striper feeding program, this is where the rainbow trout fish hatchery is and every Thursday morning at 8:00 AM this hatchery releases a lot of 8” rainbow trout, right into the clutches of 30-40 pound stripers, so this is the place to go if you want to catch the really big stripers. I bought a couple of 8” trout lures from this guy in Boulder City as that is supposed to be the bait for the stripers there.

But, we didn’t have any luck fishing there that day. We marked a lot of fish but despite trying a lot of different baits and tactics no fish on the boat, from what I understand we were about a month early. It was a stellar day on the water though, clear blue skies with an occasional bout of wind that came whipping up the canyon. I also got to try out my new Magma grill thanks @Ronnie and it worked very well for the hot dogs we cooked up. We did have a bit of excitement late in the day as two private aircraft came up the canyon Top Gun Maverick style. We fished until well after sunset and by the time we got the boat on the trailer and headed home it was dark. We got back to the house well after 9:00 PM, Hector headed over to In and Out to grab dinner while Tony and I secured the boat and tackle for the night.











Day two fishing with the crew saw us launching at Katherines landing around 0800 hrs and we started our trolling not far out of the Marina. Again, we tried many different baits and also tried casting in the coves looking for large and small mouth bass that were supposed to be spawning this time of year, again, no luck. We pulled into a wind sheltered cove and fired up the grill, this time it was cheddar cheese and bacon burgers. These had the grill flaring up a bit but it was totally manageable. The burgers were great and everyone was happy! On the first day on the water when I got into Cottonwood cove I saw a young guy who had just landed a 12# striper from the fuel dock, so, after we had our burgers, I said lets go up to Cottonwood and see if we can catch one where I saw this guy catch one the other day so off we went. Cottonwood is about 23 miles up lake from Katherines landing. While I drove the boat around the docks Tony and Hector were casting different crank baits and lures all around the docks and….. nothing.. We stayed there for some time as I maneuvered us around the docks and such, finally the wind started coming up from the south so we headed out for the 23 mile journey back to Katherines. We got back to Katherines right about twilight and headed back to the house, we secured the boat and gear, grabbed Hectors cousin and headed over to the Salt Grass restaurant at the Golden Nugget for some rib eyes and carrot cake-that place has excellent food and a very reasonable price.

The next day Hector stayed back with his cousin who had driven out from Louisiana while Tony and I headed back out fishing. This time as we left the Marina we headed south trolling. As we passed over one point I spotted a school of stripers sitting on the bottom, we continued down to Davis Dam and made a big loop and came back to the school that I had marked on the first pass over them. We pulled up and started sending chunks of anchovies over board, followed by a couple of hooks baited with anchovies. After a while we were getting bit, and our bait stolen but couldn’t hook any. I grabbed one of my spin casters already rigged up with a flat jig and started jigging. It wasn’t long before I hooked one. As you can see, it was a school of stripers alright, baby ones LOL!

Over the next hour or so I think I caught about 12 or 15 of these small ones and one decent one about 12” long. Then the wind came up as forecast, and like a switch on a wind machine, it went from nothing to 25 mph with 35-40 mph gusts so we called it and headed back about 1400 hrs.

Tony cooked us all rib eye steaks with rice and veggies for sides what a tasty way to end our get together after 6 years of not seeing each other. Tony also makes his own fishing poles and brought Hector and I both a custom made fishing rod!

The next day Hector and Tony split about 0600 to beat the Las Vegas traffic going back. I spent the day starting to break down all my gear in preparation for the two day trip back home. I took most of the stuff out of the boat to prepare for the decontamination I had scheduled on Monday over at Katherines landing before heading back home. Later that day I drove up to Kingman and had dinner with an old work colleague and we had a hoot of a time catching up and talking about the old days.

Everything was all set come Monday morning, the gal who schedules this decon stuff even called on Saturday to make sure everything was in order, this procedure should not take longer than 20 minutes with the correct equipment and trained staff, it ended up taking 2.5 hours. I came away with this conclusion, the reason there is such an AIS problem is because these procedures vary from state to state, and with the exception of Wyoming who definitely have this down pat, everywhere else I have gone to, to get a decon it has been a cluster..so most people will say screw it and pass this by. The young guy who helped me was stellar, but he had very little training and didn’t know where the adapters were to hook the machine to a garden hose which is what we need to flush our engines. While he went looking for the adapters I dug around in the bin at the back of the machine and found what was needed. The problem with their rig like the ones at home is that they are pressure washer rigs and when the low pressure adapters are put on the wand they still have a huge blast of high pressure water even though it is going through a garden hose, I found this out last summer when it blew my flushing hose off the boat stripping the two small tits that hold the flushing hose into the receptacle. So this time, like the last time, I had to have another guy hold the cut off switches down while I started the engine, then grabbed the flushing hose and had the guy pull the trigger on wand and let the pressure bleed down to garden hose level, then stick it into the flushing port. I’m glad I had my rain jacket and safety glasses. But between the three of us we got it done. Then we went do the rest of the boat and then the water wouldn’t get hot because the boiler wouldn’t light. I asked the first young guy, “is there fuel in the diesel tank?” He answered well Roberto (who was not there) said he filled the tank. The other young guy said, “really? You are going to trust Roberto?” So the first guy looks in the fuel tank and says there is a half tank of fuel. For brevity I’ll leave out the next hours worth of delays, after trouble shooting by another staff member who was an old guy, he sticks a rod into the fuel tank and shows it to the young guys and there is like a 1/4” of fuel on the rod. So after adding 5 gallons of diesel fuel we were back in business.

I was supposed to leave on Tuesday morning but I delayed one day to miss the snow storms on the way back home, that was a good decision as I had pretty much clear sailing all the way home except for some wind on day two. I got up at 0200 and was on the road by 0400, this was also a good decision to A-miss the psychotic traffic in Las Vegas, and B-I was going to lose a hour within a few hours of leaving when I got into Utah. AZ does not participate in the daylight saving time Yay AZ! So this meant when I hit UT and they were at MDT I lost a hour. I want to add that the winds were very favorable on this trip, most of the time I had a tail wind on the way to Lake Mohave and a tail wind on the way home, sometimes a rear quartering wind, but no head winds. On day two on the trip home I clocked one tumble weed at about 50 mph going down the highway.. when I pulled up at my house I had driven a total of 3512 miles in 79 hours and 55 mins, averaged 14.1 mpg. Not too shabby.

 

[YoDaddy292]

This looks like such a good winter trip! We've been debating getting the hell out of the PNW in the winter and trailering the boat to Arizona, Southern Cal, etc. Now I'm thinking next year.........

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

This looks like such a good winter trip! We've been debating getting the hell out of the PNW in the winter and trailering the boat to Arizona, Southern Cal, etc. Now I'm thinking next year.........

The winter down there is very nice.. beautiful this time of year.