Last month in March my husband, Bob and I decided to go to Lee’s Ferry on a fly fishing trip .It had been 10 years since I had been there so it was time to check it out ag
ain. Lee’s Ferry is located outside Page, AZ. which is in the top northern part of the state. Lee’s Ferry is a tail water fishery, the only one in Arizona, below Glen Canyon Dam and a wild trout fishery. This means that the river is never stocked and the trout come from natural spawning. The river runs through the canyon with spectacular views of the canyon walls. The river needs to be fished from a jet boat because there is very little shoreline and no way to get up river without the use of a boat. Since we do not own a jet boat we hired a guide for the day.
The average water flow is between 8000 and 12000 cfs (cubic feet per second). During the month of March it was flowing from 5000 to 20000 cfs. In the early morning the river was at 5000 cfs and at 8:00AM they started letting water out of the dam and by 11:30 AM the water level had reached 20000 cfs. Needless to say some of the 
areas that you could fish in the early AM were under water by noon. They were doing this due to power demands and the spawning rainbows. The lake above the dam, Lake Powell, is extremely low therefore the river is also low. The river cannot support the amount of rainbows that it has, so by a radical change in water flows for the month of March some of the rainbow eggs will not survive. By doing this they hope to reduce the numbers of fish per mile. The average fish in the river is 14”, which is a great deal smaller from past years.
We started out at 7:30AM at the dock. The jet boat was enclosed which was nice since it was about 45 degrees. From there we went up stream, docked the boat and fished from the b
eaches. I was using my 4-wt 8’6” Orvis rod with a floating line and strike indicator. We were using a 2 fly systems, which means your first fly was tied on at the end of your leader then an 18” piece of tippet was tied on with the dropper fly. The flies we were using were nymphs, scuds and egg patterns sizes 18 to 22. Using two different flies helps to see what the fish are taking. The day warmed up, we fished many different areas but the fish were being very selective. We changed patterns, colors and size often trying to see what they wanted and still having no luck. My husband and I had a wonderful time, but when all was said and done we only had landed 4 rainbows each. The scenery was beautiful the day turned warm and the sky was a gorgeous blue and we saw many types of birds. They offer tours of the dam which we went on and learned quite a bit. The dam and the river is a sight that I would suggest anyone visiting Arizona see.
