Practicing on Havasu with Joe Uribe Jr.

How a past champ preps for the Costa FLW Series Western Division kickoff

The 2017 season of the Costa FLW Series Western Division kicks off Thursday morning at Lake Havasu, the dynamic largemouth/smallmouth combo reservoir on the Colorado River that straddles the California and Arizona border.

Among the favorites this week is Joe Uribe Jr. of Surprise, Ariz. Havasu isn’t home for Uribe, but it’s where he won in 2015 to kick-start his Angler of the Year season in the Western Division. Like everyone else in the field, he’s looking forward to starting the year off right in the desert, and he lets FLW come along for the ride on his final day of preparation.

Uribe puts in at about 7:15 in the morning at the Lake Havasu State Park and idles out into the main basin of Havasu to start the day. It’s brisk and in the 50s, but the temperature is supposed to rise into the upper 70s by the end of the day. The sky is mostly clear of clouds and pink with morning light.

His first stop isn’t far away. It’s a small hump with hard bottom on top and a few bass that showed themselves on the Lowrance sonar. Dropping his trolling motor in the water, Uribe pulls out a pair of long crankbait rods with big deep-diving plugs tied on and starts slinging. He covers a swath of water on each cast but isn’t burning the bait back.

After a few fruitless casts, Uribe opens up a mostly vacant center compartment and pulls out a couple of spinning rods with finesse options.

“There are a lot of fish down there,” he says. “Let’s throw a little something down and see.”

A half-dozen casts later and Uribe has managed to hook into a hard-pulling Havasu striper. It isn’t very big and comes off at the boat, but it provides a good jolt to start the day.

Uribe makes a few more casts after the striper and gets one short strike before he hooks up again. This time it’s one of Havasu’s feisty smallmouths. Emerging from the gorgeous blue-green water, the smallmouth leaps once and then burrows down in an attempt to escape. After he corrals the fish at the boat, Uribe makes a few more casts and then decides to leave.

His next stop is similar, but shallower. There’s a fair amount of grass in Havasu, and Uribe is trying to key on its absence. He methodically works a mid-depth drop with a crankbait.

“It’ll get won in the basin if you get enough bites,” says Uribe. “It gets pressured, but it has the best water color, the most bait and all the fish get released here.”

As for water clarity, Uribe’s preference is clear, but not too clear. Though nearly all of Havasu is a lovely shade of blue, you can see down markedly farther in some places than others.

Fishless at the second and third stops, Uribe makes another stop at a hump with hard bottom and a few submerged trees. Despite being in the desert, with very few trees around, Havasu has a fair amount of cover in it. Some is in the form of manmade cribs and structures, but some is comprised of old trees that used to be growing in the open air.

Unfortunately, the spot doesn’t pay off.

“That was a bust,” says Uribe as he pulls the trolling motor. “There aren't a lot of guys fishing here though. A lot of boats are running south. A lot of this stuff gets overlooked.”

Uribe hits a few gravel banks and points near the state park marina then cranks up and runs across to a bay on the California side of the lake. He keeps his spinning gear in action and works a few little transition points on the way back into the bay. At between 59 and 60 degrees, the water is just starting to get right for some spawning activity.

“A lot of these fish are just starting to move in, and they'll post up on these secondary points,” says Uribe. “The key about these Western lakes is finding the in-between stuff. All these guys post up on the usual stuff. You have to find the transition areas.”

Still fishless since the first stop, Uribe’s next place is another gravel bank that looks pretty generic.  This year, he’s opted to run a Minn Kota Ultrex, and thus far the new motor is very impressive. Though the conditions have been absolutely perfect and not challenging, the motor is quiet and smooth, and the Spot-Lock function that automatically holds the boat on a waypoint is pretty sweet. So far, Uribe is happy as can be with his decision.

Havasu is known for good prespawn bites with umbrella rigs, jerkbaits, swimbaits and the like, but Uribe is a big believer in finesse when the water is slick. Though he has both extremes on deck, his crankbaits don’t get the call much. Instead, Uribe keeps fishing with spinning tackle, almost always with a hand on the line to help detect the lightest bites.

Soon, Uribe is running south down the Colorado River, pointing out the banks and places where he won in 2015. Notably, they are not in the basin, where he says this event will be won.

The farther he travels, the harder the mountains are to see from the lake, but the increase in rocky, craggy desert more than makes up for it in the scenery department. Suffice to say, there are plenty of views to go around on Havasu.

The next stop is a small point with gravel on it. Uribe hooks up on his first cast to break the dry spell.

“It's just a little rounded point with rock,” he says of the spot.

Uribe proceeds to hit two more similar spots, with a bite on the second one that he shakes off. It’s subtle, but there’s no doubt it’s a pattern.

“This is about the farthest I'd want to actually run,” says Uribe at the next spot down the river. “We're all around the fish. You just have to figure out something a little bit different to catch them.”

Havasu is home to largemouths and smallmouths, and Uribe doesn’t think the tournament can be won on straight smallmouths.

“The key is to weigh a mixed bag,” says the veteran pro. “You have to have some good largemouths. That's the decision tomorrow [day one]: Do I start out trying to catch largemouths? I think that’s probably the right thing to do. As it gets later and warmer those smallmouths will start moving up more.”

After one more stop, Uribe runs back up the river and drops me off at the Lake Havasu State Park so that I can get back to work. As I walk up the parking lot in the beautiful Arizona sunlight, Uribe heads back out to try and find a few more bass.