Black River fishing May 2015

Over Memorial day the boys and I joined Troop 653 on the annual fishing trip to the Black River.  The site that they visit (and have visited for the last 15 or so years) is on the White Mountain Apache reservation, about a 4 hour drive from Mesa, with the last 12 miles and 1 hour of that drive being on an unpaved 'road' that would be the first road I've driven that actually requires a high clearance vehicle.  The Suburban ('El Carro Grande') handled the trip to the river just fine, though the last 3 miles involved a 1000 foot ascent and descent and speeds no higher than 5 MPH, with > 10% grade up and down.

The last 12 miles to the campsite

Elevation profile from the highway, crossing the White River then to the Black River

The White River and Black River join up to form the Salt River a little down stream of where we camped.  The main draw of the Black River is great smallmouth bass fishing - and from the number of fish that came back to camp it looks like people had a good time fishing.  I caught 2 small bluegills and one small smallmouth, John caught a small smallmouth - none worth keeping, but enough for us to get invited into the Benevolent Protective Order of the Fish Head.  On the elevation profile, the dip in the middle is the White River, the left side is the Black River and the right side is the highway.  Quite an exciting drive, with big rocks, bumps, and things that would rip parts of smaller cars off...

It was a little chilly over the weekend, especially considering that getting anywhere on the river involved walking in the river.  Highs in the 70s, lows around 40 at night.  Most of the weekend did involve fishing and cooking fish, or playing games in camp.  I don't have a lot of pictures from fishing - not wanting to bring along the big camera and risk it getting wet (something which would have happened).  In the course of fishing I slipped twice and sat down right in the river (generally less than 3 feet deep), and got plenty wet.  The mornings were beautiful, calm air, calm river and bird song to listen to.  No electronic distractions (we were quite a ways out of cell-phone range).  Some wildflowers in bloom in the meadows and along the river.  This being Arizona, even though we were high enough for trees to grow there are still a good number of cactus growing as well, and the prickly-pear were also in bloom.

Looking upriver from camp

Looking downriver from camp

 The camp site (Tick Flat) was right near a fork in the river where there was an island.  The following pictures were taken in the early morning looking down the smaller leg of the fork, where there were more rapids.  One interesting thing to note - the island rose up about 8 feet above the river, yet shows signs that it gets submerged...

Evening looking across the river

Flowers on the hill

The trip was great for being able to just relax.  We didn't have any real wildlife encounters - other than a really annoying bird that perched in the top of a tree near the camp and was calling all night long, making it a little hard to sleep.