Full Moon Fishing at Canyon Lake

Hey Everybody!

How's everyone fishing, any trophies to tell us about? Well we've been wishing and hoping for that big ole bass to strike our lure! I can just feel it lately; I know that it's just a matter of time before I can reel in my personal best, at least hoping so. My Husband Justin has got his personal best on the wall and it's beautiful. He's been telling me all year, if I can bring in a bass 5lbs or larger, he'll mount it for me. HOW COOL, Right? My personal best Large-mouth Bass is about 4.5lbs, and I'm so close! So, it's been on and we're hard at work every day we possibly can hit the water!

As everyone knows we LOVE fishing Canyon Lake in Arizona; it's a tough lake to fish but always rewarding with a great catch! In other words, we like to call it the Land of the Lurkers. So Last, weekend Friday August 8 - 10th was an incredible full moon, and we fished the lake as long as possible. Friday we kayaked fished all around Boulder and the lake marina. It was a memorable night, the moon was so bright the water and mountains were all lite up. It seemed the fish were feeding heavily; they were literally jumping out of the water and flipping back in. It's no kidding a Full Moon does wonders to things. :) It was an incredible site! Justin and I did fairly well that night, Justin caught about 4 Large Mouth, and I caught my best in a night 6 Largemouth Bass!! Can you believe that? I couldn't, actually every-time I seem to catch a fish it never seizes to amaze me. It's those little joys of surprise that I love living for!

It's been tough on the water with monsoon weathers on and off; it constantly seems to change the fishing pattern. But we seem to manage and enjoy ourselves either way! The waters seem to be real busy lately; it's awesome to see so many anglers out there. For us, we are thinking everyone is trying to get those last great trophies of summer fishing. Just before winter sweeps through and fish go deep for an even more challenging catch.

Cactus Wren Outdoors is currently working on some awesome bait to be released real soon! As you can see in our photos below, they are so producing fish and decent ones at that. We are incredibly excited for you to try fishing them and discovering "The Reaction You've Been Waiting For!"
Thank you for following along, tell us your favorite summer fishing experiences! We love hearing feedback!  Until next time, fish on friends!

Tight Lines,

Alex Butel
gethooked@cactuswrenoutdoors.com
www.cactuswrenoutdoors.com

Wren Team Camping Trip

Hi Again!

How was everyone's weekend? Able to beat the heat of summer? Well, we decided to go on a Wren Team Camping Trip! Boy, was this a great idea! Unfortunately, our whole team wasn't able to attend. However Pro Staff Cole, Justin, I and our two amazing fur-babies Daisey and Betty went and had a wonderful time!

We went up to the rim country and camped off of Young road, it was close to several lakes for us to enjoy. We left Friday July 25 and planned to spend the next four days in peace and quiet, getting lost in the woods.

However, as soon as we got settled and camp set up I realized that we still had cell phone service. Then when I looked around all I saw was people GLUED to their phone! For me, that's a crazy thing. I mean I understand it's good in case we needed to make an emergency call! Yet I was baffled because it's camping and the point is to get out and enjoy nature at peace! Justin and I were SO EXCITED to be able to shut our phones off for the next four days to enjoy our camping trip, without screens and technology. Let's face it social media, and smart phones are the center of majority of people's universe now. It's fascinating and interesting, yes. But we need to get a grip, it's important to make connections with people and nature especially for hunting or fishing. This was a new thing to us, Justin and I have never camped off Young Road before. We usually go further north, where there's no one around and definitely no cell phone service. It was a beautiful spot, because when you're in the rim country everywhere is just gorgeous!



Friday Afternoon, we enjoyed fishing at Willow Springs. What an experience, Willow Springs is illegal stocked with Largemouth and small mouth bass, and green sunfish. Willow Springs is stocked with Trout from the hatchery's weekly from May - September.  There's even small tournament's for Bass for the locals, I thought that was neat! It's very controversial about the bass and sunfish being in the lakes where trout belong. Game and Fish don't like the bass to be in the lake because they eat trout and they worry the population will be affected. Yet, they stock the lake so much- why not keeps bass in there? With this, you found us enjoying some great bass and trout fishing throughout the whole weekend!

Friday Justin and Cole were able to get into a lot of small mouths and large mouths! We were so excited, I learned to fly fish for the first time Friday and was able to reel into one green sunfish, they were so pretty!

Saturday all day, we fished Willow Springs again! We were mostly bank fishing, and we did great! Again, the guys tore up the bass fishing while I got into some green sunfish and trout!  I was so proud; I even kept my trout and cooked it up for my dinner that night! It was my best trout yet! But, the best catch of the day was when I reeled in my line and on the end of my lure was lucky craft sexy shad pointers, my husband Justin's favorite jerk bait, talk about a score! Also in the same moment, Justin came quickly up to me with excitement saying he saw a trout on the edge of the bank fighting for his life so Justin helped him get going again, and just as the trout was swimming off for a second chance at life- SMACK a big ol largemouth swallowed him down and swam off. That was the craziest thing Justin had witnessed, and was so pumped he was able to see it happen.



When Sunday rolled around, we decided to change things up and head to our (Justin and I) favorite rim lake, Black Canyon Lake. The morning started our real rainy, which isn't new to the rim country. Black Canyon Lake is a smaller lake about 78 surface acres, so usually it's not very busy. Also- fun fact about Black Canyon Lake, it was a survivor of the Rodeo-Chediski Fire in 2002, most biologist and foresters expected the lake to silt up and become unusable. Fortunately they were wrong, it's a great lake and every year we go back it seems the habitat is growing stronger. Black Canyon Lake was also illegally stocked with green sunfish and largemouth bass. So again, you found us tearing up the bass fishing! We enjoy the morning there with lots of good fish to talk about. After Lunch time, we decided to stay close to camp and hit Willow Springs again! We spent most the afternoon there catching bass and sunfish. Until about 3:45pm a heavy rain swept through, we waited under trees for calm weather. As we waited it seemed everything kept getting progressively worse. So we headed back to camp to wait it out, as we weighed out our options we decided with the camp area flooding we needed to unfortunately pack up and get home!

This is where things get funny, now none of us wanted to leave earlier than we had planned but Mother Nature had another plan. So there we are packing up in the mud and pouring rain, while Justin and I remained calm and laughed it off- Cole was sure poopy. This is a perfect example "Life is divine chaos, embrace it" I tell ya what, we learned a lot about one another and how we each handled a situation. I say it was meant to happen this way to open our eyes to things we hadn't realized before. However, you'll find my husband and I am silly and really love to have fun so after we were about finished packing up, I started a mud fight! It was AWESOME, things got real messy and everywhere but the point was it was the best part of the sour situation. :)

In the end it was an amazing weekend, and I'm so glad we got to get out and enjoy a camping trip!

All weekend, we were on vacation so we played around with some lures we enjoy! However, we did reel in some wren fish to stay true to Cactus Wren Outdoors! We fished Drop Shot and Tully Shakers with NEW Color Ridge walkers, Copper Basin and Horny Toad Talking Sticks. Stay Tuned we have killer NEW Products Coming SOON!


Thank you for fishing with Cactus Wren Outdoors and Following Along, until next time!


Tight Lines,

Alex Butel
www.cactuswrenoutdoors.com

Fishing, Fishing and More Fishing.

Hello fellow anglers!

  How's it going? Have you been fishing with Cactus Wren Outdoors? Let's talk fishing, or just want to try out a sample. Email us at gethooked@cactuswrenoutdoors.com- we'll deliver "The Reaction You've Been Waiting for!"

  Let's play catch up. Justin and I are always fishing; it's just another day at the office for us! It's important we get out there as much as possible, because we are constantly doing research and development. Oh buddy, let me tell you we've got something real EXCITING in store for y'all coming real SOON! So Stay tuned for upcoming products! :)

Bear with me; I have about five fishing trips to fill y'all in on!  So I'll do some short recaps, and have lots of photos for everyone to see! It's extremely difficult to blog as much as I'd like to, but we are doing our best to get them up for you to read and hear about what we are up to and how we are fishing. :)

First let's start where we've been fishing the last two weeks, Canyon Lake. It's just about our favorite lake in Arizona! It's extremely tough to fish yet, it's always rewarding in the end. We do a lot of night fishing around this time of the year, it's unbearably hot out and evenings make it easier to relax and fish comfortably. Lately, we've been arriving on the lake around 6:30pm or so. Just around sunset, so the skies are gorgeous and the fish are usually active and starting to bite. The last few weeks at Canyon, it has been tough, and let's face it fishing is totally unpredictable. However, I've been lucky enough to out fish my husband Justin, and even a few times when we've brought our best friend David. I've had the opportunity to out fish the both of them. How did I get so lucky? Cactus Wren Outdoors, never will you see any of us fishing anything else. Actually at times we still do like to check out other products, especially my amazing husband. We both really love lures, they're awesome and there's so many- it's fascinating. But, we like to say when there's temptation to try another lure that's not ours, we call it cheating. It's all fun and games, but we have to fish them and be sure everything works as it should, before we go and try to get customers fishing. With this patience and dedication, we've received successful products that our Wren Customers are hooked on!

Its monsoon season this time of the year and we are really hoping for some good rain to hit the valley. There have been some decent storms, which is just mucked up all the waters. Canyon Lake this year also seems to be completely filled with vegetation, more than usual. Which has its pros and cons, heavy vegetation will hold fish and potentially a good amount which is a good thing. Yet, it's extremely difficult to fish through the vegetation, lots of hang-ups and losing rigs. But, it's where we've been pulling fish out of. It's actually quite difficult to tell the difference lately whether you're caught or you're getting a bite. I can't tell you how many times I've been disappointed and thought my rig was going to be stuck and lost, although when I pulled up it was a nice Large-mouth. What a pleasant surprise it is, until you're really stuck and lose your rig. Like I said it's unpredictable and you just have to enjoy the little moments like sharing the experience with the ones you enjoy.

All in all, with the mucky waters and heavy vegetation we have been fishing a few different styles. For example - Drop Shot Rig, Chowa Barb Rig, Tully Shakers, and Weightless. We are doing real well with all these techniques lately! We've been using some NEW developed products, Wren Talking Sticks, and Wren Ridge walkers! The colors that are bringing in fish every time have been TWO NEW Developed Colors, Dragonfly, Saguaro Sunset, and Chili Pepper. Check out the products for yourself. www.shop.cactuswrenoutdoors.com

 It seems we hook into some fish steadily from 7:30pm to about 8:30pm, then it's a tough gap until about 11:00pm and on we start really getting those toads. At least that's the pattern we've studied lately. It's been a great time. All the fish you see us catch, we immediately throw back in the water to live long healthy lives. It's important to promote healthy catch and release habits, especially if you're fishing for a sport and as much as we do. If we don't all take care of the lakes and habitats, how are we supposed to expect our future generations to enjoy the outdoors? Remember, please don't trash Arizona! :)

Thank you for fishing with Cactus Wren Outdoors and Following along, until next time y'all!

Tight lines,

Alex Butel
www.cactuswrenoutdoors.com