Fishing

Reservoir Fish Habitat Locations

The Arizona Game and Fish Department’s Aquatic Habitat Program conducts habitat surveys in reservoirs, assesses structural habitat availability, and designs and implements fish habitat projects to improve reservoir fish habitats. Installation of structural habitat improvements involves material acquisition (purchased or donated), construction and transportation of structures and materials to the lakes, and final assembly and transport by boat and sinking of the structures at pre-determined locations in the lake.

Over the last decade, projects have been implemented at Roosevelt Lake (2016-2019), Bartlett Lake (2019-2020), Canyon Lake (2020), and Saguaro Lake (2021). The following maps identify a specific GPS point that represents an area of approximately one acre where fish habitat structures have been installed. The UTM and/or Latitude/Longitude coordinates are provided for each of those points in a table, and can be entered manually into a hand-held GPS or a GPS enabled sonar unit. Remember that habitats were installed in an area around each coordinate and sonar units will be helpful in identifying exact locations for individual structures. Some examples of the structures installed are pictured below. Fish habitat structures were also installed at Woodland Lake (2021) and Show Low Lake (2022). At Woodland Lake the points and GPS coordinates represent individual or paired structures.

Habitat Location GPS Enabled Files

The Arizona Game and Fish Department installs several different types of habitat structures in reservoirs throughout the state to help anglers find fish throughout the year. The Department uses PVC, Christmas trees, wooden structures, and others to congregate fish and increase chances for anglers to have a successful fishing trip. Finding these structures is easy when using the files provided below and installed in your GPS enabled sonar on your boat.  These files can be loaded into any GPS enabled device that supports .gpx files such as Lowrance, Humminbird, or Garmin sonar units by using your own memory card (typically an SD or micro-SD card) or bluetooth to transfer them to the device’s on-board memory.

*The GPX files need to be downloaded to a computer before transfer to your sonar unit via an SD or micro-SD card, as applicable to your unit. Download by right clicking on the filename and left clicking on “Save link as…” and choosing the location to download the file. Then copy to your card and transfer to your unit. Left clicking on the filename itself may open the file in an unusable format.

 
Mossback Safe Haven, Georgia Cube

 
Reef Ball, Christmas Tree