Lake Mohave

Resorts and recreation

Lake Mohave has three resorts: Katherine Landing and Willow Beach in Arizona, and Cottonwood Cove in Nevada. Both Katherine Landing and Cottonwood Cove provide lodging, RV parks with utility hook-ups, campgrounds, a restaurant, a store, launch ramps, and marinas with gas docks. Swimming, kayaking, fishing, boating, and skiing are popular pastimes. In Bullhead City, Arizona, which sits at the lake's southern tip, visitors can rent boats and personal watercraft, and buy gear for kayaking, scuba diving, and fishing.

Bullhead City and Laughlin, Nevada, border the recreation area and offer many places to stay, eat, and shop, especially for those heading to Katherine Landing, the largest and busiest marina. The lake is open for recreation year-round, with water warm enough for swimming in every season. Its clear water draws boaters, swimmers, and anglers, while the surrounding desert appeals to hikers, wildlife photographers, and roadside sightseers. The shoreline is called the Mohave National Water Trail.

Divers can explore Black Canyon, Ringbolt Rapids for advanced divers with swift water, Work Barge on the Arizona side where a 38-foot tow barge sank in 1946, and Cabinsite Point, which has two boat wrecks. Personal watercraft with four-stroke engines or two-stroke engines meeting EPA 2006 standards are allowed. Since December 31, 2012, many two-stroke PWCs, including any with carbureted two-stroke engines, are banned; enforcement started January 1, 2013, after a ten-year phase-in based on a rule approved in April 2003.

Fish enhancement projects

The non-native sport fishery in Lake Mohave is supported by a Nevada Division of Wildlife program that places artificial habitat bundles in coves. These bundles, made of bundled salt cedar trees attached to wooden pallets, create cover for sport fish.

Lake Mohave also hosts one of the largest and most genetically diverse wild populations of razorback sucker. Each spring, biologists collect about 30,000 razorback sucker larvae along the shore using underwater lights, transporting them to Willow Beach National Fish Hatchery. The larvae grow in protected raceways for up to three years, and when they reach about 14 inches in length, they are released back into the lake to avoid predation by larger introduced game fish such as striped bass.