I joined some friends who make the trip to Pyramid quite often. It was nice to have a "guide" on my first trip. My expectations were low as the weather forecast was pretty nice for the first 3 days of our trip - last Thursday - Saturday. We were all looking forward to Sunday and Monday - clouds, wind and new moon. It was indeed nice when we arrived around 2:00 on Thursday afternoon. We set up camp and started fishing (just from the bank - no ladders needed) pretty quickly. By 3 my friend was hooked up and actually landed 3 by 4:30 - me not a grab. We then packed up and headed to his favorite low light beach for the evening bite. The weather was quite pleasant so my expectations were still low. HOWEVER, my first cast produced this - not a bad first Lahontan Cutthroat!
This flop shot gives you some idea of how wide this fish was.
We didn't have a scale with us, but the guess was around 15 pounds. Soon after I got this smaller (maybe 25 inches) Pilot strain fish. Both ate the classic white/chartreuse popcorn beetle on the strip.
It was very nice to get the trip skunk off on the first day!
My luck continued the next morning with this 31" Summit strain fish - easily over 10 pounds followed by another smaller Pilot. This shit is easy!
My boot is a size 14.
Then reality set in. I didn't get another grab until Saturday afternoon.
Friday mid morning we left the beach to fish the rocky areas on the north end of the lake - all the rocks were taken - lots of people up there. We fished a beach and explored some unoccupied rocky areas - too shallow. We got back to camp to see if the mid afternoon bite would happen again - nope. Fishing the beach near camp was tough Friday evening and Saturday morning. Conditions were tough - sun and no wind.
Rocks up north again crowded mid day Saturday. We walked down to one spot and spent a good bit of time there with no action. I started taking pics of the strange tufa formations on the rocks. Pretty unique environment.
The walk back to the truck
I don't like fishing an indicator. I have had some success but not much. Saturday afternoon back at camp I was committed to fishing an indicator until I caught a fish. I caught 4! This small Pilot was the first
This 6.5 pound Summit was the best one of the evening.
Sunday morning conditions were not too bad - a little chop on the water. I lost one small fish stripping and a friend caught a big Pilot - maybe just shy of 10 pounds. Then the weather just got really beautiful. The weather that was forecast to roll in was late. We fished hard but in conditions like this, we took a mid afternoon break.
The evening bite never happened - skunking for 3 out of the 4 guys on the trip.
Monday morning the weather was starting to show up. This was taken after I landed a small fish on a tan over white balanced minnow that produced 3 of my 5 indicator fish.
Fishing was tough for the next couple hours so I packed up and headed home.
It was a fun trip. I don't think I will be making the 6.5 hour drive multiple times a year, but I do have some things I want to try to see if I can break the code a little better.
This flop shot gives you some idea of how wide this fish was.
We didn't have a scale with us, but the guess was around 15 pounds. Soon after I got this smaller (maybe 25 inches) Pilot strain fish. Both ate the classic white/chartreuse popcorn beetle on the strip.
It was very nice to get the trip skunk off on the first day!
My luck continued the next morning with this 31" Summit strain fish - easily over 10 pounds followed by another smaller Pilot. This shit is easy!
My boot is a size 14.
Then reality set in. I didn't get another grab until Saturday afternoon.
Friday mid morning we left the beach to fish the rocky areas on the north end of the lake - all the rocks were taken - lots of people up there. We fished a beach and explored some unoccupied rocky areas - too shallow. We got back to camp to see if the mid afternoon bite would happen again - nope. Fishing the beach near camp was tough Friday evening and Saturday morning. Conditions were tough - sun and no wind.
Rocks up north again crowded mid day Saturday. We walked down to one spot and spent a good bit of time there with no action. I started taking pics of the strange tufa formations on the rocks. Pretty unique environment.
The walk back to the truck
I don't like fishing an indicator. I have had some success but not much. Saturday afternoon back at camp I was committed to fishing an indicator until I caught a fish. I caught 4! This small Pilot was the first
This 6.5 pound Summit was the best one of the evening.
Sunday morning conditions were not too bad - a little chop on the water. I lost one small fish stripping and a friend caught a big Pilot - maybe just shy of 10 pounds. Then the weather just got really beautiful. The weather that was forecast to roll in was late. We fished hard but in conditions like this, we took a mid afternoon break.
The evening bite never happened - skunking for 3 out of the 4 guys on the trip.
Monday morning the weather was starting to show up. This was taken after I landed a small fish on a tan over white balanced minnow that produced 3 of my 5 indicator fish.
Fishing was tough for the next couple hours so I packed up and headed home.
It was a fun trip. I don't think I will be making the 6.5 hour drive multiple times a year, but I do have some things I want to try to see if I can break the code a little better.
I had confidence I was in the game for about 4 hours out of 4 days of fishing. The last morning for example. I was stripping flies for 40 minutes without a bump. Switched to the indicator. The current was pushing it to the bank. I let it sit on the edge of the drop for a bit and it goes down - first drift with that rig. 100% that fly was dragging in the sand on the drop. The guy next to me asks how deep and what it ate. I tell him "12' and a balanced minnow." He is fishing a couple midges - one at 3' and another at about 6' down out away from the drop in about 25' of water. I know because one of my friends had a floating sonar on a spinning rod. He doesn't change what he is doing and catches 2 fish while I keep repeating what I did and get nothing. I had confidence for about 15 minutes.
