MARCH  2009

OUR FIRST TRIP IN 2009 WAS TO NEVADA'S PYRAMID LAKE, HOME OF THE LAHONTAN CUTTHROAT TROUT
Pyramid Lake is 33 miles northeast of Sparks Nevada.

 John C. Fremont was the first American to gaze down at Pyramid Lake, and his journal entry of 10 January 1844 records his impressions of the lake: ". . . we continued our way up the hollow, intending to see what lay beyond the mountain. The hollow was several miles long, forming a good pass; the snow deepening to about a foot as we neared the summit. Beyond, a defile between the mountains descended rapidly about two thousand feet; and, filling up all the lower space, was a sheet of green water, some twenty miles broad. It broke upon our eyes like the ocean."

Pyramid is a favorite hunting ground for the fishermen who wade out deep and cast for trout even in wintry weather. In ancient times this fishery was a magnificent survival resource. For a while, when the first wave of white settlers came, it was big business. Commercial fishermen harvested 100 tons of trout between winter 1888 and spring 1889, for shipment all over the U.S. By 1912 a local entrepreneur was hiring as many as 50 Paiute fishermen to catch and ship from ten to fifteen tons of trout a week for sale in the southern Nevada mining camps.

In 1925 a Paiute named Johnny Skimmerhorn caught the world's record cutthroat here; a 41-pounder. Photographs taken in the twenties and thirties show celebrities like Clark Gable struggling manfully to show off a pair of enormous cutthroat, or a group of Nevadans peeking out from behind a curtain of silvery fish that stretches eight feet long: a day's catch. But in the 1940s the cutthroats were gone. Restocking began in the early 1950s, and today five to ten pounders are not uncommon at Pyramid.

OUR TRIP WAS PART OF A DVFF CLUB OUTING, AND A FIRST FOR CRAIG McMULLEN AND I. WE BOTH HAD TO BORROW LADDERS TO BE ABLE TO FISH AS YOU MUST WADE OUT FAR ENOUGH TO BE ABLE TO REACH AN UNDERWATER SHELF WHERE THE FISH CRUISE LOOKING FOR FOOD. THE LADDER ENABLES YOU TO GET HIGH ENOUGH TO MAKE THE LONG CASTS NEEDED TO REACH THE CRUISING CUTTHROAT.

VERY COLD RAINY AND WINDY WEATHER IS THE NORM ON PYRAMID THIS TIME OF YEAR AND 2009 WAS NO EXCEPTION!