Pyramid Lake 4/21

Pyramid Lake has been rough this year. Every person I have talked to has mentioned that the fishing has been slow at best, and I would have to agree... The season started well, but with the mild weather and abnormally high water this year, the Cutt's have been cruising the deep water filling up on chubs while we sit on the shore throwing flies at nothing.

As soon as the weather began to warm though, I knew that things would have to turn around. With a 70+ degree day, I tossed my gear in the rig and decided to head out. I got out to Indian head around 6:30 am, and there was only 1 other couple fly fishing. I chatted them up for a minute and noticed they were rigging up nymphing rigs for the day. I had my 4 weight (disclaimer: if you tell somebody you're fishing for cutt's on a 4 weight, their eyes will widen) so I through a nymph rig on it, and rigged up my 6 weight for the standard bottom dragging rig of a bugger with a white beetle trailer.

After stripping streamers for a bit, I realized I wasn't attracting anything but weeds. I looked to my right and sure enough one of the other 2 folks had a decent cut on a nymph. I watched him pull in 2 more in short order and decided it was time to throw caution to the window and break out the 4 weight. My stack consisted of a #8 Prince Nymph, #8 Red Chironomid, and #8 Green Chironomid.

It took me about 30 minutes to finally hook into my first cutt in quite a while... this decent 18 incher here:

I tried my luck for another 45 minutes or so, but gave up and headed to another beach.

Shot Dog was my next stop, and let me tell you that the Shot Dog has been terrible. The underwater plant life loves to cocoon your flies with a nice sticky film, and really pisses you off more than anything. I gave up after 15 minutes and moved down to Wino, which I hadn't visited in a couple of years.

Wino was hip hop as usual. Between the 10 - 12 fly fisherman and the kids playing beach volleyball, I didn't expect much success. Especially when said kids were bumping teeny bopper crap like Justin Beeber and Flo Rida. I posted up right in the middle of the bay, and managed to land this smaller cut on the same nymph stack:

Not much of a hog, and he really didn't put up much of a fight either. I thought I had a stick on at first...

Needless to say, a 2 fish day is better than a no fish day. I chalked it up to a success; especially after the countless days of getting skunked this Winter. It looks like the fishing is finally starting to pick up out there, finally.