The otherworldly feeling started before we even left South Lake Tahoe the morning of November 24. When you live here for years, with your view of the water blocked by restaurants, time-share resorts and casinos on the way through town, you come to accept that given human nature, the shore of a big trout lake will of course be highly developed. A half-hour drive on Highway 50 over Spooner summit brings you to Route 395, where a left turn takes you north through Carson City's auto dealerships and strip-mall sprawl. Continue on to Reno, and you find more of the same-- here airliners land next to the highway and low rent versions of Las Vegas sucker-palaces dominate downtown, giving way as you approach Sparks to industrial and warehouse grids, interspersed with tight clusters of mass-produced residential zones where all the houses look alike.

When you turn off 395 and pick up Highway 445 though, development thins out almost immediately; it takes a moment to reorient to the lonely beauty of Nevada's high desert and the separate reality that is the Paiute Indian Reservation. Even though I knew what to expect, I was still stunned as we rounded a bend in the highway and I first glimpsed Pyramid Lake. Miles of technicolor water, jade-green shallows and azure depths, shimmer incongruously in a desolate landscape of brown, sage-dotted mountains, cliffs, and bizarre tufa-rock mineral formations, without a single Starbucks or Wal-Mart to mar the solitude.

When explorer John C. Fremont and his party arrived at this same shore on January 10, 1844, they found "a large lake, full of salmon trout on which they feasted." At that time both Tahoe and Pyramid held huge Lahontan cutthroat trout; the Truckee River connected the two lakes, providing eighty-one miles of rocky, fish-rearing habitat. There was an upstream run of spawning fish out of Pyramid lake each spring, met by cutthroat dropping down from Tahoe for the same purpose. Fremont's party observed "Indians at the river catching trout of enormous size, about as large as Columbia River salmon."

This discovery marked the beginning of the end for native trout in both lakes- from Pyramid alone, fifty tons were caught commercially each year during the late 1800's for the markets in San Francisco, Nevada towns and mining camps. These fish were described as growing as large as 60 pounds, but the recognized world record cutthroat trout on fishing tackle, caught in 1925, weighed 41 pounds. The heavy commercial fishing and construction of Derby Dam and subsequent water diversion upstream from Pyramid caused a swift decline of the cutthroat, and by the early 1940's they were gone. As we drove toward Pelican Point, I thought about man's capacity for destruction, that such a massive lake could be completely emptied of game fish.

This left the Paiute tribe with a reservation typical of the quality afforded Native Americans by the United States, in this case a dead lake. They could have taken a lesson from Nevada and built casinos and houses of prostitution to generate income, but instead decided on the much more difficult task of bringing back trout to their sacred water.

What we have now is not even close to the original fishery, but it's Lahontan cutthroat country again, offering the best remaining angling in the world for this beleaguered species thanks to a huge hatchery and conservation operation maintained by the Paiutes. Nearly one million hatchery trout were stocked this year alone, and restrictive fishing regulations give them good odds of growing to trophy size. No bait may be used here, and the daily limit is two cutthroat, with a slot limit system as well. All fish under sixteen inches must be released, and all fish from nineteen to twenty-four inches must be turned loose as well. The two fish you are allowed to keep may be between sixteen and nineteen inches, or one of them can be over twenty-four inches. Got all that? Don't worry if not because a map of the lake with the tribal regulations printed on the reverse side is available at any of the lake's marinas or stores.

We picked ours up in Crosby's Lodge at Pelican Point, where we lingered to catch the fishing-town buzz by looking at one section of a wall covered with photos only of trout ten pounds or heavier. There are also dozens of mounted trophies throughout the lodge, looking ferocious even through a light coating of dust.

The friendly bartender sold us our daily permits to fish the lake, then while Aaron prepped his 16 foot Lund fishing boat for launching, his friend Sean and I watched the lake with trepidation as gusty northwest winds kicked up whitecapped waves. We opted to put in and begin fishing immediately south of Pelican Point, which would afford us some protection from the wind. A phone call to my friend Brad Stout the previous evening had garnered me some good advice for our trip, including the best spot to launch. Brad lives in Sparks, just a half-hour drive from the lake, and has fished it for years. He recommended Pelican Point ramp as the best for launching trailered boats at this time, due to low water conditions.

When I asked him for suggestions on productive lures he replied "It's not what works on Pyramid, it's what doesn't work!" He then went on to illustrate his point with an anecdote about a friend who had a great day fishing a spoon there, an actual dinner spoon with the handle cut off and holes drilled for split rings and a hook. Vague, yet heartening, this tip was really as good as anything specific you'll hear from anglers and vendors at the lake. Twenty years ago, outdoor writer John Rousch included a chapter on Pyramid in his pioneering book on fishing Lake Tahoe, and at that time he listed Flatfish, Tor-P-Do spoons, and woolly bugger flies as the productive offerings here. You'd think the fish would have become wise to such lures by now, but they still occupy top spots in any current fishing report.

So when we launched and let the wind push us out over deep water, we chose three very different lures to run. First, I tied on a watermelon pattern Sting King. This lure by Pro-Troll is simply the latest incarnation of the venerable Apex, a favorite trolling lure on both Tahoe and Pyramid. The Sting King version has a slightly different shape and is enhanced by an 'E-Chip', a tiny device that sends out electrical impulses purported to mimic the signals sent out by wounded baitfish, thus attracting predators. My friend who had advised me on fishing Pyramid is a pro-staff angler for Pro-Troll, and as such is always given their latest prototype lures to field-test. He sent me some Sting Kings recently to try out, and I was eager to see how well they worked. I sent the lure out behind the boat as we moved forward, then clipped the line to the release on Aaron's electric downrigger and dropped the cannonball down to an exploratory depth of forty feet.

On the other downrigger, Aaron set his current favorite lure, a jointed Rapala Shad Rap, at twenty-three feet. For Sean, I tied on a one-ounce Luhr-Jensen Krocodile spoon and let it out on a long line down the middle of the stern, where Aaron had a rod holder mounted just for this purpose. We began trolling south from the boat ramp, starting out over one hundred feet of water but angling in toward shore. As the depth finder showed the bottom rising to sixty feet, the middle rod bent over hard then pulsed frantically. Sean jumped up to fight our first trout as Aaron's rod surged and his line popped free of the downrigger clip. He grabbed his rod from the holder, and seeing that we now had two fish on, I picked up my rod and pulled my line free from the other downrigger, raising the cannonball to clear the way for these trout. "I'll get the net, boys." I said, then quickly changed my mind- "Whoa! No I won't, I have one too!" My Sting King lure had been struck hard, and we somehow managed to get all three fish to the boat and into the net. Each was in the nineteen to twenty-four inch slot that requires release, so we took a few photos and set them free. Continuing south, we quickly picked up another fish, then went twenty minutes without a bite.

"Let's run back upwind and troll through the same area again." Aaron suggested, so that's just what we did, all day long. For five hours from late morning until close to sunset, we trolled repeatedly past the same stretch of shoreline, catching thirty trout. Nearly all were in that same, nineteen to twenty-four inch slot; Sean's Krocodile spoon caught the most, Aaron's Shad Rap caught the two biggest, and the fish that hit my Sting King seemed to be the best average size. When a trout managed to break off and steal Sean's spoon, I gave him a gold Hotshot plug to try; this lure is completely different in appearance and action from the other three we used that day, yet it still hooked fish. My field test of the Sting King lure was a great success of course, but this lake is probably not a fair testing ground.

Interestingly, my second trout on the Sting King also hit after I popped my line free of the downrigger clip, so I began to employ the technique in earnest, and every fish I caught from then on came when I quickly dropped the downrigger ball deeper, then popped free of the clip. "Drop-N-Pop" became my nickname for the day.

We kept only one trout, a fat eighteen-incher Sean took home for dinner. We might have considered taking more, but after measuring a few we could tell that most were in the larger 'release' slot, and we also found it difficult to measure the fish accurately yet treat them gently for potential release in substantial wind and choppy waves.

As a licensed USCG captain and owner of Backwater Charters (530-544-1977), Aaron fishes Fallen Leaf Lake all summer and Tahoe all winter, so it's not as if he needs to drive close to three hours to troll for trout. Still, he told me that fishing is so good at Pyramid that at least one trip a year is 'mandatory' for him, and reports this year were of an even better early season bite than usual. We were not disappointed, and glad that the fish stories proved true, as even in a decent sized, well powered boat, we would not have felt safe in the conditions we found to travel around the lake's 110,000 surface acres looking for fish. One angler who gave us some good tips at the boat ramp was charter captain Lex Moser- he runs a boat around 30 feet long that looks worthy of work offshore in Alaska.

While he talked to us at the top of the ramp after he parked his truck, his client on the boat tied to the dock tossed out a lure, then started yelling as he hooked a substantial fish. This brings me to another great aspect of Pyramid, the shore fishing! Don't worry if you don't have a seaworthy vessel, fishing from the bank can be very good here, anywhere the bottom drops off toward deeper water within casting reach. Some of the more productive spots include Warrior, Spider and Pelican Points, Sutcliffe, Tamaracks, Cattleguard, Blockhouse, Popcorn Beach and Dago Bay. Spin anglers casting spoons on light rigs that can send the lure a good distance will find fish, but the most amazing thing you'll see on the shore here is the cult of fly fisherman. There aren't many lakes this size that afford good fly angling from shore, but at Pyramid they have developed a specialized approach that consistently hooks trout. Using rods up to eight-weight, these adventurers will don waders against the chill (surface temperature was 51 degrees when we went) and step out into the lake, bringing milk crates, step-stools, or even ladders to stand upon. From this elevated position, they can spot cruising fish and keep their backcasts off the water with full-sinking line. Woolly buggers in every color from white to black work, as do a number of local patterns.

Although shore anglers don't tend to catch as many fish as boaters, they bring in quite a few of the larger ones, fish of ten pounds or more. So if you've never caught a big cutthroat trout, or like me you sometimes get so sick of modern urban life that you wish you were on another planet, visit Pyramid Lake this winter! For information contact the Pyramid Lake Ranger Station at 775-476-1155.

Guide Advice: Lahontan cutthroat are notorious for chasing lures long distances without striking, and as I confirmed on the downrigger at Pyramid Lake, a quick change in depth and speed can trigger these followers. Shore anglers will do well to use a stop-and-go retrieve, letting the lure or fly sink down then giving it a quick yank forward, especially if taps from short-striking fish are felt.

Until next time, remember, never stand in a canoe!
Mark Wiza
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