Freedog

My friend Dan and I headed to Pyramid Lake for a morning of fishing.  After an extremely windy weekend, Monday morning was eerily calm and quiet.  Those familiar with Pyramid may not necessarily interpret this calmness as a good sign, but I was happy to be rid of the wind after the weekend’s tirade.

The weather was pretty fluid throughout the morning.  Temps never rose above 55 degrees and water temps hovered around 49 degrees, a bit on the cool side.  Winds came and went with 11am to 1pm having the strongest gusts.  It was partly cloudy most of the day.  For all respects, a perfect Pyramid day.

So how did we fare?  Once we found a beach that had cruising fish we did much better.  I wound up 0-3 on the morning whereas Dan was 1-3.  I don’t know if it was bad hook sets, late hook sets, or just overall bad luck, but I lost all three hookups without even seeing the fish.  Yes, I checked the hook on each release to make sure it was good and sharp.  Dan was able to land one very nice fish out of his grabs.  In all cases, the fish were grabbing the olive and red buggers that I had tied earlier in the week. Not a single fish took a swipe at either midge or the black and pink bugger.

We finished up with sore arms at about 1pm and sat at the car to eat some lunch.  We were both happy with the results and whereas it would have been nice to land one of my hooked fish, I can still revel in the satisfaction that my flies got grabs and were responsible for the sole landed fish.  We did roam around and do some additional reconnaissance, checking out South and North Nets, Separator and Pelican Point.  All these spots had considerably anglers as our beach, which had exactly two.  We did spend some time up on the rocks watching the picket line of anglers at Pelican and noticed that the hookup rate was about every 15 minutes while the land rate was about 1-in-4.  So I guess for the day we were about average.

When you check out the photos below, note a few things.  These were all taken with a phone camera which proved to be a huge hassle.  My phone is just not quick to take shots and keeping the fish still long enough to get the shot was tough.  But you can still get a feel for the size of Dan’s fish when you look at it as we try to net it and when he is about to release the fish.  Enjoy!