I am a Christian who has been married to my wife for over four decades, with six children and four grandchildren so far. I have retired from a string of successful occupations as a certified public accountant, a chief financial officer, and a registered municipal advisor. I have been a fly angler for almost five decades. My one and only article submission was published by Southwest Fly Fishing magazine (now American Fly Fishing). You can learn more about me by clicking on “About” on the top of my blog page.
Baker Reservoir, just off Utah Highway 18 between Veyo and Central – no ice!
Many folks take up fly fishing but quit after a while. I suppose we get attracted to hobbies for one reason or another, and once we learn more about them our interest wanes for who knows why. Perhaps it’s not as fun as we imagined, or the hobby is too costly, or maybe it’s harder than it looks. For fly fishing, the most common beginner complaints are the cost and the difficulty as compared to other fishing techniques. I attempted to address those two fly fishing complaints in my beginners blog, but I know that fly fishing still requires a certain adventuresome spirit to fully embrace it.
A large high-pressure weather system has settled into the Great Basin and beyond, keeping temperatures around Nevada near record highs for this time of year. For about two weeks the Las Vegas valley temperatures have been between the high fifties and the high sixties. I began to wonder if the Cold Creek ice had melted off.
Bright rainbow; first trout of the day on a beaded prince nymph
We had a little cold snap in Las Vegas this week, a precursor of the colder winter to come. It made me reflect upon the Cold Creek pond, wondering if the freezing overnight temperatures had sealed its fate for the season. But yesterday was a nice day for late fall standards, and the weekend forecast was good. Being an impulsive fisherman I decided to see about the ice status for myself this morning.
A resplendent Cold Creek trout and my favorite light rod.
My friend Mitch emailed me that Cold Creek pond was stocked on Monday. Then yesterday I had a post from a reader who said he had a great time fishing in the morning before work, which made me feel relieved to learn that I’m not the only fanatic that fits fishing around odd schedules. So by Thursday you can only imagine that I was unable to resist leaving work early to have some fun before the Christmas season and the inevitable ice-over occur.
Glass smooth Cold Creek pond reflecting Trout Truck and juniper under a snow dusted mountain
I suppose I should have called the hatchery number to check on the timing of the fall stocking program. But, had I called and been told that it hadn’t been stocked yet I might not have gone to Cold Creek. And although it turned out that it wasn’t stocked, and I’m glad I went “blind” to discover that on my own.
This is the Cold Springs boat dock. The Grant Range on the left side of the horizon.
I made a quick getaway to Cold Springs Reservoir in the Wayne Kirch Wildlife Management Area. The KWMA is nestled in the high desert of the White River watershed, such as it is. As barren as it appears from Highway 318 (thirty miles south of Lund, NV), the KWMA does have quite a variety of wildlife (see this KWMA brochure). On a previous KWMA excursion I wrote about almost running into a golden eagle that was pursuing a desert cottontail rabbit; that was an awesome experience. On this trip I again flushed another large golden eagle from the left side of the dirt service road. This time I got a very close look at the large raptor, and it amazed me that such a large bird can actually fly, let alone attack game from the air. By the time I stopped the truck, lowered the passenger window, and got the camera into zoom mode the eagle had gotten about 100 yards away and was circling back to the south. Having a close encounter with such a majestic bird is the highlight of any trip.
Cold Creek Town 9,950 foot Willow Peak glistening in the background from a very early fall snowfall
After experiencing the hottest August on record (average high temp was just under 106º), and with September not providing much more relief, the sudden thirty degree plunge last week triggered the autumn fishing twitch within me. Waking to Las Vegas temperatures in the fifties and highs barely reaching sixty, not to mention the clouds with their needed precipitation… well it was all more than I could withstand last week. So I planned a quick one-hour visit to Cold Creek in between dropping Evan off at high school and feeding Emily breakfast (thank goodness Emily is a late morning riser).
They say these are the dog days of summer, the hot, sultry time of year between early July and early September. Here in Las Vegas this is our monsoon season. As funny as that sounds, there are two periods where Las Vegas receives most of its precipitation: December through March and July through September. Make no mistake; it’s the July through September period when moist air travels up from the Gulf of Mexico that’s the killer when combined with high temperatures well above 100 degrees. At those temperatures the rain often evaporates before hitting the ground which contributes to humidity… and thus the “dog days of summer.”
This Pine Valley mansion overlooks the cattle pasture and the Santa Clara River that flows just below the white fence in the distance.
Holiday weekends don’t usually entice me to travel. I like to vacation between the weekends so as to keep the crowds to a minimum. It’s not that I’m introverted or antisocial, but truthfully, who likes to struggle in crowds on a vacation. Fishing works the same way, but for different reasons. When I venture outdoors I like to pursue the feeling of wilderness (even when it’s not reality). It’s a throwback to my youthful hiking days; always wanting to trek where no one has gone before, to see things as natural and undisturbed as possible. Currently, fishing on weekdays before or after the holidays is the best I can manage to create the sense of solitude and peace.
My good friend Bill fighting a Lahontan cutthroat on Martis Creek inlet. Note the trout porpoising under the leverage of Bill’s fly rod.
In prior blogs I’ve written about the allure fly angling has had on me since my early youth. It is rooted in New Hampshire. My earliest memories are of our home on Benton Road in Hooksett, New Hampshire. Benton is a rural-like road, and Hooksett is just north of Manchester. Our backyard was the New England woods all the way to the Merrimack River. The Merrimack is a large, powerful river, and its upper reaches still support Atlantic salmon as part of the Merrimack River’s Anadromous Fish Restoration Program. There is a small brook, Benton Brook, that is north of our old house towards the Londonderry Turnpike (I believe it is now called Dalton Brook). The brook drains into the Merrimack, and on the way it skirts along the backside of commercial property on the west side of the Turnpike. One of those properties had a little man-made reservoir that contained stocked rainbow trout back in the early 1960s. As the crow flies, the Merrimack was less than a half-mile from our house, and the meandering course of the little brook was about a mile long from where it passed under Benton Road. Also behind our house, in the thick of the Merrimack Valley woodlands, were other shallow ponds and swamps. I recall skating on Maureen’s Pond on double-rail skates in the winter, and that was without adult supervision. As a child I never realized how close we lived to the mighty river; the thick woods made it seem so far away and mysterious. Images of my brothers Neal and Bruce emerging from the woods with water moccasin snakes, cottontail rabbits, grey squirrels, and even a porcupine are still vivid in my memory. At the edge of our property, abutting the woods, my father had a dog kennel. Dad raised Weimaraners, training them for bird hunting. We had a chicken coop where we harvested fresh eggs, and a garden that grew fresh melons and vegetables. I recall the wonderful cucumber sandwiches mom would slice up, as well as the trouble I got into from secretly dipping wild rhubarb in the sugar bowl, the pink stain being the convicting evidence. I may be suffering from selective memory or romanticism, but I think that was a wonderful way to start a life, and I’m thankful for those beginnings.
