Went up to Cold Creek pond today. There was no snow at the pond itself, but plenty of snow on the mountain. In the picture, my son Kellen is playing in the snow. The pond's water level was full and really dirty. There were a few other people there fishing, but I didn't see any fish caught. I did see one fish rise. My kids threw a gold kast-master and I threw a couple different nymphs and an olive and a purple woolly worm, as well as the kast-master. But we didn't catch any fish this trip, not even any strikes, which is really strange for that place. Usually you can't make a cast without at least a small nibble. I think I might go to Lake Mead later in the week and try to catch one of the big stripers that are chasing the stocker trout around.

December Stripers

December was a pretty good month for stripers at Lake Mead. I got down to the lake about four times. I didn't really know how good the fishing would be, and my son wanted to go and is not really into going in the kayak in the dead of winter, so we bank fished. We did pretty good. Caught fish three out of the four trips. No more than 5 fish in any particular trip, but not bad for a few hours fishing. I got kinda lucky, I went down to Hemingway harbor where the hatchery trout are dumped in the lake. I was going to throw big trout swim baits in hope of getting a big striper. Once I got down to the lake there was like I expected, alot of people bank fishing. But to my amazement they weren't fishing for planter trout. They were all striper fishing. There were thousands of shad all balled up against the shore line. Most anglers where netting the shad and using them for bait. The stripers where not far behind the shad. I was using storm swim baits in shad color patterns. You had to be able to cast quite a ways out past the shad bait balls, but that was where the stripers where. On the first day I hooked three in a matter of 20 minutes, which wasn't bad considering that most of the other guys had been there all day using shad and hadn't got a bite. Here is a picture of my son Jared holding a striper he caught.