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Tracy Chimenti
06-30-2007, 11:48 AM
Well, we made it back from Ruby marshes last Friday. Had a little problem with our wife's pick-up coming down the hill through Kingvale... it blew up! So, now we've got a new one, a dead Silverado Extra-cab sitting in the driveway, a batch of new memories of the Nevada desert.

The place is infested with bass, some ranging in size to 18-inches, but they must be scouted out. If you venture there with your kayaks, you will find the bass in the off-stream marsh pockets of the canoe trails. They will hit anything-- streamers, cork poppers, small top-water plugs, plastics and spinners. Most people we saw there were targeting these smallish fish, but there were some nice coolers full of bass fillets going home to Idaho and Nevada.

I'm not sure a GPS would have helped, as you can pretty easily landmark your put-ins. Problem is when you venture out a couple miles as Ben and i did one evening, you have the chance of getting "turned around" and this will cause major delays back to port, so if you don't have the technology, for god sakes bring water and food. This is a 17,000 acre marsh and I was bitten twice by mosuitos! This alone is a miracle.

One day three I found some willing trout and nice sized bass while car cruising the refuge. I saw one nice pass cruising along the road, got out, threw to it, and another bass even larger came out of nowhere and blasted the plug. The entire marsh is fed by springs coming off the east side of the Rubies, the flow of which insersect "transfer ditches" that serve the marsh. The ditches about 5- to 7-degrees cooler than the refuge, and although not ideal, serve as refuge for the cold water kittens we've all come to know and love.

On day five, I found them as we were putting in for a morning of boating. They were laying in the top end of a transfer ditch, with some fish working a flat in search of damsels and helgramites. Several fish wer laying in an undulating ground cover of algae and moss, in crystal clear water, raking down hundreds copepods, back-swimmers, and other unidentified insect life per minute. So after our boating trip pulled out the 5-weight floater and went at them with a tiny bead-headed, copper wired prince. The first fish ferried over like a drunken sailer and inhaled the fly. TWANG! The fight was on. Jumping, running, he knew all the moves. He was thoroughly exhausted and with the 64-degree water temp, abundant algae and Karen urging me to keep one for "dad", I "clocked" him. He was right at or under 6-pounds. Next fish took right in front of the culvert pipe and he ran through the pipe, under the road, and out to the other side of the ditch, rolling momentarily, before burning back out through the pipe. We got him quick with a rubber net and had to take some time to fully revive him, but I think he made it. I switched over to a 8-pound tippet and began looking over the flats. Fish were rising, sucking down blues, and smaller trout (under 16-inches) were chasing damsels and dragonflies around the moss pockets. After several other hook-ups I lost the nyph and switched to a some kind of calf-tail dry. I got rolled on by another big trout that would have been my biggest on a dry and caught a couple about 15-inches that really hustled. Called it a morning and went for a drive.

Came back to camp in the evening and could see through binnocs that the neighbors were "camped" on those fish with egg-sinkers and Pautzkees. Long sotry shot, they only caught one trout of about 14-inches and the father was really bitchin and moanin about the action, so that was all good news-- the fish were even smarter now! So that night i spen wading the flats. I set Ben up with a tiny little Prince Nymph on a spinning rod with a bobber, but the educated fish turned their noses. I was then interupted whilst mid-waist in the marsh when Ben sunk the nyph deep into Karen's palm. So after several minutes forming a loop of butt and doing the old trick, i was in the water with sun falling fast and got right into them. I located a pack of feeders in a large moss pocket and they were litterally blowing up on the flies. I was losing one, then losing a few flies to the tules, then losing one to a fish until it was dark. It was dark enough that I tied on a size# 6 olive stonefly nymph and began hurling it, waking it through and hanging on. Caught several more to about 4-pound and cartwheeled another big guy on the break. Ben and Karen got to watch this fish launch around the pond for the next 10-minutes trying to rid it's mouth of the fly. Back at camp, we were uprised to noe a large leech had attached to my right inside knee and blood was streaming down into my shoe. I'll get back later to you guys, but i have to go now.

Tracy

David Lee
07-01-2007, 07:41 AM
Good stuff , Tracy !!

Leeches ..... yeah , the bush is a hard place . I got hit on the arse by a mini-Wasp 7 times last weekend . Not much fun , to put it mildly .... :twisted:

David :D