Brandon Holbrook of Reno caught a 24-pound, 6-ounce trout using a pink spoon from the shore at Blockhouse. Mark Hildahl of Reno caught-and-released a cut that weighed 26 pounds, 4 ounces.
Hildahl is no stranger to big fish. He has fished Pyramid regularly since the late 70s and last year he caught seven trout larger than 14 pounds. But the fish he caught last Monday was the trophy of a lifetime. He was fishing from a float tube near Windless with his son, Cole, and his son’s friend. Cole was onshore when the big fish hit.
“It had been extremely slow that day and I struggled all day for bites,” Mark Hildahl said. “But I just got done telling one of the guides in the area that ‘I’m out here for one bite.’” As fate would have it. That bite came immediately after that statement at 1:15 p.m. “I would’ve never said it was over 15 pounds when it bit,” Mark Hildahl said. “It took two runs. He took 30 yards the first time and 15 the second time. Then it laid on the bottom."
Mark saw the fish and realized he didn’t have a net large enough. He yelled to Cole to come out with his net. “He thought I was kidding,” Mark said. “I was screaming for him to come out. He finally got the message. It might have taken five minutes but it seemed like an hour.”
When Cole arrived, his father told him to get on the right side of his float tube and get ready with the net. “Cole asked how big the fish was and I said it’s really, really big,” Mark said. “I told him I was going to reel down and kick past him. He saw the head coming up and he scooped, lifted and he almost lost his mind. That was the trophy of my life.”
Pyramid Lake guide Casey Anderson of Pyramid Fly Co. said the warmer weather is drawing fish closer to the shallows.
“As we transition into slightly warmer days and the shallows warm the fish are starting to come in to feed for longer periods,” Anderson said. “More big fish have been caught from shore in the last two weeks than the whole month prior.”
