Friends, fishing contribute to beautiful morning

The water was smooth as glass when Roger piloted his boat past the tires outside of Callville Bay Marina at Lake Mead. It was chilly, but after being beat about by the winds during Thanksgiving week, we looked forward to having a beautiful morning outdoors.

Fishing for striped bass reportedly had been good in the channel outside of Callville Bay, so we headed that direction. Roger selected a steep rock face where he had found success in the past and steered the boat in a path that paralleled it.

Almost immediately, the fish finder began to sound off as we passed over submerged peaks and canyons. On the fish finder's screen, we could see stripers stacked in the bottom of those canyons, usually at depths from 90 to 120 feet. Some were deeper still.

We broke out the downriggers and began trolling. Roger was using a jig head with a white plastic tail, and Dave went with a Sassy Shad. They dropped their baits to about 100 feet. Meanwhile, I cast a WildEye Shad between their lines in case something was hanging out a little closer to the surface. One of us monitored the fish finder at all times, calling out depths as they changed so the downriggers could be cranked up or let down as the situation demanded.

Had any other boaters been in the area, they probably would have had a good laugh as we danced around each other while racing back and forth to adjust the downriggers each time a new depth was called out. With the rough topography on the bottom of Lake Mead, this happened with regularity. "Eighty-five feet!" one of us would call. Only to be followed seconds later with, "No, it's 65."

After performing the downrigger dance for a while with no luck, we reeled in and made our way to the Hemenway area. We marked a handful of fish midway between the Boulder Islands and the no-wake buoys and lowered the downriggers again. It was there I caught the first fish of the day, but Dave and Roger weren't too impressed. They looked at the plump 18-incher, laughed and asked if I wanted to keep it.

A few minutes later, Roger managed to pull another fish from the same area, but that was it. So we crossed over to the north shoreline and began working the coves between Swallow Bay and Sand Island. We found little success, but tried to make the most of the situation.

"Well, even if we don't catch any fish, this has been a beautiful morning outdoors," Dave said. I responded by saying something about no phones ringing and, as you might guess, that's when mine did.

Shortly after I hung up the phone, we spotted birds gathering in the back of a cove and decided to check it out. There were gulls, cormorants and a handful of great blue herons, and they were all hunting shad. If it was good enough for them, we figured it would be good enough for us and began casting our various shad imitations. As usual, Roger outfished Dave and I, and to top that off, he caught the biggest fish. It must have been the secret fishing juice he was spraying around.

We took home only seven fish, but they were in good condition and provided some nice filets. Good friends, good fish and smooth water. It was a beautiful morning outdoors, after all.

Freelance writer Doug Nielsen is a conservation educator for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. His "In the Outdoors" column, published Thursday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NDOW. Any opinions he states in his column are his own. He can be reached at intheoutdoorslv@gmail.com.