Columnist Paula DelGiudice: Fishing heats up throughout area

Paula DelGiudice

Wednesday, May 10, 2000 | 10:49 a.m.

Paula DelGiudice covers outdoors for the Las Vegas Sun. Reach her at PDelGiudice@compuserve.com.

Fishing has been picking up throughout Southern Nevada as water temperatures climb. Last week three boaters at Kirch Wildlife Management Area caught and released 14 largemouth bass from Adams-McGill Reservoir. On the same day anglers did well catching trout at Cold Springs Reservoir, also at the management area.

Fishing has been good at other favorite fishing holes, too. Eagle Valley in Lincoln County has been producing some nice catches of rainbow trout following recent stockings by the Nevada Division of Wildlife. Echo Canyon Reservoir also has been a good spot to try for rainbows. The largemouth bass and crappie fishing have been slow, but that, too, should change as the month progresses. Memorial Day weekend is usually the best time to fish for crappie.

Southern Nevada anglers will appreciate that Comins Lake is back on the list of fishing spots. Located along U.S. 93 just south of Ely, it was once known for its trophy-caliber northern pike fishing. I remember catching large northern pike there in the early '80s before the pike ate their way out of house and home.

With the pike gone and the lake now under state management, the stocked rainbow have been providing some good recent action for anglers.

The Willow Beach area was stocked with 3,600 rainbow trout last Thursday by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service from its hatchery at Willow Beach. It is scheduled to be stocked again on Thursday, May 18.

For local catfish anglers eager to fish the Las Vegas area ponds, the stockings of the urban park ponds have been delayed until Tuesday to accommodate a change in plans by the Arizona commercial grower who supplies the fish.

Originally the fish were to have been stocked in ponds at Floyd Lamb State Park and Lorenzi Park on Tuesday.

Plans call for channel catfish to be stocked monthly at the parks. During the cool weather months, NDOW stocks rainbow trout every two weeks from its Lake Mead hatchery.

If catching catfish is your fancy, you might want to attempt those bullhead catfish at Kirch WMA. NDOW spokesman Jack Clifton said he found several fish that could have broken the state record last week when he was doing biological sampling of fish in the area. The current state record is three pounds, five ounces with a trophy fish considered one pound or more.

The majority of the bullhead catfish that Clifton found were on Hawmeadow Reservoir in or near areas with heavy vegetation. He said the fish should be biting through the summer months.

* FLY FISHING SEMINAR: A free fly fishing seminar will be presented by NDOW and the Las Vegas Fly Fishing Club on Thursday, May 19 at 7 p.m. at Johnson Middle School, 7701 Ducharme, near Buffalo and Alta. Included in the seminar will be equipment selection, casting techniques, float tube and wader safety, and basic information for newcomers to the sport. Registration is not required. For more information, call Ivy Santee at NDOW, 486-5127 ext. 3503.

* TOPO MAPS: Years ago purchasing the topo map of Nevada was an ordeal. If you had an index map, it was easier. Once you determined, by looking at the index, the map you needed, you could chase it down at the few suppliers of maps or order it through the mail. All that has changed.

"All Topo Maps: Nevada Edition" recently has been released on CD-ROM. All Topo Maps is a digital collection of 7 1/2-minute (1:24,000 scale), 1/2 x 1 (1:100,000 scale) and 1x2 (1:250,000 scale) USGS topographical map images. Every map for the entire state is included in the Nevada edition, along with an easy-to-use viewer.

It's perfect for hunters, anglers, backpackers, off-roaders or other outdoors enthusiasts.

To run the software, you need an IBM-compatible PC running Win95/Win98 or WinNT. All Topo Maps runs well on an old 486 with 16 megabytes of memory. At least 60 megabytes of hard disk space is required for the program, databases and map cache. All Topo Maps runs on a Mac using the "Virtual PC" and "Soft PC" software emulators.

For more information check out their website at www.alltopo.com.