This is Upper Government Wash. The first spot I went fishing
at Lake Mead. In a previous post about my first channel catfish, I gave a story
about my first outing to this spot. This was during a time where everything was
still new, exciting, and still somewhat scary. At that stage, I had never been
to Lake Mead. I had not even seen Hoover Dam. Why I chose this specific spot
escapes me to this day, yet I am glad I did.
The photo above was taken at a later stage. In fact, I only
took pictures of the fish and none of my surroundings. This was at the time
before I started documenting my fishing trips. It was only when I started
blogging that I even noticed that I don’t really have pictures of my surroundings.
You might then ask, but why does that matter? Well, this is a life lesson you
only learn when traveling a lot. We all remember the big things like Hoover Dam. But as time goes by, it’s the memories of the little things we lose.
The look of the little dirt road, the reflection of the colorful
mountains in the clear water. The different rocks in the landscape, with the odd
shrub fighting for survival. These are the things that make the area what it is,
yet we enjoy them, often without capturing them. I have learned that over time
it’s these small things you tend to forget but long for the most. I can look at
my photos of the Colosseum in Rome, but the little street in front of the house
we lived in, that I saw every day, was never captured.
It is this insight that taught me to look for the small
things, the reasons for why this particular spot. Once you notice these small
things, you start seeing the reasons for the fish to be in a particular spot,
and it gets easier to find them. The Las Vegas Bay area has an inlet from Vegas
bringing in nutrients and food. This makes Upper Government Wash a feeding area
for many fish. Now all we anglers need, is to understand the fish we are
targeting.
A breeding fish is not a feeding fish. Finding bass here during spring is unlikely, but in fall when the fish are fattening up for winter,
it is another story… Similarly, fish that prefer cold water will be few and far in-between in summer. It is important to get your baits out there to catch fish,
but learning to read the little signs and combining that with an understanding
of fish behavior, can turn a normal bait into a great bait.
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