Good results from doctor, not so good results from Pyramid Lake

By Don Quilici

On Sept. 29, I was scheduled for my first-ever, appointment with my Cardiologist, Dr. Larry Noble, who has his practice in Reno.

After suffering those two heart attacks in the early morning hours on Aug. 19, my recovery has, in my less-than-humble, layman's opinion, been proceeding in a "Five Star" manner.

However, Dr. Noble had requested a blood panel for the week preceding my appointment to ascertain exactly what was happening inside of Little Donnie Q.

He wanted to know for sure and so did I. So, it was with more than a little bit of apprehension that I arrived for my 1:30 p.m. appointment.

For those of you who have had a heart attack, who have never had a heart attack, who will have a heart attack or who will never have a heart attack (I think that I covered all of the bases!), here are the official blood panel results of that first visit to Dr. Noble:

I got an A+ from the good doctor, based on the following results:

I am 6 foot tall and weigh 197 pounds.

My blood pressure is 110 over 60 (120 over 60 is considered very good).

My heart beat is a very healthy 60 beats per minute.

Most amazing, my total cholesterol count is an unbelievable 92! Yep, 92! Try to top that if you can!

My "bad" cholesterol is 58, with 70 being considered good.

And, in addition, there are no restrictions on either diet or exercise!

Heck, based on those results, you would never know I tried to die, not once but twice, on Aug. 19.

In fact, the good news was that Dr. Noble told me I'm good for another 40 years. Yahoo!

The bad news was that he also told Elaine that I am healthy as a horse to do such things as wash the dishes, carry out the garbage, dust the furniture, mop the floors and vacuum the rugs. Bummer!

While there, I asked him if, based on those results, I could have my first Manhattan that evening and resume fishing as soon as possible.

He grinned and said, "Yes, you can, to both questions!"

We left his office, drove to our cabin near Davis Lake and about 4:30 p.m., poured our first Manhattan in six weeks.

Yuk! it was terrible-tasting.

It tasted very strong after all that time and we had to really water it down and sip it very slowly, over the next hour.

To help celebrate the great medical news, we decided to fish for Lahontan cutthroat trout at Pyramid Lake on the following Monday morning.

We chose that particular date to avoid the crowds of anglers, who jammed the lake on Oct. 1-2-3 for the opening weekend of the 2004-2005 fishing season.

So, on the morning of Oct. 4, we got up about 6 a.m., Elaine packed a lunch, I got our fishing stuff ready, we had a quick cup of coffee and left for the lake.

Special Note: If you have not been out that way for awhile, you are in for a serious culture shock.

You will not believe the traffic that is inbound to Reno on the Pyramid Lake Highway from the Spanish Springs area at that hour of the morning. It was two lanes of bumper to bumper to bumper traffic! It was absolutely unreal! Thank goodness that we were going in the opposite direction.

We arrived at the Pyramid Lake Store shortly before 8 a.m., visited a short while with Carla Molino, picked up some new lures and bought our annual Pyramid Lake Tribal fishing permits ($50 each!).

Then, we left Carla and drove to one of our favorite fishing locations, which is just north of Warrior Point.

Once there, we got into our chest waders, rigged up our spincasting poles with Chartreuse/black dot, No. 2 TOR-P-DO lures, slowly waded out into the water until we were thigh deep and began casting our lures.

In just the blink of an eye, bam! I had the first fish of the new fishing season.

It was a small 13-14 inch Cutt that I very carefully released, unharmed.

I thought "Yahoo!" this is going to be one of those days were we catch and release all kinds of Cutthroat trout.

Sadly, that was not the way it turned out, as we quickly found out.

Our biggest problem was all the grass floating in the water at that location.

Cast after cast after cast, we would bring in big globs of grass on our lures and lines, which effectively put a stop to the spincasting.

After trying unsuccessfully to spincast for about an hour, we finally threw our hands up and decided to move south to try to avoid the grass.

We drove south to Spider Point, got back into our waders, waded out into the water, began to cast and guess what?

The good news was "No Grass!" Yahoo!

However, the bad news was that the fishing left a lot to be desired.

It was slow, slow, slow.

We fished until about 1 p.m. and during that time, we only caught and released six average-sized trout.

Not good, not bad, but definitely a lot less than the action that we had hoped for on that particular day.

Our largest cutthroat trout of the day was a 19-incher, which we photographed, before releasing it.

After quitting for the day, we drove back to the Pyramid Lake Store to give Carla a fishing report and to tell her not to advise anyone to fish, up north, where all the grass was in the water.

While there, she told us that the opening weekend was successful, especially for the boaters, with some boats reporting catching and releasing as many as 60 fish while either trolling or jigging.

Carla also told us that the largest Cutthroat reported in at the store was an 8.5-pounder (28 inches in length), caught by an angler in a boat on Oct. 3.

Sigh, I'm always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Oh well, at least we tried.

You can bet we will be back, and in the very near future.

Geez, I sure hope that it is in a boat!

• Bet Your Favorite Pigeon

Bet your favorite pigeon he can't tell you the size of the largest Lahontan cutthroat trout that I have ever caught at Pyramid Lake.

If he grins and says, "It was many, many years ago and it was a 12-pound Cutt caught on six pound test line with a red/white striped, No. 2 TOR-P-DO lure while fishing in chest waders near the mouth of the Truckee River," he might have been the person who helped me land that big trout.