Getting Ghetto With Science

Ive got a trip coming up in a couple days to fish the famed Pyramid Lake of western Nevada. For those of you East of Salt Lake City, I'll clue you in. Pyramid is a giant, alkaline lake in the high desert. It is one of the last remnants of a huge prehistoric lake known as Lake Lahontan. In that massive loch of yore evolved a great beast. The Lahontan Cutthroat Trout. Cut off from its mykiss ancestry by the last ice age, it evolved into an awesome creature. Growing in excess of 40lbs, this is the big boy of the Cutthroat world. Starting about 12,000 years ago, it began to desicate, leaving big dusty basins, small lakes, and limestone tufa formations in its wake. The only natural lakes remaining of this inland monster are Pyramid Lake and Walker Lake. Ive got a date with one of them.

This will conclude the superfluous verbiage section of this post.

Now! Lets get to the ghetto part!

Given the larger fish, prevelant winds, and long casts I'm gonna see, I'm taking the 8wt for streamer chunkin. Up until yesterday I owned one spool and a floating line for this bad boy. I need to be able to get down and cast long, so I decided that a shooting head was in my future. Being broke, a $70+ line was out of the question. After a quick web search and talking to a buddy, I decided that a straight up leadcore head and mono running line sounded good. CHEAP! The leadcore I bought was not labeled with grains per foot of course, so I had to figure that out myself. No problem, I have a very accurate postage scale that I used to use for mixing clear coats for my bass lures. Only problem is, I havent used it in a couple years and it has grown legs and walked away. Now I fully intend to take a long head out, cast it, and cut it down till it feels right. But I still wanted to know what I was working with. As it turns out, a coat hanger, a metal ruler, tape, and a quarter makes a perfectly accurate scale.


11.25 grains per foot. My 30ft head I have strung up now should weigh about 337.5 grains, which seems to be a shade heavy for a mod-fast 8wt. But I'm in the ballpark. We'll see how she casts at the pond tomorrow. Ghetto jury rigger till I die!