Somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half outside of Las Vegas (depending where exactly in the city you are and how fast you drive) past the prisons but before the drone base, lies the small, weird little town of Cold Creek on the north side of the Spring Mountains. If you don’t live there and don’t feel like navigating pucker-inducing rock garden of Wheeler Pass, there isn’t a whole lot to do up there.
Thankfully, fishermen don’t generally need a “whole lot to do” in a given place when there are fish that can be caught, which, at Cold Creek Pond, there are. At least, there are a few times of the year.
Stocking and What to Expect
NDOW stocks the largest pond approximately three times throughout the year with rainbow trout. These are just your average, stocker rainbows, not large or particularly pretty. Still, you can find fish over 12”, and they eat pretty good (one advantage of the put-and-take model). Fishing is invariably best within one week of stocking.
When you pull up to the lower pond, you might look around, look down at your fly box, look around again… what do they eat here? To be honest, I haven’t quite figured that out myself. This area is absolutely hammered by feral horses, and as a result there is minimal vegetation around the pound, with the exemption of a few older mesquites and willows scattered around the backside.
In the springtime, the pond is muddy brown from all of the runoff draining through Cold Creek, and looks completely dead, for lack of a better word. It would be tempting to complain about this, but before you do that, you should remember that this is the middle of the Mojave desert and any fishing is, presumably, better than no fishing.
Fly and Gear Selection
If you ask me, this means you’re in junk fly territory, so bring out those squirmy wormies, eggs and mop flies (the biggest fish I’ve caught here was on a size 16 squirmy wormy). Others have also reported success on stillwater nymphs and damselfly nymphs. I’ve also tried stripping smaller woolly buggers and other similarly-sized streamers, but have never had any luck. Maybe it’s just me.
You could fish anything from, say, a 2-weight up to a 5-weight here, but I always bring a 9’ 5-weight; you’ll likely appreciate the extra backbone while trying to cast across the pond in the middle of some serious mountain gusts, although playing these smaller stockers on a 5-weight isn’t exactly “The Old Man and the Sea.”
While I’d like to tell you to follow such-and-such arcane instructions to catch fish here, the reality is that these are stocked fish, and this pond isn’t exactly a spring creek. There’s no need to get too serious about all this.
Final Thoughts
Certainly most who fish here use gear, but there are a few recurring guests who use fly tackle, such as the writer of the Fisher Dad blog.
After stocking, it’s my experience that the fishing peters out pretty quickly; NDOW says it’s best within a week, and that seems to be just about right. I have no idea how much carryover there is between stockings, but I”d have to say there isn’t much.
While this spot is certainly not a secret, I’ve also never found it to be particularly busy, either (although maybe I subconsciously never go there when I assume it will be busy, as fishermen are wont to do). Still, and the closer you are to the stocking date, expect at least one other party there.
Also, in case the scale of things isn’t immediately obvious… this is exclusively shore fishing. Leave the belly boat at home.
The view from the pond is absolutely beautiful — one of the best in the Vegas area. Sporadic low-passes from Apaches are an occasional sideshow. Like I said above, this place is lousy with feral horses (“wildlife”), and you can occasionally see some genuine elk. The cold, windy winter months keep the randos away. Combine all of that with the potential for some quality solitude, if you hit it right, and it’s a place I’d recommend to anyone attempting to wet a line in the vicinity of Las Vegas. Not that there are tons of other choices…
As long as you are aware of what to expect (hint: not the Madison), you should be able to have a good time. Cold Creek Pond. It’s a nice place. Thanks, NDOW.
