Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge
South end of Ruby Valley · Collection Ditch & spring channels · ~6,000 ft
With Angel Lake closed and the creeks too low to fish in good
conscience, we are sending you somewhere that does not care what the
snowpack did. Ruby Lake is spring-fed, at the south end of Ruby Valley
under the east face of the Rubies at about 6,000 feet — 40,048 acres of
marsh, meadow and upland, and one of the most remote refuges in the
lower 48.
Know what you are walking into. There are no open-water
lakes here. It is wetland threaded with cattail and bulrush into a maze
of channels, and the fly water is the Collection Ditch —
long, clear and weed-lined, holding rainbow, brook, brown, tiger and
cutthroat trout along with largemouth bass. Sight-fishing is the game:
walk the bank, look before you cast, expect the fish to see you first.
The Collection Ditch is artificial lures and flies only, and
bait, float tubes and wading are all prohibited — you fish it
from the bank. In the South Marsh, by contrast, wading and bank fishing
are open from August 1 through December 31.
The one rule that will catch this newsletter's readers.
We tell you to be on the water at first light every week. Here you
cannot: the refuge is open only from one hour before sunrise
until one hour after sunset, and camping and overnight parking are
prohibited. Plan a mid-morning-through-afternoon day, which
suits the fishing anyway — cooling water pulls the bass onto the edges
and turns the trout on through the middle of the day.
Go before October, and this is the honest reason. The
short way in is over Harrison Pass: SR 227 to SR 228, which turns to
dirt, 4.2 miles over the pass, then well-maintained dirt and gravel
about eight miles to headquarters. Those 4.2 miles are not
maintained in winter and may be impassable anytime from October
on. The year-round alternative is the long way round via Secret
Pass — I-80 east to exit 321, then SR 767/229. Either way it is 65 miles
from Elko down the county road, and fishing licences are not
sold in Ruby Valley, so buy yours before you leave town and
take fuel, water and a spare.
A word on what lives there. Trumpeter swans nest on the
refuge in summer and forty or more winter here, which is why the whole
of Ruby Valley is closed to hunting white waterfowl. The only fish
native to Ruby Lake is the relict dace, now reduced and hybridised by
introduced species and the subject of an active recovery effort. Wet
hands, quick release, and leave what you do not recognise alone.
Great Basin Flyfisher