Walker Lake

Overview

Walker Lake is not a place to plan a trout trip. It is a terminal lake in Mineral County, the end of the Walker River, which carries Sierra Nevada snowmelt north into Nevada and then south to die here near Hawthorne. Like Pyramid Lake it is a remnant of ancient Lake Lahontan, nearly 13 miles long and 5 miles wide with a maximum depth of about 80 feet, and for thousands of years it was a trophy Lahontan cutthroat fishery; the Paiute called it Trout Water. Upstream irrigation took most of its inflow, the lake shrank to less than half its surface area of a century ago, and the salts concentrated. Fresh water carries under 1,000 milligrams per liter of dissolved solids; NDOW reports that Walker Lake now exceeds 21,000. From the early 1950s the cutthroat survived only through stocking, and eventually even that failed. No Lahontan cutthroat has been reported by an angler or found in a survey since the winter of 2010, the last was taken in 2009, and NDOW says the tui chub that fed them can no longer survive either. What exists is a restoration. Congress created the Walker Basin Restoration Program in 2009, and the Walker Basin Conservancy has been buying water rights from willing sellers to send more river to the lake, with the goal of bringing salinity down to a long-term average of 12,000 milligrams per liter, the level at which cutthroat can live here again. The Conservancy reports it has acquired 59 percent of the water it needs. Until NDOW reports fish, come for boating, paddling and birds.