Monster Fish Caught In Local Pond Fulfills Years-Long Quest

By MAGGIE MCMURRAY

Moapa Valley Progress

A local man has a whopper of a fish story to tell.
Hayden Dimick, 20, of Logandale, has loved fishing since he was a kid. The 2015 graduate of Moapa Valley High School says that he goes fishing several times a week and fits it in whenever possible.
“Even in high school, if I had an open period I’d take off and spend that hour fishing and then run back to school to finish my classes,” Dimick recalled.

Dimick has several favorite fishing spots in town that he rotates through every week. Although his primary target is largemouth bass, Dimick says he’s pulled about everything out of local waters, including plenty of catfish and carp.

Once, while fishing when he was a sophomore, Dimick saw a fish so large in a local pond that he couldn’t believe it. Of course, neither could anyone else when he told them about the size of the fish he saw.
So over the next several years, Dimick kept trying to catch the elusive monster fish; but to no avail.
“I fish with flies, and I would cast my fly so it would settle over that fish, but as soon as it landed, he would always spook and take off,” Dimick said. “Only once did I ever get him to even rise to the fly and check it out, but as soon as he got to the top, he bolted.”

Recently, Dimick decided to go after the big fish again. Sure enough, when he arrived at the pond, he spotted the monster. This time, however, the fish was acting strangely like something wasn’t right.
“He would swim around for a while and then float to the top and then take off to the bottom and swim some more,” Dimick said. “I kept aiming for him and eventually I snagged a fin with my hook and I worked hard to slowly pull him in. I was using a 5-weight fly rod, which is nothing, and he was extremely heavy, so it was a tricky business, but eventually I got him out of the pond. He was so hard to pull in I thought he must be 100 pounds!”

The fish, a carp, wasn’t quite as heavy as Dimick had first imagined it to be. But it was close enough. The carp topped the scale at 49 pounds and was 40 inches long.
“The most amazing thing about that fish was how big around it was,” said Hayden’s mother, Lynda Dimick. “It measured 30 inches around its middle. Hayden, himself, only measures 32 inches! It was nearly as big around as he was!”

Dimick knew he had a record-breaking fish, but he also knew that he had snagged the fish instead of catching it by mouth, which means it wouldn’t be eligible for the state record.
He contacted the Nevada Department of Wildlife anyway and found out that the current state record for carp is only 37 ¼ inches and 34 pounds, a record which Dimick’s fish completely smashed.

Even though his record is unofficial, Dimick still feels lucky to have caught the fish. “It was very exciting and a lot of fun,” he said. “I was fishing by myself, but as soon as I caught it, I called my friends and they all came down to see this amazing fish. It was pretty exciting.”

Dimick, who works as the Archery Manager at Sportsman’s Warehouse in Las Vegas and loves all things to do with hunting and fishing, does not feel that his fishing career has peaked.
“I’m going to just keep on fishing and hope to someday catch something else that rivals that record,” he said. “In the meantime, though, I will always have the memories and pictures to back up this fish story. It was an awesome experience.”