Stillwater Success!

September 26, 2013

A scrappy Lake Lenice Rainbow.

Here in Eastern Washington there are not a lot of options when it comes to trout streams.  There are, however, many productive trout lakes.  I've decided that fly-fishing lakes for trout is a game that I need to learn, so Thursday I packed up the kayak and drove north to Lake Lenice.

My view for the day.

It took me nearly an hour and a half to catch my first fish.  Fishing a type III sinking line (the only full sinking line I currently own) I counted down leech patterns until I was occasionally hitting weeds, and slowly stripping them back with an erratic motion.  At one point I dumped a cast.  I started quickly stripping the line in to cast again, and BOOM, the first fish hit.  For the next couple hours I cast and then just stripped like a madman - and I caught fish!

Another hard-fighting rainbow.

From 1:30 to 3:30 there was a very small mayfly hatch.  There were not many fish on the surface, but if I could find fish actively feeding on mayflies, they would also readily take my leech.

The second largest fish of the day - the biggest was a bit camera shy!

I caught fish consistently throughout the day.  It was never red-hot, and it never really slowed down.  I fished the same technique with different color leeches (black, brown, olive) and caught fish on all of them.  I definitely need to learn some other techniques, as I 'm sure this one won't always work, and I would get bored with it anyway!

For trout - these fish were athletes!

Highlight of the day:  I'll be the first to say that trout don't fight all that well - nothing like a smallmouth bass.  Well these fish apparently didn't get that memo.  These fish were hot!  Every fish felt like it was going to be an 18 incher for the first couple runs.  One time I had my rod bent into the water on the left side of my kayak as the fish jumped on the right!  It was fun to have fish pull so hard - even 13 inchers were taking out line on my 6 wt.  I look forward to tangling with these guys again!

Even without the reds and oranges, nothing beats a desert sunset.

Eventually the sun dropped over the horizon and it was time to head home.  I was treated to a beautiful desert sunset.  Looking back on the day, I wish I would have tried some other techniques, and I wish I could have found more of a pattern to the fish.  But who am I kidding?  I caught a bunch of beautiful rainbows on a lake I'd never been to before - I had a blast!