Memorial Day at Lenice

Finally downloaded pics from Memorial Day with Tom at Lake Lenice. Weather was nice, a little breezy at times. Water temp wasn't too warm after the recent cooler weather. Started about 11:30 am. Only a couple others on the lake. Fishing was not spectacular, but we found some. Tom had a few dragging a leech, more on chironmids. I had none trolling, and about a half dozen on chironimids. Action was very sporadic, would hit one, then nothing. Moved around quite a bit, finally had a brief spurt of consistent action on chironomids off the reef towards the west end of the lake. Tom headed home about 3:30. I stayed and kicked up to the inlet end where a father an son had been having more action than we had been having. Not much for me until I asked what he had been finding them on. He answered a size 20 chironomid, a couple sizes smaller than I had been using. Tied one of those on the dropper, had a couple takedowns, then things died there. Worked back down to the bay opposite the launch and found a couple. Left about 5 pm. Moving water opens soon. Lakes are OK to fill in the time, but I will be glad to get back to streams.

Moving Water

Visited an old friend with a good friend today. Kirk and I revisited a section of scabland creek that was too low to fish last fall, now recharged over the winter and running at a good level. We hiked through the sagebrush to the edge of the wide coulee through which the creek runs. What a view!

Hoping that springs and the little flow that remains through the summer keep it habitable for trout, we made our way down a break in the cliffs to the edge of a tall bank overlooking a deep hole. Peering into the water for several minutes, we saw nothing. The angle of the sun was perfect and the wind was light, so the view to the bottom was very clear. There were a few weeds that looked like fish with their side to side motion in the current, but no fish of any size were seen. Then, movement, a shadow over a lighter section of the bottom. Yes, definitely a fish. Very good size, maybe 16" plus. There was at least one in the stream. We found a break in the bank well upstream, crossed, then carefully approached from below and tossed our flies up towards where we had seen the fish. No response despite out best attempts. But there would have to be more, and we had confidence we would find some fish today.

A short distance upstream in a likely looking stretch of fast, deep water, Kirk got the first fish to hand, about 4" long. It was a long hike to catch a baby! The next run up, Kirk spotted a nice looking fish in a wide, spring creek like section flowing through weeds. He directed me from his position on the high bank, and I drifted a small black micro leech and psycho trailer several times near where the fish way laying, but it showed no interest. While Kirk moved upstream to find more fish, I switched to a cone head bunny leach without an indicator, tossed across onto the grass on the far bank, pulled it off and started stripping slowly. As the leech came into view, a good-sized fish was following, darting towards the fly, then turning away several times. I stopped the strip and the fish turned towards and away from the fly again, once, twice, and on the third approach the fish stopped right next to the fly. Then I saw the fly disappear. Fish on! After a good fight, he wiggled off while I was bringing him over the weeds to the bank. It was a really nice rainbow, maybe 16" or 17". Continuing upstream, we started finding smaller fish and more numbers. One run would be silly full of fish, the next none or only a couple. Beautiful water, fish in the running water, only an occasional one seen in the spring-creek like flat water.

Kirk manhandling the fish across the top of the water in a beautiful run. There were a ton of fish in this run.

Typical fish from typical water

My big one of the day, 13" or 14" on the leech. The last and biggest of about 10 fish out of this run.

Kirk and a pretty trout

Kirk's monster; can't see it? Here, let me zoom in for you...

Peek-a-boo!

About a mile up, we came to a section that was actively grazed. The creek spreads, flat, not so deep. A few small trout in sections where it is moving, but this would get hot in the summer. No banks, no trees. Dang cows!

The token brook trout. Don't know how they reproduce, I never catch more than one.

But there were a few sections where it moved and deepened a bit more. In one of these spring creek like sections, Kirk got this beautiful 15" bow to come up to his elk hair caddis. Just above in moving water, I caught a nice little guy on an irresistible. Then, the creek started shrinking dramatically. We could see greenery on the cliff side, indicating incoming springs. It was time to turn around, find our way to the top of the cliffs, and head for the car.

Kirk's big rainbow

Nice one on the dry

Two and a half miles back through rough sagebrush, dry grass, and.....snakes! Kirk exploded into the funniest, high-stepping dance after nearly stepping on this little guy, who turned out to be without rattles, just a friendly bull snake.

A rattler look-a-like

Shortly thereafter, we came across another bull snake stretched out on the rocks. Luckily, that was the end of the snakes. Back at the car, with not enough time to stop anywhere else on the way home (we had our float tubes), we headed back to the creek at the bridge, and found it silly full of fish. The channel had returned to the normal entrance on the left side, and we fished side by side catching way more fish than should be in this hole.

Typical bridge fish

In the midst of the abundance of small fish, Kirk was surprised by this monster that slowly rose in full view and took his dry. Great restraint on Kirk's part to keep from yanking it out of the mouth of this guy!

Beautiful fish!

Another pic of the same fish

We finally decided to move up when several casts didn't bring a hit, but really, we were just looking to fish more water. We could have caught a lot more. In the next run up, we found only a couple, until I put a sinker on and pulled ten out of the very top of the run, the largest being this 13-incher.

First of ten out of the next little hole up, after putting on a sinker to get down in the fast water

Nice 13-inch rainbow

Trying to long-arm him, I realized the fatal flaw of long-arming is always the fact that your hand looks so big when you do it. So I came up with an invention idea that every fisherman will need to have - the long-arm stick. It will have a scaled down, lifelike prosthetic hand, made from grippy silicone rubber, that you screw onto the long-arm stick and clamp gently onto the fish before you stretch it out in front of you for the larger-than-life (literally) shot. The hand would be available in multiple sizes, depending on how much help the fisherman needed to get decent sized fish. The half-size hand makes your fish look twice as big; the quarter size hand can turn a 6-inch minnow into a 24-inch beast (make sure to take the hook out first). Time for a Kickstarter campaign...

The long-arm

Well, all good things must come to an end, and so did this day. We continued up to the riffle above the flat water and only found a fish or two, surprisingly, given all the fish below. I just had to drop in below the bridge before we left, and quickly had 20 to hand, mostly 6 to 9 inches, but a couple 11 to 12 inches, while Kirk returned to the bridge hole and continued catching where we had left off. Kirk motioned that it was time to go, but I just had to make a few more casts into the run directly under the bridge. Casting over the barbed wire that spans the stream there, I landed three more, then hooked number 24, a nice one about 13". Instead of running down under the barbed wire like the few before him, the acrobatic fish jumped up and through the barbed wire, ran back upstream, wedged the line in a barb, then ran to the side and broke off. I guess it was a sign from the fishing gods that Kirk was going to leave me if I made another cast. That was OK. Ten hours of hiking and fishing beautiful moving water, new and old, makes for a pretty awesome day!

The acrobatic fish jumped between the two wires!

Good Day at Beehive

Nope.  Not the classic beehive hairdo of the 60's or the Beehive State of Utah (which I hope to put some damage on in July), but Beehive Lake up out of Wenatchee.

Sorry for no photos.  I forgot the camera on the nightstand.  That's OK.  The fish just got 50% larger as a result!

I arrived at the lake around 5:00 pm.  It was fairly crowded with people, but only a few people were out in float tubes or boats.  I started with a chironomid set up, had a take down on the first cast and then nothing for about 15 minutes.  My ADD kicked in at that point, so I switched to a black bugger behind a clear camo line.  I immediately started catching fish.  Fortunately with more action that the bait fishermen from the bank!

After kicking around and catching them on the bugger, I switched back to the chironomids.  I LIKE watching the bobber go down!  Still no action on the chironomid.  I think the recently planted guys still didn't know what bugs look like, since the green strike indicator got more action than anything else!

After another 15-20 minutes of no chironomid action, I went back to the bugger and continued regular consistent action.  I left around 7 having landed around 30 and having missed a bunch more on short strikes.  All were small in the 7-12 inch range.  Wait, without a camera.... in the 12-18 inch range!  ;)  The action was fast on the bugger and non-existent on chironomids.

I'll have to get back once the fish learn what natural food looks like.  

Monster Lost...

A quick trip after work to a lake north of Pasco where Kirk and I had found a bunch of triploids around this time last year. It was 7 pm by the time we hiked in, just about the time when the rainbows started rising in the arm of the lake the previous year. Calm, warm, mostly overcast, perfect except the bows decided to be somewhere else this year. One other angler in a float tube said the water temp was 70°F, and the one trout he had caught was deep at the other end of the lake. Oh well, there were bass cruising the shallows; some very, very large. Out with the spinning rod and a perch rapala. Lesson for the day - there is a reason those bass fisherman on TV use 20 lb or 30 lb test line...

About the third spot I stopped along the shore, I pushed my way through the reeds to the edge of the water, cast to the left about 5 ft from shore. The line caught a little in the reeds, so the rapala sat there floating for a moment while I pulled the line free from the end of a reed. I reeled the line tight and immediately felt resistance, then really good resistance that started moving towards me. At first I thought stick or weeds, then I started to feel the back and forth of the fish swimming. I had a fish on! A pretty solid one at that as it continued to swim straight towards me. It came right in front of me about 12 ft out and passed by in its full glory. It was a huge largemouth! We had seen one earlier cruising that Kirk said was probably about 18" and 3 lbs. This was probably 6" longer than that and much, much fatter. After giving me the full-on side view, it decided it was hooked, turned, and ran steadily back where it came from. With 6 lb test that was several years old, I couldn't do much to try to hold it back. I also remembered this was a small spool on the old Mitchell 303, so I was starting to see the bottom of the spool when the fish stopped. The line was against the reeds as the behemoth had headed into some short reeds almost on the shore. Nothing to do but hop into the thigh deep soft muck adjacent to the reeds and slowly work towards where the fish was sitting, hoping it was still there. Keeping the line tight with my rod in the right hand, hanging onto reeds with the left, I made my way through the muck. I found my line tangled in some reeds, and as I reached down to get the line off, the fish splashed nearby into some more reeds a few feet away. Still on. Off the first reeds, on to the second tangle. Pulled the line off of those, but it was now pointed straight into another small clump nearby. A couple steps towards them, another big splash, and off went the fish, leaving the rapala on the reeds. Wow! Might not be a trout, but pretty cool. It could be fun to actually try and catch those things. With new, 20 lb test line. And a decent reel. And maybe a little skill rather than blind luck.

We fished a little more, not too concerned about the occasional distant rumble of thunder until we climbed out from the lake to where we could see the southern sky and a scary-looking wall of black. Kirk said we should be good, as storms generally move SW to NE. I told him I watched the weather the previous night, and the weather pattern had the storms tracking straight S to N, or directly towards us. We had 1 1/2 miles back to the car, so maybe we could beat it. About halfway to the car, multiple bolts flashed across the southern horizon. Then Kirk curled up in a ball on the trail and started crying softly. OK, he didn't actually do that, but he is seriously terrified of lightning. Seriously. Like he probably goes and climbs in his kids' bed with them when a storm comes through so they can comfort him. The storm appeared to me to be tracking a little east, but that wasn't consolation for Kirk. As the bolts got closer and the thunder louder, I gave him the keys so he could run ahead the last 1/4 mile to get to the car. The storm did track just a couple miles to the east, or it would have been right over us at the end. A fun evening, a monster lost, and some weather excitement to go along with it. Oh, and a new fishing strategy learned - if you are out with Kirk and he is crowding you a little, just pull out your phone, set off the flash, point to a nearby cloud and say, "Did you see that bolt?" You will then have the hole all to yourself...