Those of you that frequent Pacific Fly Fishers know that there are few days when Ben and I both have the day off. Well, that’s the beauty of major holidays when the shop is closed, and we took advantage of Easter Sunday to try and repeat our success at a local bass lake.

Sawyer Lake is located near the town of Covington and is the perfect size for a couple of fly-chucking bass chasers. We launched the boat around 8:00 a.m. and quickly found the one other boat on the lake right where Ben landed a solid 4-pound smallmouth last year. So, we headed to our second favorite spot from last year, a shallow flat that dropped into a creek channel.

The water was still pretty cold for bass, ranging from 49- to 55-degrees. I was fishing a new pattern I created last year called the Mega-Craw (hopefully available in the store in 2012). Ben primarily threw a Sheila’s Sculpin, but fished a ton of different flies. Both of us fished fast sinking lines nearly all day, trying to walk our flies on top of the weeds, down drop-offs, and through submerged timber.

About an hour into the day, something felt a little fishy on the end of the line and I set the hook in a way that would make Bill Dance proud. Up from about six feet of water came a nice little largemouth, angry as hell after a long, cold winter and early spring. Just a few casts later, Ben stuck a fish that would turn out to be a beautiful native cutthroat. We were pumped. We had a couple fish to the boat and the day just started!

We fished with new enthusiasm but didn’t find any other action except the action of putting on our rain jackets for the rest of the day. We stuck it out until about 3:00 and decided to call it a day so Ben could make it back in time to watch the Canucks game.

If we could get a few more warm days of weather around here, the bass should really start to turn on. Once the surface temps reach the 55- to 60-degree mark, look for the fish to start staging close to spawning areas and for the fishing to get excellent!

When I arrived at Lenice and opened the door of my truck, it was immediately pulled from my hand, blew open and

 shook the truck as it reached the maximum limit of the hinges.  “Whoa, it’s a bit windier than I thought it was”, I said to myself.

In the parking lot, a customer and friend of PFF watched me roll in and came over to say hello.  He regrettably informed me that the lake was fishing pretty slow and that it had been windy all morning and he was heading home.   I could certainly see the wind hadn’t let up as I began packing my boat with the eight million fishing goodies I like to have with me in a day of fishing.

I had heard Lenice had been a little tough lately but decided to head over anyway.  Slow on Lenice is usually still pretty decent and today wasn’t much different.  Even the ubiquitous wind isn’t out of the norm, but you still hate to deal with it all day.

Based on the parking lot report I had just received, and the lack of chironomids on the surface of the water, I didn’t breakout the chironomid rod at all.  Instead I used what I am most comfortable with, my trusty type IV sinking line and various leeches, damsels, and other subsurface critters.  The wind had actually died down and right out of the gate I hooked four fish and put three in the net.  “Slow fishing, pshhh, it’s going to be an awesome day”, I thought!  Well, within minutes the wind was back in full force.  This wasn’t the “barely able to stand up straight” kind of wind I’ve seen over there, but it was definitely the “this wind sucks” kind of wind.  Each time that wind started howling, the fishing would shut off.  Fortunately, though, there were a few periods when the wind died down and the fishing was good.  I was lucky to find two spots, one of which has been good in the past and the second a new find, which gave me some pretty good action in spurts. 

The best fly I could find was the Gold Bead Bouface in black.  Usually I do better with olive on Lenice, but I won’t argue with the fish and they definitely seemed to want this one over the others I tried.

In the late morning hours when I finally made it on the water, the water temperature was 51-degrees and most of the fish seemed to be in the 12 to 15-foot depths.  That’s were I found some success early.  By noon or so, they seemed to move shallow and I was hooking fish in depressions close to shore or off drop-offs in the far west end of the lake.  There was less wind over there too!

So, overall I netted 14 or 15 fish and lost a few more.  Not too shabby, but I was working hard for them, covering lots of water and kicking my fins so hard at times it felt more like I was riding a bike than kicking a pontoon boat.

Michael

Pacific Fly Fishers