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