Wow, where to begin with this report....put simply, I am now a firm believer of the incredible fishery at Omak lake and can very easily see myself making a yearly trip (or two, or three) over there. I had been planning this trip for a while and had consequently done quite a bit of research about fishing the lake, a lot of which included reading previous reports from Northwest Fishing Reports. I was only going to have one day to fish the lake and I wanted to make the absolute most of it.

My wife and I left our hotel in Chelan and were on the road by about 6:30am under clear skies, headed for what was to turn out to be an excellent day of fishing. After stopping to pick up licenses in Omak, we were on the lake and fishing at Beer Can Beach by about 8:30am, being graced with our first sight of some Lahontans cruising the shallows as we made our way down to the beach. Having heard from previous reports that frog pattern Krocodile spoons (gold underside) produce well when cast from shore, I started out with that lure (the 14 gram version) and soon found it to be true. After not more than about 10 minutes of fishing I hooked and landed my very first Lahontan, a beautiful silvery hen at about 23" long!

In the next two and a half hours my wife and I proceeded to hook and land six more fish, all on the frog Krocodile. During that time period we lost another during the fight and also had numerous follows on other gear that we tried, including a gold and crimson Kastmaster and a 3" sinking Rapala in brook trout pattern.

After heading out for lunch, we returned to the lake at 1pm and fished all the way up until dusk (about 8pm). Right after starting again I hooked and landed another 19" Lahontan on the frog Krocodile and then hooked and lost another just a few casts later. At some point I switched my wife over to a size 4 blue and silver Vibrax, which produced a solid 20" fish and at least one other follow that just about brought the fish into no less than a foot of water.

As the afternoon wore on it seemed that the gear bite really started to die down, which is what prompted me to pull out my five weight and again resume my quest of trying to catch my first fish on a fly rod. Not only did I manage to catch my first fish on the fly rod, I also caught it using my own hand tied fly, another first! I can see now why sight fishing with flies is such a rewarding experience as well. The fly that finally did it for me was a simple size 10 beadhead olive Woolly Bugger. Up until about this point in the afternoon (4pm) the biggest schools I had seen come through had about 10 fish in them, but now I was consistently seeing schools of 30 or 40 fish moving through in water that wasn't more than 2 or 3 feet deep. The strategy that I eventually figured out worked the best was simply to look a ways down the beach waiting for a school to come by. As soon as I saw one, I cast my fly into their path before they arrived, letting it sink to their level, and then slowly stripping it in right as they got near it. This is what finally produced my first fish on the fly, a 22" Lahontan.

On another particularly memorable encounter I had my fly (this time a hand tied size 12 beadhead olive WB) in the path of the fish as they were coming, however, I somehow messed up my stripping method and spooked a bunch of them away. I figured it was over and started stripping in faster, only to see that I still had three fish following the fly. I then somehow lost their attention as well but decided to keep on slowly stripping the fly in anyway. It was at this point that I saw one lone fish double back and start following the fly. While following it, the fish must have turned away from the fly but quickly turned back to it at least twice, and I realized that he simply wanted the fly to just sit there and not move at all (each turn away came with a small strip of line). So on his last pass at the fly, I just let it sit there and watched with enormous anticipation as he lazily approached and gulped it down. I did a quick hook set and proceeded to play him in, a solid 20" fish. I still have the mental video of him taking my fly running through my mind.

After seeing the way the fish keyed in on the stationary fly, I decided to switch to a size 12 beadhead olive Damsel Nymph under a strike indicator. After figuring out the proper depth, all I had to do was get my fly in the cruise lane and let it sit until a school came through. This produced three more fish for me in the hour between 6pm and 7pm.

As I was working the flies my wife caught another fish on the frog Krocodile, and then I switched her to floating a size 10 beadhead olive Damsel Nymph on spinning gear. Unfortunately, I didn't think to make the switch soon enough and for whatever reason the time that I made that switch for her was right about the time that the bite really dropped off on just about everything I was trying (although she did get one really good hit on the bobber and fly right near 7:00pm).

That was the end of the action for us that day, with the totals being 15 fish landed for the two of us: 9 on the frog Krocodile, 1 on a silver and blue Vibrax, two on olive Woolly Buggers and three on olive Damsel Nymphs. And now for a few observations. Regarding gear presentations, it seems that gear that can be presented slowly works better than gear that has to be presented quickly. Also, we quickly found out that when using gear it is very important to let the lures sink all the way to the bottom before starting your retrieve. This is how we got all of our strikes on the gear. For flies, olive seems to be a great color, and it also seems that these fish just really want a big lazy bug that they don't have to chase down to eat. So if you are stripping, keep it nice and slow, or just let your fly drop in the water column or fish under a strike indicator. As far as timing goes, we caught fish in the morning, mid day, afternoon and evening, but morning and evening were definitely best. For whatever reason, the fish really seemed to like the gear (that Krocodile spoon) in the morning, and preferred flies in the evening, although, I didn't actually try flies in the morning.

Definitely a great day of fishing. I look forward to going back to Omak again!

Tight Lines!

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