Went to Lenore last Sunday for a few hours in the am. Water looked like pea soup in places, with lots of matted debris. Turnover? Had to cleanup the fly often but managed two fish in two hours. Should be better this weekend. Used streamers, they liked lots of movement.
I fished Lenore last week too. The water was pea soup with thick chunks. There was also this thick pinkish-white frothy, crusty stuff all over the surface. Couldn't even access the lake from the north end, had to walk around beside the highway for about an 1/8 of a mile before the gunk cleared up on the bank enough to launch the tube. Anybody know what that crap is? It's disgusting whatever it is. There was a nice PMD hatch in the morning and caught 2 in an hour. Then they stopped rising and I went subsurface. They ignored black buggers, olive buggers, woolhead sculpin and muddler minnows I trolled at various depths. I threw on an indicator and dropped a brassie from a BH prince nymph and caught one more on the PN before leaving around 11am. These fish lived up to their reputation for being weenies. Amazing specimens though, very beautiful to look at.
You should have seen Lenore a month ago, dried algae covered approx. 1/4 of the lake, combination of hot weather and ?. At the worst it looked like a solid coating of dried cow manure, but according to Jeff Korth, Reg. 2 biologist just a real bad dried algae condition. This was the worst we've ever seen, south and north ends covered almost solid and east shoreline almost length of the lake. Most of this crud is gone now and conditions should steadily improve with cooler weather. Lake level is holding up pretty well too.
Try a burgundy bugger. I've found it works better in the fall than any other color. I've caught them on black, olive, etc. but the burgundy one seems to outfish them all. Of course, if you just want to catch numbers, soak a small damsel, 'mid, or other nymph under an indicator along their cruising lanes. Not as exciting, but hard to beat for numbers...
They are much more aggressive in the fall and in much better shape. It is a fun fishery, but you won't get the numbers you do in the spring since the fish are not as concentrated. Still, 20+ fish days are not uncommon. Problem is, there are so many OTHER good fisheries this time of year, plus hunting season.
I LOVE hunting season... keeps people off the water.
PMD's dont hatch on lakes? You are probably right, then. My entomology terminology is pretty bad still. They were definitely mayflies and they looked EXACTLY like the picture I am attaching of a umpqua "hatch matcher" PMD.
I still dont understand all the technical jargin. Baetis? Chirominid? Callibaetis? I thought they were all ways of geeking out when referring to BWO's, Midges, and whatever the hell a callibaetis is...
Just to give you an update, we fished Lenore Friday morning through Saturday afternoon. The 3 of us averaged around 15 fish a piece on Friday and we all got 6-8 fish Saturday morning in just a few hours. Every fish was well over 20" with the biggest ones going close to 30". I would say the average fish was around 5 pounds with the biggest ones going around 7-8 pounds.
It was a great day and a half of fishing and all the fish are large. The best bite is from morning up to around noon. The evening didn't produce quite the results we expected, but we still caught fish. Burgundy was a good color choice. We found that anything with a lot of bright hackle such as peacock or estaz worked best due to the murky water. Big nasties were the ticket to get the bigger fish. By the way, the hatch was definitely a mayfly...all day large hatch on Friday and an evening caddis hatch. Hard to believe that you rarely even see a rise on the water with all the bugs out. With the size of these things, there must be plenty of food down below. The fish were absolutely full of scuds.
Location is not as big of an issue in the fall. The fish cruise the shorelines and islands looking for food, just troll along the shorelines or find a spot to intercept their cruising lanes. It is a different fishery from the spring when you target them milling around the north end looking for a place to spawn. this is the great part about this fishery. It allows the fishermen to spread out a lot more and fish the whole lake. In the spring all 100 fishers are within 100 yards of the north shore.
His report sounds about typical for the fall. You can have some phenomenal days, but since the fish are not as concentrated you don't get the huge numbers you do in the fall. The trade-off is that the fish are in much better shape and much more aggressive. 15-20 fish in that weight-class is a great day in almost anyone's book.
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