Yakima/Lenice reports

[Tim Harris]

I fished the Yakima on Tuesday and Friday this week and had mixed results.  On Tuesday I did OK but not as good as the previous week.  The fish didn’t seem to be in the usual nymphing spots though I picked up a couple of bows but got more whitefish in the spots where rainbows were the week before.  I found some fish in small pods rising to BWOs in the afternoon but most of the fish were also small.  My one exception was a nice 17” fish that took a #18 BWO Comparadun.      On Friday I floated from Big Horn to Umtanum and the river had colored up a bit since Tuesday.  We got a few fish on nymphs and again got some whitefish – big ones at that.  My friend, Lisa, got a whitey that had to have been 18-19” and fat, it was the biggest whitefish I’d seen on the river.  In the afternoon again we found some fish rising but no size to them so I figured that getting some fish on a dry was better than no fish on a nymph and managed to get 8 or so of them to the boat.     On Wednesday Jay and I fished Lenice and did fairly well on dries.  I did troll a nymph around some with no luck but mostly in crossing from one place to another so I can’t really say they weren’t going to hit it.   My first fish came early on a #18 Racoon in a light green since there were some greenish chironomids about.  My next fish was on a blue damsel and then the next was on a #16 Chopaka Mayfly as some Callibaetis duns were hatching.  The hatch was localized to the area I was in and I hit it just right, I hooked up 8 and landed 6 total during that hatch which went on about an hour.  After that it was all damsels for me though I think I only landed one for four of the ones that took it.  I spent a long time on two browns which I swear were only eating damsels that were in flight, how are you supposed to imitate that?    Jay got about 5-6 fish, all on damsels.  All our fish were basically 18-19” fish, I think I had one that may have just gone 20”.   Tim