Lenice Lake
My casts to the cattails below the rocky cliff were made more out of habit than hope. Fighting a headwind, I was anxious to return to the launch area before the waves got higher. I’d never caught anything here, and I didn’t have much faith in the untested strip of rabbit fur that was supposed to suggest a leech.
The first jerk caught me off guard, but I quickly recovered and pinched the line against my rod grip, lifted the tip, and reeled in a loop of slack. The reel spun as the fish made for the deep center of the lake, and after a healthy back-and-forth dance, I was looking at the bold, iridescent lateral line of a Lenice rainbow, at least 20 inches from nose to tail. Thwarting my plans for an early exit, several more fish followed, all on the same leech.
Lenice Lake can be full of impromptu surprises. A friend of mine once caught a 10-pound brown while crossing the deepest part of the lake, trolling a Woolly Bugger behind his float tube. I surprised myself recently by catching a tiger trout—a brown trout/brook trout hybrid. Still, the most common trout at Lenice (and its sister lakes, Nunnally and Merry) are triploid rainbows: hatchery-bred fish developed with an extra chromosome set that renders them sterile. Because they don’t expend energy by breeding, they eat and grow quickly. In Lenice, many of these fish stretch from 16 to 20+ inches.
Scabland Trout
Stories about the size and strength of the fish at Lenice bounce around your head as you drive down the final stretch of washboard gravel toward the parking lot. Dying Russian olive trees and abandoned railroad tracks are on your left, and the barren ridge of the Saddle Mountains soars to 2,000 feet on your right. When you arrive, you may find more than a hundred cars, trailers, vans, and RVs, depending on the season and the day of the week. For the past few years there has been an encampment—including wall tents with stovepipes protruding through canvas roofs—at Lenice, housing a group of anglers who spend the first month of the season there.
The landscape is part of central Washington’s scablands, an arid geography topped by bunchgrass and sagebrush. There’s no sound of traffic, no rumble or whistle of trains. Aside from anglers’ voices carrying over the water and the occasional sound-barrier-
crashing jet, coots rocking on the lake and the chattering of yellow-headed blackbirds in the cattails are all you hear. One remarkable spring day, coyotes serenaded me at noon. If it’s an early spring, you may spot sandhill cranes pausing on their annual migration.
Fishing Lenice
Floods from prehistoric Lake Missoula carved out this landscape, but Lenice, Merry, and Nunnally lakes are less than 50 years old. They owe their existence to O’Sullivan Dam, built in 1949 as part of the Columbia Basin Project. The dam was intended to capture irrigation runoff and regulate Crab Creek’s flow. The geography of the site incidentally produced seep lakes, which are now some of the best state-managed stillwaters.
For fishing purposes, Lenice’s 100 surface acres are best accessed from chief walk-in entry points (a ½-mile hike) near the parking area at the lake’s south end. A locked gate crosses the dirt road leading to the shore, and there are paths branching to the left and right.
The main access area provides good nearshore fishing in water from 5 to 8 feet deep, as well as drop-off areas that descend quickly to about 20 feet. The lake’s cliffs plunge into cattails; perfect for prospecting with Woolly Buggers, leeches, scuds, and damselfly nymphs. Where there’s less vegetation and a mud bottom, savvy anglers fish chironomid patterns, unless something else is hatching.
The middle part of the lake is the deepest area, at 25 to 30 feet. Here anglers catch fish by trolling Woolly Buggers, Zonkers, or Carey Specials with fast, full-sinking lines such as a RIO Deep 6 (6-7 inches per second). In late July and August, when weeds fill much of the lake, this area provides some of the only open water and is a prime location for Callibaetis and damselfly hatches.
The east end of the lake is an inlet area, shallower than 5 feet in most spots, but with a steep drop-off. This is often an excellent area to walk the banks and sight-fish.
Much of Lenice’s north side is dotted with small, rocky islands, bays, and channels. Depths average about 10 feet.
This is my favorite area during the Callibaetis hatch. You can position your pontoon or belly boat between islands, track the paths of rising fish, and move from one trout to the next. The islands channel the fish, and anglers, that tend to cluster there later in the day.
When this area gets crowded, I head for the lake’s west end, which has a mix of characteristics such as channels between islands, a sloping ledge and, due to the outflow to Merry Lake, a slight current. The narrows help concentrate feeding fish, and seem to attract bigger trout. Some resident 5-pounders call this area home, and you’ll find plenty of 2- to 3-pound rainbows during chironomid season.
Copyright © 2012 Intermedia Outdoors
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