My fishing buddy and I made our annual trip to lake Omak after my scouting trip 2 weeks ago. I locked my keys in my car at the shell station in Lincoln Rock and had to have a towing Co come unlock me, after that we made it to Omak without issue. I only mention this because my buddy was cursed by his sister after he woke her up yesterday when we went to get his gear after work.
So we headed down to the lake at 5:00 pm and found more people there than I have ever seen. There was still plenty of room so we headed down to our usual spot on the west bank at beer can beach. We both tried spinners and lures that we know catch fish, the fish had other ideas about this as they were not hitting the hardware offering. There was a guy fly fishing there and we saw him hook a few times so we knew what to do. I put on my short haired olive bugger and sent it out to do its job. my buddy put on large black carry special. My fly got no attention, Chris got hit in short order and landed a nice 20" with spawning colors. I tried another fly.....Chris hooked into another that started to peel line off of his reel. The fish ran out along the surface breaking the surface few times. We knew he had a big one. Chris fought with the fish and after a few minutes of runs he got it in and I snapped a shot and he unhooked it and we saw it was around 30" and was at least 7lbs. Chris was very happy and said if didn't catch another that would be ok as he got his moneys worth. I changed flies and still no action. I went up and down the shore, I had one grab my lure as I was switching back and forth between hardware and flies, but my fish spit the lure when I tried to hook set. I then went to sandy portion of the beach where you can see the small schools more clearly as they swam the shore line. after several attempts at casting in front of the school I hooked into and landed a scrappy 18" fish with spawning colors. I had to really work for that fish. I have gotten spoiled as I usually do well at Omak. Chris caught and landed another, all of his fish were on the same fly that he was slowly retrieving. we are here for three more days and I plan to use my fly rod tomorrow as the fly guy closest to us caught and landed at least five fish while we were there. This is a great fishery but as the saying goes "that's why they call it fishing, not catching. Is that you down there fly fishing AJFISHINGDUDE? tight lines to all!

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