A half day Tenkara fly-fishing at the beautiful Jenks Lake!...):}+{:(...
5/19, woke up to a nice sunny Saturday, just being lazy and relaxing in the house. After a good rest, all of sudden a thought crossed my mind - How about we go visit Jenks Lake? I shared my thought with my husband and we quickly worked as a team as usual - I pick the destination, and he googles the map.....It's always nice to have a 'Honey do' and that makes my life much easier and sweet. I didn't even know how long it would take for us to get there, as he was driving, I took a nice nap with my seat down in the car.
We arrived Jenks Lake parking lot at 3:45pm. I got my 11' Tenkara rod and headed down to the lake. The sun was strong and the weather was very warm. The water was crystal clear, with tall pines and other large trees surrounding it. It made this small lake look like a hidden gem.
I fished on the pier and saw some trout were swimming in the deep water. I cast out a size 16 Elkwing Caddis dry fly, the trout were only interested to check it out, but no bites at all. I heard someone say that trout fishing was tough today due to the hot weather. We were walking around the lake and chated with others and only saw a few people were lucky with 1-3 trout on their strings.
We hiked around the lake and I started to sight fish. I found a wide open spot right across from the fishing pier where the water was deeper and the weeds were taller and thicker than other side of the shore. I cast out the fly towards the weeds and saw a couple of trout come out of the cover and inspect it.
I repeatedly cast over their cover and once I got a hit, I quickly raised up my pole. The trout swam from left and right and tried its best to get off the hook. I extended my arm all the way up and raised its head up. I slowly leaned my body back and pulled it closer and landed it on the shore. This rainbow trout had beautiful color all over its body.......
After my Elkwing Caddis dry fly snagged on a tree branch, I was fishing with a size 16 Adams Parachute dry fly. I continued fishing that area and had one more hit on the fly. This time I hooked up a baby bass. I moved to different location and fished for a while and hooked another trout, it fought hard and I lost it half way in during the battle.
Around 4:30pm, the wind blew strongly in my face, and I was frustrated with getting wind knots on my line and snagging the fly up in the trees. I had to give up trout fishing and move to the opposite side of the lake to fish with the wind at my back.I discovered this side of the lake was much shallower and an area more like a sandy beach. Maybe because of this reason, I only saw two little trout swim by.
There were a few spots that I spied on had some under cover bass and green sunfish. They were so crazy about my Adams fly, and they attacked the fly aggressively. They kept me so busy with the catch. With in 3 hours, I mix matched 29 pretty sunfish and 11 hand sized bass. ( all fish were released safely, included the trout!)
At 7:30pm the sun went down and every one who fished by my side had left. The park looked pretty empty, so we joined the club and hurried back to the car. It turns out that park closes at 7pm, and we two didn't know until we got to the parking lot. Luckily the man who is supposed lock up the gate was busy doing something else and didn't even bother to kick us out. That gave me another 30 mins of time to have fun. What a lucky girl I am!....
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. Your husband is just too good to you. Jenks lake looks beautiful with the clear water and all the tall pines. As usual, you did not take the easy way out and went out hunting for productive fishing spots instead of just putting out a lounge chair and hoping a fish swims by. Nice variety of fish. You may never fish the Pudd again. Looking forward to your next report.
Originally Posted by christainmetalhead909
