On Wednesday and Thursday I went to this spectacularly scenic lake in central WA to give it a try. The planting rate was reduced by half several years ago, and although that means that there are fewer fish, those fish have more food and thus are fatter and stronger fish. I had a tough time finding fish, but each day I lucked into finding a small school of fish that provided some good action.
(This chart above covers totals from both days of fishing, about 14 hours of fishing altogether. Reminder that I measure from the tip of the nose to the fork in the tail (not the end of the tail as most do), so your fish sizes may be slightly larger).
Almost all the fish fought very well, especially the 17 to 20 inchers. Here are a couple of examples so you can see the nice girth on these fish:
The water temperature was nice at 47 to 50 degrees, with excellent visibility of around 16 feet and no algae bloom. When the water was calm and I looked down into the water while on shore, I could often see some fish swimming around.
There were about 8 or 9 fly fishers on the lake on Wednesday, but on Thursday there was just one shore fly fisher who only fished for about 15 minutes, so I essentially had the lake to myself that day.
Although most of the fish I hooked were on various leech patterns, I don't think the specific fly pattern matters all that much. Getting the fly down so that it is brushing the tops of the weeds on the bottom is much more important than the specific fly pattern one is using.
Aside from the marginal parking area and almost non-existent launch, I feel this lake is currently a true quality fishery, one to which I would be happy to introduce to my out of state friends to fish.
Rex