My friend Mike McKee, owner of Mike’s Meats and Seafood in Pybus Market, has fished Omak Lake with me and wanted to plan another trip. We were able to do just that on Wednesday of this week. We used the launch at Nicholson Beach, which is only one available right now. This requires four wheel drive as it is steep and very much unimproved. I had purchased my Colville Tribal Access Permit and annual license earlier this year, but I needed to get online and get a launch permit. Mike got a one-day license online, too, for ten dollars. Why do we go to all this trouble to fish this lake? Read on. We ran down to our favorite fishing area, which is at the eastern end of the 10 mile long lake. We dropped large plugs down to an average of 80 feet on the downriggers and I kept our speed at about 1.7 mph. We were busy. We caught and released 50 Lahontan cutthroat in five hours of fishing. The fish ranged in size from 14 to 19 inches. We have both landed much larger fish on Omak Lake but didn’t find them on Wednesday. We were the only boat on the lake that day, which isn’t unusual. In spite of the tremendous fishing, Omak Lake gets very few visitors.