Slow day trolling for muskie but we got a good one!
Me & jeff went out on my boat trolling for ‘skie on the canadian side of the lake. I’ve noticed that the fish seem to have shifted around a bit since the water has cooled down. They’re still in their summer pattern, which is suspended in deep water, just shifted around a little bit. As the water cools they seem to be heading toward the shipping channel.
So to change things up I decided to troll from the firecracker to the weather buoy and then figure it out from there. We got set up, 2 rods each, which is the limit in canada. We decided to put all the lines out on the planer boards. Jeff was running his purple bucktail and a loke, I was running a golden shiner shad rap and a big double blade bucktail (#10 colorado blades!). I started off the troll slow, about 2mph. THe reason I wanted to try that slow is because the walleye guys catch quite a few musky on crawler harnesses and their speed is about 1.5 mph. I really believe in experimenting. It’s the only way you can really learn and in some cases discover a new tactic that no one else is using! After about 30 min of trolling slow I bumped it up to the standard 3.8 – 4.2 mph. After that we got to the buoy pretty quickly.
Outside of 1 other boat there was nobody else out trolling. It was great! I think the reason was that there was supposed to be a good chance of rain. The only rain that we did see was a little spit on the way out and nothing else. As a matter of fact it even cleared up to a slight over cast and the waves were about 1.5 – 2 footers. Overall great condtions for trolling.
Once we did a lap around the buoy we changed things up. Jeff kept his purple bucktail out but changed his bodybait toa st. lawrence loke. I decided to keep the shad rap out and change to bucktail to a double black blade with black skirt. At the bottom of the buckie the skirt was red and silver. I ran it as a down rod, 10 oz of weight 15 foot back. The leader was 6 foot long 60lbs ande’s mono. We did another lap around the buoy and headed for the st. clair light. We had to clear weeds once so far.
After a few minutes I decided to head to the front of the boat to select a few more baits for changes later. All the sudden I hear the drag scream and jeff holler “Fish ON!!!!!”. I jumped up and spun around to see him grabbing the down rod. The musky hit the surface and jumped shaking it’s head……Nice Fish!! I slow out speed way down, grab the net & extend it. Head up front to grab all the hook out tools – 11 inch needle nose plier, jaw spreaders, wire cutters, boga grip and a camera. I set everything on the cooler seat and grab then net. Jeff gets to the leader but doesn’t walk down the sife of the boat to make it an easy net job so I had to reach for it. Not good, not good at all. Thankfully when the the net gets under the fish she spins and wraps herself up in it. That allows me to get her in the boat!
Woohoo! Man this is a nice fish. I reach in and pick her up by the gill plate, grab the pliers and get the 1 hook that is in her jaw out. Then we unwrap her from the net. Jeff gets the camers up and running and then I hand her off to him. I grab the camers run around the console and stand on the livewell to get a good pic. At this point she’s only been out of the water maybe 90 secs to 2 minutes. I snap 2 pics and jeff sets her in the water to get her revived. Sometimes this can take a few minutes but not with her! Almost immediately she kicked free of jeffs hand, swam out from the boat about 30 foot and then back down.
Jeff stood up and we looked at each other, coated in musky slime & dripping blood, we were grinning like kids! A quick high 5 and we cleaned everything up and reset the down rod & speed. For those that don’t know musky have huge teeth! I got a cut & 2 pokes on my right thumb jeff got a couple pokes on a finger. If you fish for musky and ever pick one up you better expect to get some kind of cut or poke. That’s just part of the game.
We trolled until dark without anything else going on. But hey all in all a really good day. We boated a 46 – 48 inch musky.
Here’s the best pic:
Related posts:
0 Comments
You can be the first one to leave a comment.