My First Musky

    My first experience with muskie fishing was in 1959, as described in "My Introduction to Muskies", when my father caught a 52", 29lb spawned out female. Now, we fast forward to the summer of 1978 and my experience catching my first legal musky.
    It was mid-July, 1978, and my wife, young son and mother were in Pennsylvania visiting my grandmother. Dad had called me the previous evening and asked if I wanted to go fishing. Of course I did! Having a young child tended to keep my wife and I too preoccupied to do much fishing, so I jumped at the chance to wet a line. By this time dads' old wooden boat was just a fond memory. I had purchased an aluminum boat in 1969 which had been put to use as often as possible, and now it was the craft that was creating memories.
    I picked dad up about mid-morning and we headed off to the bait shop to get a couple of suckers. Our technique hadn't changed much from the 1950's. The lakes we fished in central Wisconsin varied in size from 35 to 110 acres, and at that time we usually were on the smaller lakes because they were easy to row around. We still used a single hook through the nose of the sucker and used a rubber band around the middle of the sucker to hold the leader to keep the bait level. We would use large bobbers to set the line depth, one deep and one shallow depending on the structure of the lake we were on. Then we just start slowly rowing around the lake following the drop-off and hoping to find a lunker hiding in the weeds. I like to think of this technique as the "musky fishing the lazy way." Since you couldn't row that fast because of the bait, fishing in this manner was actually quite relaxing, and definitely enjoyable, whether you caught something or not. And, since our lakes were class C muskie waters, the catching was usually "not". There was the occasional undersized musky, and now and then a northern or two, but we weren't concerned about "catching", only the "fishing". Although we may not have caught many muskies, the time we spent on the water over the years brings back many fond memories, some serious, and some humorous. The memories of my first musky tend to fall into the second category.
    It was mid-afternoon and probably our 2nd or 3rd loop around the lake. We were fishing on Marl Lake, a small, 15 acre lake in the Waupaca Chain O'Lakes and as we were approaching the drop along the eastern shoreline, we could see a large fish swimming up out of the depths and going into the bulrushes that lined that section of the shallows. We were too far away to tell if it was a musky or northern, but did assume that it was of legal size, whatever it was.
    I was rowing, so as soon as we got close enough, dad started casting a Creek Chub Pikie Minnow into the area where we last saw the fish. As we got a little closer, I also started casting, hoping to entice the potential lunker to bite. We cast for a few minutes along the edge of the bulrushes but our efforts were in vain. We couldn't raise the fish, couldn't see the fish - we figured it must have returned to the deeper water as we were rowing over.
    Just then, my sucker started coming to the surface. As mentioned, it was July, and the warmer water was having ill effects on the sucker. It was evidently in the process of dying and was surfacing as if to get a last gasp of air. Suddenly, about 20 feet back in the bulrushes a V wake started zooming toward the sucker, almost like the torpedo wakes you used to see in the movies. The fish had been lurking in the shallows waiting for dinner, and we obliged by bringing it to him. The sucker was close enough that we were able to watch as the fish struck the sucker so hard that it was knocked off the hook and went flying through the air. For a second or two I thought that we didn't have the fish on, then the float started moving away from us.
    To say that I was excited would be an understatement. I grabbed the rod, stood up, and set the hook as if it were a white shark on the line. I overdid it so much that I nearly fell backwards out of the boat, but the fish was still on the line. I did have the sense to keep the line taut, and got to watch as the fish made a couple of beautiful leaps out of the water. I started reeling in, and the fish started swimming toward us just slightly faster than I was reeling, so there was some slack in the line. As the fish swam around the stern of the boat, it managed to get the line looped around the propeller on the trolling motor. I should have raised the motor out of the water before we started trolling, but had not. Now it looked like I was about to lose a fish because of that stupid mistake.
    Marl Lake is a beautiful green, clear lake, and we could see the fish motionless about 15 feet below us. Using some quick, if not smart, thinking, I reached below the propeller and grabbed the line going to the fish so I could keep it tight. Then using my other hand I removed the loop from the motor. Luckily there was only one loop, and it is hard to say what the outcome would have been if there had been more. Keeping the line tight with one hand, I grabbed the rod and continued the battle.
    It wasn't long before we had the fish alongside the boat and netted it. It was a beautiful tiger musky, and two inches over the legal limit at the time. We got the fish out of the net, and I noticed that the hook wasn't even in the fish. It had caught around one of the gill rakers. One flop, and the hook went flying. I was quite fortunate I had kept the line tight, otherwise one bit of slack and it would have been goodbye musky! Guess that fish just wanted to go home with me.
    Being the first legal musky of my life, we of course had it mounted. The taxidermist was a friend of ours and he was nice enough to skin the fish out and give us two nice fillets to take home. Yes, it was VERY good eating! As good, or better, than walleye in my opinion.
    This bit of a fishing farce was the start of what was to become a series of fishing bloopers that occurred on some of my fishing excursions with various companions. More of those will come to light in future postings.
I hope you enjoyed this one.

Jaymz