Epic trip first muskie

Just made it home from northern MN was up off the sawbill trail camping and fishing with my dad since last Saturday , first lake we hit we found a lot of active walleye but almost all were 7-10 inch fish , we managed a few keepers with the biggest around 16” this lake also has a population of Muskie a native shoe PAC strain i had never caught ,well long story short i hooked into three of them landed one got a nice picture and measured in at 37 inches which is pretty big for the native shoe PAC strain , the other two muskies i hooked i lost at the boat the one snapped my 6 pd walleye line . The other Muskie had actually latched onto a 10 inch walleye that had just hit my jig . So i get the musky into net range and he spits out this little walleye i had initially Hooked and swims off . The Muskie were so active on this lake that we decided to leave and try another lake that only holds walleye and perch . Once there we found some nice eyes and a few perch got one giant 14′ perch and a couple 19” tagged walleyes a fair amount of eater size 14-17 and a few decent pike mixed in . Weather was crazy up there i swear it changes every 3 hours . Also seen a big doe running along the shore like it was being chased , the next night some other campers told us when we left the night before they had heard a lot of splashing and seen a cow moose swimming toward the island on the lake acting like it was being chased , they got there binoculars out and could see 3 wolves along the shore going up and down looking for the cow , they also said they could hear the alpha male in the back growling like crazy and going after the other wolves . This all happened within a mile of our campsite . Same time every year for us that 3rd week of September can be epic up there . I was not targeting the muskies either we were walleye fishing and i first noticed them after seeing them trailing my boat then they actually were attacking our stringer when we would toss that over board , the one i landed actually hit a lindy style spinner rig and minnow in a wind blown area headed into a bay the part i am having trouble with is the walleye numbers were good on that lake this year but the size was considerably smaller then last year

That shoepac musky strain is quite rare and unusual. So far as I know, nobody can really explain their limited growth. Many years ago the DNR was using the shoepac strain for stocking, then realized they were inferior for growth potential and has long since been discontinued.

Leech lake strain is almost exclusive now for most all stocking efforts except for perhaps a limited Tiger muskie stocking in a certain few lakes around the metro.

Nice report from a remote area and is interesting the variances in fish sizes caught. Infertile lakes I’m sure…but that 14″ perch.

Yeah that perch was biggest I’ve ever caught an I’m used to catching jumbos down here on the river , that was my first musky and although they stay smaller then others i cant imagine catching a 50 incher the battle those things put up is world class . I can definitely see were chasing muskies can be addicting , we are already planning on hitting that lake first again next year