Just wanted to thank Gary for his help on my recent trip to French lake. I had asked for help in trying to catch muskies, haveing no idea where to start. I’ve been fishing my whole life, and have caught good pike, pass, walleye etc… but my buddy and I had made up our mind that we would give up some promising bass / panfish and just try to catch a muskie. On the drive up, felt that maybe we’d made a mistake and even talked of trying something else. Gary had given some good basic advice on where to start, and recommendations on what to use. Not haveing any lures for muskies, we decided to throw what we had. I was throwing a large prop bait while my partner had found a flourescent green jointed minnow plug. We tried the point right out from the boat ramp, and then figured with the wind blowing in all morning, the other side of the lake may be better. We marked tons of fish wherever the weeds started to show up on the graph usually in the 13-15′ range, so we trolled some as well. Anyway, around 10:00 my buddy said, very calmly…”I think I’ve got one” two minutes later we netted the first muskie for either one of us, I tried to measure the fish as accurately as possible, but we really wanted to get a couple pics and get it back. My closest guess/measurement was right around 46″ maybe a bit more, an amazing fish. Does catching a fish like this usually have a strange effect on people? A couple hours later we think he had a miss while fishing the shallow weeds on the North point. Gary said to try and if we did’nt get a hit leave and come back a bit later. As luck would have it, another boat caught about a 40 inch fish about 50 yards from us, we pulled over to take a quick picture for the guy. After talking to him, I tried to find a spinner, but none in the boat except for an old Blue Fox Vibramax? that I had literally found stuck to a log somewhere along the line. No bucktail left, so I dug in the spinnerbait box for my bass lures and stuck two over the treble hooks…one green, one black… you guessed it, about 5 casts,I see a flash of color at the boat, I remember someone telling me you need to figure 8 so we did. About the third time I looked at my buddy and said this won’t work, then my rod was about yanked out of my hands! A beautiful 38″ at the end of about 7 foot of line was a real rush. A quick picture and release! A huge thank you to this site and to Gary. I also might mention that was using a boat that I purchased off of this site in August. We have had a hard time thinking of much else at work lately…is this normal?
bcon
September 28, 2005 at 2:23 am
#1292204
. I have fished French a few times with no luck. I must have had bad timing.
