unusual fish story

here’s a pretty good story for ya.

as i posted earlier a friend and i were down fishing the foot of the lake on thursday. did pretty good chasing around the white bass for a couple of hours. even though the fishing was great i will still remember this trip for something very strange that we saw:

as we were motoring from one bunch of seagulls to another feeding frenzy that was going on a couple hundered yards away i noticed something putruding out of the water. at first glance a thought it was a log or stump that was floating around. i even told my friend to watch out for the stick. he noded, but as we got closer i could tell it wasn’t a log and thought it must be a big turtle. it took until it was about 5 yards infront of us that i realized it wasn’t a turtle, it was a GAIGANTIC, HUGEMUNGOUS, almost MONSTEROUS looking northern (musky?)!!! it was holding its self at a 45 degree angle to the water with its head about 2′ out of the water and its very toothy mouth WIDE OPEN!! i couldn’t believe my eyes as i watched it swirl away once are boat was practically by it. that thing must have been waiting for one of them seagull to make the mistake of thinking it was a striper and grab em right out of the air (it was certainly big enough to eat a seagull).

thats the ony thing i could think of. has anyone else ever see anything like this or have any clue what else it could have been doing in such a strange postion

Never seen it myself but I have heard of people seeing muskies do this, why I know not, but have heard they are sunning themselves, but knows. I have seen bowfin and gar do simular things.

Hey Jake I never seen what your explaining. But I’ve seen northern jumping all the way out of the water along the summer months. A local told me there gilling they do this along the summer when the water heats up an the oxygen lowers. They shake head an open there mouth an it cleans the algae from there gills i was told.

I have seen this a few times from large northern on Lake Vermilion over opening. I always assumed that they tried to eat something too big and are stuggling to get it down. Awesome sight regardless of why they do it.

yes, several years ago I was fishing for crappies at a dock on lake calhoun in mpls. saw what I thought was a log floating from quite a ways out, it kept moving closer and I kept my eye on it so it wouldn’t hit my line. as it approached it seemed self directed ? ! and like you said it was a large northern head out of the water just swimmin along. it went under the dock and then just took off. no good guesses what it was doing maybe just checking out the goofus on the dock. anyway good fishing, kenn

I’ve never seen one stick it’s head out of the water like that either. I wonder how long they can do it? I have seen huge muskies go totally airborn for no apparent reason several times though. I also have seen huge ones basically suspended right below the surface and almost let you touch them with a rod or the boat before slowly moving.

I witnessed a muskie doing this on Lake Arbutus by Hatfield Wi. maybe 5 years ago. This was a very large fish and he cruised past me while catfishing just at sundown. His whole head was out of the water and he did this for 10 – 15 yards!!! Im glad to see that Im not crazy because most people that I have told this story to looked at me like I was nuts. Good fishing to all of you!!!

*geeez*… so this is how the story of the lochness monster got started!.. was just a LARGE Pike!!.. amazin!…. and I cant imagine why they might do something like this… sounds like a question to pass by John Pitlo… so I will drop him a line and see if his biology experience can shed light upon this phenomenon….. very interesting!.. would have been great to have a picture of!!…

…..that the Muskie are just as tired of the Lake Lice (PWCs) as we are and have begun to take it upon themselves to eradicate them?

Okay, don’t take this to the bank, but here’s another tidbit that I seem to remember from a couple of years ago. A new state record musky was caught on Spirit lake, and the guy had to take it to get the weight verified. He was able to stuff the head into his livewell, and on the way to the official weigh-in, the fish barfed up a seagull.

The story used to be online at the IA DNR website, but a search for it turned up blank. I think they recycle the monthly news so there’s only a year’s backlog online. In the picture, the thing looks like a dinosaur, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they found birds, squirrels, and household pets inside the thing.