WI River, April 15 to 17

Spent 3 days with my son last week, chasing eyes on the river below Nekoosa. We stayed away from the crowds at the dam, and spent all our time between 10 mile creek and the head of Petenwell. With perfect weather all 3 days, and decent action, all we were lacking were a few more eaters. Boated about 60 eyes in total, with only 3 legal fish and none in the slot. My son got his first sturgeon, and I got two of those pesky muskie that frequent these waters, a 30 incher and the bememoth 45 or so incher shown. Didn’t see the fish for the first ten minutes, so thought it was a big carp at first, but then we got a glimpse of him. My son fought him for a while while I tried to boat it. After two futile attempts to get him into my rubber walleye net ( he was so girthy, he wouldn’t bend into the net), and two hand-landing attempts, the line got twisted around the rod tip as I began to lift him up and created some slack….he took off and bust the twisted line. Favorite eye bait was the orange catalpa paddletail, which the muskie also seemed to like, although the walleye were smacking jig/minnow combo too.
Water temps ranged from 4o to 45 in the areas we fished. River was very low, as no major water was being let thru to fill’er up. No current to speak of.

Glad you got into the fish! Too bad that you couldn’t get that horse of a musky in the boat. Cool pics regardless

Nice report Z-man.

That was a darn nice looking muskie! To bad you couldn’t entice her into the boat for a picture or two.

Quite a few years back I learned that same tough lesson about trying to put to big of a fish into to small of a net.

Best thing to do under those circumstances is to slowly slide your hand under there belly, then try & slide your other hand under her head on the other side and into her gill plate. Cradle her in your arms and pick her up. Quite often, it doesn’t work on the first try but once they’re tired enough, that first hand under the belly will often calm them down.
I’ve only done it once though, so there may be a better way also.

Yup, would’ve been nice to land it and get actual measurement and weight, and pics, but whadya gonna do?? It’ll just get bigger for the next time we hook it.