Saturday Nights alright for fighting……..

Friday and Saturday nights we fished the east side shoreline and a couple of our local rock reefs. The shoreline bite was slow for walleyes Friday evening to say the least. We primarily ran Stick baits, Husky Jerks, Little Rippers and we did run jointed shad raps with mediocre success. The few fish we did catch were concentrated on the edge of a shoreline rock flat in 10 feet of water.

Saturday evening we changed strategies and the first 3 fish we hooked all came clear out of the water! We targeted the shoreline right outside our boat harbor trying to drum up a few Smallies. While retying a spinner my fishing partner Leroy Carl yelps, trolling motor. As I look up I see him scurry to the bow of the boat and his 6 lb. Test, V-lining across the front of the boat to the west for open water. As the slack comes out of the line about a 4-5 lb. Northern comes straight up out of the water and does a summersault, back down it goes and spits the hook.

Shortly after that with nothing else happening in shallow, we make a move to a nearby 6 foot deep rock reef, that we planned to fish after dark and tried our luck there. About 10 minutes later Leroy lands a nice Super doo smallie. This fish too made a nice jump before ending up in the net.

After landing that fish the boats started to gather around and we initiated our evening trolling pattern. It always amazes me how a landing net can attract so much attention.

We’re now on our second pass and I was running a fire tiger #12 husky jerk when I hooked into what I turned and said to Leroy "this will be my biggest fish of the year so far". I thumbed the spool to see if I could turn the fish, and did momentarily. The fish reeled in fairly easy until it was about 30 feet back, then it took a turn west and stripped line moving out away from the boat. This played out a couple minutes and then it surfaced, 15 feet out to the side of the boat. This was the biggest fish I’ve had the pleasure to hook. It was a 51" Muskie and the fight was on! Leroy gasps "Holy Smokes" (I substituted a word there). This fish just turned, dove and swam out fifty feet of line in nothing flat. I thought to myself, "how are we going to get this thing in the boat". Well by the time I retrieved the fish half way back to the boat it took another run and did a tail dance about twenty-five feet to the side of the boat. Now that attracted some attention! The boats began to circle us, (like I had time to care) to see if we were going to land this critter. After another two runs, one across the backside of the boat, Leroy says "it spinning the boat around". Finally it surfaces next to the boat, He lowers the net into the water and it swam right into the net. Well half way into the net! Leroy couldnt get enough leverage on the net so I dropped the rod, reached over the side and grabbed the hoop of the net and tail of the fish and scooped it into the boat. This thing was unbelievable! A couple of the guys around were congratulating us wondering how big it was. My only concern was to get this thing out of my boat and back in the water, alive! After about what seemed an eternity, we finally got the hooks out of its mouth, charged the camera flash, (of course the battery is nearly dead) snapped off a quick picture. We had no tape long enough to measure it, so Leroy laid the landing net handle down next to it and marked it off. We quickly released it and just sat and stared at each other in amazement. We later took the big judge we had (30 ½") and measured it off on the handle. The fish was going to go into the 50 inch range. We used a tape measure the next morning on the landing net, 51 inches.

What an evening, We hooked three consecutive fish, of three different species, and all three cleared the surface of the water. The picture didn’t turn out very good, we didn’t take enough time to get a good photo but I’ll always have the memories and story to tell.

The rest of the night we trolled for walleyes, changing baits often but could only muster up a couple fish. The amount of boat traffic from structure to structure told us that we weren’t alone with the slow bite. The other guy’s we talked to fishing the eastside by us reported the same. Next I will be moving to the north side to check that out bite.