On June 26th thru July 1st I found myself back up north again. This time it was to fish my first muskie tournament of 2013. What I had high hopes and much anticipation for was only a meager little event in which the lake gave my tournament partner Steve Peterson and I a brutal ass-kicking.
My 79yr old grandfather joined me on this quick trip; nowadays a 5 day trip for me is a quick one. We hadn’t gone up north together by ourselves in a few years so it was refreshing to have an elder with me rather than any fishing buddies, or go by myself. Since grandpa is no longer fit, and suffers from a bad hip, he can no longer join me in the boat for long hours. I fished by myself for much of this one.
At this time, conditions had finally progressed into a typical summertime bite. Fish early and late, and go deep. Water temperatures ranged anywhere from 72 to 76 degrees on the lakes and river I fished, and feeding windows were short. The “experts” said lakes were still running behind. On weedgrowth, yes, but on temperature I beg to differ.
Throughout the week and the days before the region had been rocked by a lot of rain and thunderstorms. Each day it rains, many lakes are gaining water. But the more it’s been raining, it’s been more difficult to make my first float trip of the year.
One of the few highlights of my weekend was christening the 14ft jon boat I rebuilt and restored. Here she is, fully rigged and ready to go in the water for the first time on the Wisconsin River. The flow was still high and somewhat fast, but manageable.
My “Musky Jumper” floats, and fishes beautifully. No leaks, tons of storage space, room for two (almost too much for even just myself), and excellent handling. The 6 horse pushes this boat faster than it ever did with the old 12 footer aluminum v I previously used. I was excited to finally fish with this for two hours before a thunderstorm and hail storm of epic proportions forced me off water. Luckily I didn’t venture too far downstream and go on my typical 2 mile long float. Apparently it rained three inches during the 90 minutes I was forced to wait in the car back at the boat landing.
When I return later this month, a full day float trip will be my first priority.
With thunderstorms and a lot of rain putting a halt in my fishing activity outside of this brief float trip the first two days, I was regulated on my backyard. It gets boring for me quickly out there, but it did not disappoint. The crappies didn’t seem to mind, as I found them in amazing numbers, and sizes which seldom happens for me unless it’s early and late spring. I found them stacked in wood, fooled by a combination of jig and plastics, and hair jigs tied by my friend Jim Gronaw (River Critter Hair Jigs).
At one point on Wednesday evening I was catching them cast after cast. Most were 10 to 14 inches, with all the others being smaller, encompassing a variety of different year classes. One of my many goals for 2013 was to catch big crappies and get some good photos. Mission accomplished!
Many of you folks might be thinking the following; “Well, did ya keep them?!?”
I like to release all of my big panfish. On my little lake, all the big ones go back.
Biologically speaking, a lot of my lakes up north have been raped of big fish and all they contain now are stunted 7-8-9 inchers. Overharvest, continuous keeping, and keeping of little guys. It’s real bad to the point WI is considering establishing size limits and reduced bag limits for crops. Some unexploited gems are still out there, however. Despite their prolific breeding, not a lot of lakes are able to sustain populations of large adult fish. This occurs due to exploitation, and slow growth rates. My little lake is one of these places that I will continue to keep the big ones in.
After telling my pal Jim Gronaw about my success with his hair jigs, we talked about the concepts of catch and release and catch and keep. He had some interesting things to say. (NOTE: He writes for In-Fisherman and specializes in big panfish species):
Not all lakes are capable of producing or sustaining quality panfish species, regardless of angler pressure or harvest.But at least in my neck of the world, many anglers continue to harvest only, and I mean ONLY, the top-end crappies in any given system and complain when they have to settle for smaller fish. Given the cyclical nature of crappie spawns and growth dynamics, and the ancient concepts that we can ”never’ fish down a fishery, it’s a wonder there are any good crappie waters around. You can fish down’ size’, but almost never fish down ‘numbers’ in a panfish population. In my 61 years of fishing, I have seen many prime fisheries gutted due to the glut and overharvest of ONLY the larger bluegills, crappies or perch in a given system. Most of these have yet to return to their ‘glory years’ of producing 14 inch crappies or 10 inch bluegills. Releasing big panfish just makes sense. I keep mid-size fish for a meal. And it is no crime to keep a hard-earned trophy.But I am thoroughly convinced that if more anglers would release large panfish that our waters would benefit greatly. It works for bass, trout, and muskies…it works for panfish as well. Releasing of big panfish is the final frontier in catch and release fishing. It is sad that most of today’s panfish anglers, far more skilled than their those of even 10 years ago, refuse to believe that they have any part or responsibility in creating and maintaining good fisheries through good catch and release ethics. Keep what you want, but don’t complain when the fish are all dinks. Quality panfish lakes need to be treated with care.
After my first two days of leisure with the panfish, it was time to finally concentrate on the muskies. On Friday the 28th, I began prefishing for Sunday’s tournament with the WMT Muskie Country Series. It was a one-day event on one of my home lakes in the area.
I prefished Friday from 6am until 12:30pm. It rained the entire time and I didn’t see a musky. This was really bad. I had never gone fishless like this on this lake in all the times I’ve fished it for muskies. I knew immediately that things wouldn’t be good for Sunday.
The next day I prefished with Steve, out of his dad’s brand new Lund Pro V 1775. I was assigned the duty of driving this sexy beast on the water and navigating us. In nearly 7 hours we could only raise one musky. Better, but still not good.
Sunday was the big day and we were team no. 5. Blast-off was at 6am and a total of eleven boats fished until 3pm. Only one muskie (45″) was registered for the event at 8am. It was caught from a 10 to 15ft developing weedline that was being fished by three to four other boats at the same time……. Practically anyone’s fish, really…. This would be the only catch amongst the eleven boats competing. The lake was off. Dead.
As for us, I had one undersize tiger swipe and miss near boatside. When the event concluded at 3pm, we learned by checking our phones thru Facebook that the winning team proceeded to leave the lakeat 830am following catching the 45″, hoping the lead would hold and no one else would catch. I’m not a fan of cockiness but that’s what it seemed like to us. It was demoralizing to learn that we really had no chance to compete on this day. I wish we knew how to have overconfidence but at least we showed gamesmanship and humility by fighting it out until 3pm and busting our butts trying to catch something from the dead sea.
Faring poorly on our first showing of the 2013 season, Steve and I will be fishing a few more events this year.
Outside of this event, I did get to fish elsewhere for muskies and worked one of my favorite action lakes where I had been bringing several 40 to 45 inchers to boatside throughout June. Following my day-1 of prefishing Friday evening, I found an awesome window from 6pm until 9pm in which the rain dissipated, the clouds broke up, and the sunshine came. Fishing with my favorite Curly Sue near open water I raised five, caught one (my largest of this subpar muskie year, a 42″ beauty), and lost one. The lake is about 250 acres in size and it felt good to finally bring a nice one into the new net I had bought the day before (Frabill Conservation Series).
Following the Sunday tournament I was going to fish that evening, and again somewhere the next morning before it was time to return to Chicago. I was going to go back to my same lake from Friday evening and do muskies, and if they were bad again I would go look for big smallmouth bass the next morning.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do either. After I launched solo, I put the boat in reverse so I could leave from shore. In the process my boat’s remote control locked up, got jammed, and broke. In the process of un-jamming it the boat did a 360 near shore, I crashed into some guy’s pier and somehow avoided additional damage to my boat. With the control being broken and without a way to continue operating my boat I was out of luck. I was told to never fish angry but was pissed off beyond belief because my day of fishing couldn’t have gotten any worse at that point. I didn’t even make a single cast and returned to the house to open up my control and find that a few pins inside broke.
The next morning I took it into the shop for my repair guy to examine the Evinrude and its control unit. The control was indeed broken and needed a new pin. Additionally, one of the cables used for the throttle locked up and froze too. Luckily the boat broke at a good time for me because Fourth of July Holiday Weekend is my lone excuse of the year when not to fish and be on the water. With that being said, it could have been much worse. Luckily I will be back north again next weekend for a quickie with my dad to get the outboard fixed, and get me back on the water again. Unsure with the cost of repairs, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay.
In six years of fishing from this boat 50 to 75 days per year, I was fortunate to never have a mechanical break down like this until now.
Till my next post after next weekend……. I don’t know where I’ll be fishing again, but it’s gonna be someplace good.
