Last summer I told you about a late-night musky fishing outing on Lake Vermilion. There’s a reason why I’m revisiting and re-telling the story of that night, so keep reading to find out why.

It was just like any other late night musky outing. The sun and blue sky had long disappeared, giving way to the moon and darkness. I’ve always said that catching a musky is always a thrill, but to catch a musky in the darkness is that same thrill times two. When you’re fighting a fish in the daylight, you’re watching it unfold before your eyes. A daylight fish splashes and throws the same amount of water as a nighttime fish but in the daylight your eyes dominate your senses. You hear the thrashing but you don’t really hear the thrashing. When you’re fighting a fish at night your sight is replaced by your ears and your imagination. The best way I can think to compare the experiences so you understand is to use a daytime thunderstorm and compare it to the same intensity of a storm that rolls through after dark. The difference is that at night you “feel” the storm and the experience is heightened. It’s exactly the same with night time musky fishing. Does that make sense?

We were casting towards a rock reef at 9:37 p.m. There was a light wind blowing just hard enough to keep the oversized mosquitos at bay. Justin Durand (that’s both who he is and where he is from) was in the back of the boat throwing an oversized topwater lure towards the reef and I was pitching a subsurface lure to deeper water. When the fish hit Justin’s lure, it