Tales and Trails

BY DAVE BECK The first musky fight of the season

The summer seems to be racing by faster than me when I am on my way to the boat landing. It seems crazy that we just blew by the 4th of July. The good news is that fishing is heating up and there is plenty of time to put some more fish in the boat.

Musky fishing has long been my favorite form of fishing but the finicky esox monsters are not early season biters. Until the water really warms up, I don’t spend a lot of time chasing them. While I am waiting, I use that time to catch crappies for some Friday night garage fish fries. That’s not to say you can’t catch muskies early in the season because it can happen. A more consistent bite occurs the later we get into the season.

While the season is open, I don’t get on a lake without my musky gear. Even if it’s just for a few minutes, I always have to scratch that itch. On one of my first musky outings of the year I started off the day catching some crappies. Who doesn’t like catching, cooking and eating crappies? Besides that, the conditions were not favorable to catch muskies. The sun was high and bright without a cloud in the sky. A minor cold front had blown through and just seeing a musky would be a tall task and actually landing one would be unexpected for sure.

A quick sidenote to this story is that the “first” of every season is always the toughest. For example, it seems to take forever to find the first morel mushroom in the spring. It’s the same thing in the fall when looking for ginseng plants. Muskies are no different. Getting that first fish in the boat is a huge confidence booster and the second and third, etc., seem to come much easier and quicker.

So now I will tell you about when I stopped fishing for crappies and started fishing for muskies. I slid into the first spot where the water was calm and flat. It was like one of those pictures where it takes a minute to decipher up from down because of the reflection of the trees and sky on the water. Maybe that was the distraction that allowed a musky to slip in behind my lure. When I turned my attention back to the lure that I was retrieving back toward the boat, I saw it. A musky was closing fast and the water was swelling up behind my lure forming a V on the calm surface. An instant later the water erupted at the point of impact and the first musky fight of the year was on. A moment later the first musky of the year slipped into the dipnet and I was on the board.

My day started with a limit of crappies and ended with a musky in the boat. As far as fishing goes, I don’t know if it can get any better than that. Well, actually, I guess two limits of crappies and two muskies would be better.

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