Outdoor Tales & Trails: Another harbinger of spring

By Dave Beck
Posted 3/23/23

I can’t forecast the weather for this week, but I do have a warm weather topic and given our crazy long winter, that’s the best I can offer. I spent a few hours at the Minnesota …

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Outdoor Tales & Trails: Another harbinger of spring

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I can’t forecast the weather for this week, but I do have a warm weather topic and given our crazy long winter, that’s the best I can offer. I spent a few hours at the Minnesota Muskie Expo held on the State Fairgrounds. It was a great time to live in the moment of big fish, new lures, and old friends. 

The musky show is a lot like the turkey hunting postcard: both are harbingers of spring. On the eve of yet another snowstorm, the Expo provided a ray of hope that soon enough the snow will be gone and it will be time to chase big fish. New fishing lures provide high expectations that the shiny works of art will fool the toughest critic of them all: the mighty musky. 

The strategy involved in attending the show is a lot like fishing a new lake. The first thing I do is survey the lay of the land/lake, or in this case, the show by walking the perimeter, eyeballing the booth locations and potential points of purchase. It’s like driving around a lake and watching the electronics for ledges, drop-offs, and points of interest. During my walk, I marked some mental waypoints of booths that I needed to hone in on before leaving.   

A popular stop for me is the LAX Reproductions booth. Basically, it’s a wall of dreams. The rest of the booths have all the tools to help make your dreams a reality. If only catching a monster musky were as simple as that. I haven’t had the need to use the services of LAX Reproductions but I can assure you that it’s not for lack of effort. 

For the last 20-some years that I have gone to the Expo, I have always stopped at the Ghost Tails booth and I have always purchased bucktails from them. Sadly, that streak ends this year as they have made their last lure. Easily I have more of their lures in my tackle box than all other brands combined. I guess I have about a year until the next Expo to figure out who my new lure supplier will be. 

I continued to troll around the Expo and it was easy to be in awe of how lures have become works of art. They are miniature replicas of everything from perch and northern pike and they look almost too good to use. It’s easy to find new patterns, brands and gotta haves. It doesn’t take much to convince me that a new lure will be the next best thing to help me catch a monster fish. I just wish muskies were as easy to persuade.  

Didn’t get enough Dave this week? Visit “Outdoor Trails and Tales with Dave Beck” on Facebook for photos and video of Dave’s adventures. You can share your own photos and video with him there as well, or by emailing him at dave@piercecountyjournal.news Also, check out OTT content on Instagram @thepiercecountyjournal

Minnesota Muskie Expo, Dave Beck, Outdoor Tales & Trails, outdoors