DAVE BECK

It’s the heart of the fall hunting season but I need to take a break from that to tell you about my last musky fishing outing of the year. Well, I really hope that it’s not the last outing but if it is, I’m okay with that.  

Late in the musky season the lake, the boat ramp, and the parking lot are pretty lonely places. After I launched my boat, I wondered if I could just park my truck and trailer on the ramp, staged for my return some three plus hours later. Even though it looked like I had the lake to myself I pulled my truck and trailer into the parking lot, just in case.  

During the course of the fishing season the lake changes: weed beds come and go, water temperatures rise and fall, and fish move around. Knowing when and where the fish move is a good thing but mostly it feels like a game of hide and seek. I guess that’s why the late season victories over those toothy adversaries are special.  

Once on the water, I hit a lot of my usual spots and a couple places where I rarely fished. I learned where the muskies were not, so I slipped into the corner of the lake that had had lush green weeds all season long, but now the patch was reduced to an area half the size of my boat. I threw a cast behind the weed bed and two cranks later I was dealing with a 28-inch musky. Now that’s a very big fish and the fact that was a musky raised the value of the catch and the experience, at least for me. It wasn’t much of a fight because of my heavy gear but the greenish, iridescent youngster of a fish was gorgeous. As muskies age and get bigger their colors and markings tend to fade but no matter their size, a musky is a musky and any musky is a trophy in my book.  

Having possibly located a potential pattern, I searched for other visible weed beds which for this time of year are almost as elusive as the muskies themselves. I eventually gave up trying and just started fishing. Lo and behold, I almost bumped into one. I pitched my lure past the small mostly green weeds and about where you’d expect a fish to hit, one did. The musky was a 38-incher and had the start of some shoulders on it. Compared to my first catch of the day, it was a humdinger. The fish had jumped completely out of the water, did a couple of tail walks and ended with a series of alligator rolls right into my net. Immediately after dipping the fish my lure fell free making the release part of my meeting with the musky quick and easy.  

As the fish swam off I realized that I was probably catching a glimpse of my last musky of the season. More often than not, my last trip ends fish-less because of the tough conditions so I wasn’t experienced with closing out the year on such a high note. That warm fuzzy feeling lasted until the boat was loaded and I was headed for home.    

My musky fishing season is now officially over. I already miss it.  

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