My dad is a lifelong euchre player with extraordinary confidence. He is always willing to give constructive criticism and free advice. Even though you may not know my dad, if you’re a euchre player, you know the player. My dad has a “go to” line that he uses pretty freely at the card table: “If I person has a butt chewing coming, you got to give it to them.” I want you to remember that phrase as you read about my last musky fishing outing of the year. Spoiler alert: that’s the outing where I wanted to fire my long time net man.

It was a sun drenched, unseasonably warm afternoon and the perfect day to squeeze in one last outing of the season. It was a last chance before I conceded that it was getting colder and indeed time to start thinking about storing the musky gear for the year.

The best spot to find a late season musky is to first find a green weed bed. The catch to that is the later in the season it is, the harder it is to find green, fish holding weeds. The other factor is finding green weed beds that hold hungry muskies. I guess finding hungry muskies is a problem that happens all season long, not just when it’s getting colder out.

So there I was, throwing a topwater lure and I pitched it across the last weed bed that I could find on the lake. When my lure was halfway back to the boat a musky slammed it and that’s when my netman kicked off a myriad or errors. It seemed like he was trying his best to knock the fish off my line. He did almost everything wrong, and that included dropping the net in the water while the musky thrashed alongside the boat.

In what seemed like forever, the fish did all the classic musky maneuvers that would usually result in throwing hooks leading to freedom. The fish thrashed, rolled, tail walked, and went under the boat. I suppose at times during my career I’ve seen all those tactics work in favor of the fish but for whatever reason, they didn’t work on this day. Before any further damage occurred, the net was pulled from the water. An instant later the musky laid safely in the bottom of the net. 

So there you have it. It was one of the poorest excuses for a musky net job that I have ever witnessed first hand. In spite of everything, the fish was landed and the season ended with a win. It was not a great conversation that I had with my net man but like my dad always says: “If I person has it coming……”.  

Did I mention that I was fishing by myself?

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