Two Hours of Fishing = Two Fish

Matt Clay and I fished yesterday 8/9 under some of the best fishing conditions I've ever been in: clouds ALL day, slight breeze, warm, fronts moving around us, excellent water clarity. In fact, it was so cloudy all day that at 6:30PM it felt like 6:30AM. We had the same light levels from start to finish.

Enough of the weather talk... To make a long story short, we had action on just about every spot we fished. Ten to eleven fish contacted with all but three strikes. Had a dandy hammer a large plastic bait, but it never felt hooks. Lots of action on topwater, too!

I woke today unsure of what the day would bring. Conditions could only go downhill from yesterday, but the front isn't supposed to move through until tonight (8/10) so we were still in prefrontal conditions. I met up with Hedrik and we hit the river to give it a shot.

Our game-plan was to hit spots we hadn't previously fished. Lots of our go-to spots are getting hit hard and it's time to find newer fish. Not to mention try to get data from fish in different areas.

Our first spot was a massive weed flat with a very defined weed-edge. The clarity looked excellent as it did the day before, so I clipped on the same big plastic bait that enticed a few fish into either following or striking yesterday. I made a comment to Hedrik that I thought today was going to be the day I would finally stick a fish on a big plastic bait.

Shortly after saying that I felt a tap and whipped around just in time to see what was now causing my rod to vibrate like the line was attached to the rotor of a helicopter. I look out to see a giant blender for a mouth churning the tanin stained waters to a white froth. The headshakes were so violent I could feel them in my gut. Thirty-five seconds later I was staring down at a 47" that inhaled my bait. In fact, it was bleeding a bit so we cut the hooks as most muskie anglers would had they seen the slight pulsatile blood flow.

After a while the bleeding stopped (while we were sampling her). She swam away strong and descended after a short bit on the surface. We released her into 1.9m where she stayed for at least 30 mins, but at the 1-hour mark she was elsewhere... out in 5m of water. When we tried to come back at the 2-hour mark she was nowhere to be found. We searched and combed the nearby waters for a few hours to no avail. I am presuming she retreated to the extreme deep water nearby (30+m/100+ft). We will return tomorrow to try and find her.

Oh, and about an hour after releasing the 47" we got another smaller one (~36")! We only fished for about 2-hours total today (maybe 2-3), so I'm glad we made the most of it! Who knows what would have happened had we found the 47" at the 2-hour mark... Maybe we could have had a hat trick!