Saturday October 8th, my buddy and I headed out to musky fish the early morning. The temps for that morning were in the low 30s with water temps around 56-58 degrees. The cold temps are starting to kick in which in result can make these big muskies start to bite. We started out fishing some vegetation that was still standing in the lake. Jumping from patch to patch we weren't seeing much. Our first pass along this break line we didn't move any fish. The sun was just starting to poke the horizon. Early morning fall fishing is one of my favorite times to fish. The leaves are falling and sun poking through trees. Nothing better!
Back to fishing, as we moved to this next area, we noticed some of the docks were taken out where we last fished. We use docks as a quick reference guide to know where certain structure might line up. Noticing this, we backed out a little deeper than normal. As we did this, I got a follow on my first cast, small fish but still a follow. Talking to my buddy about how we haven't seen many fish. As soon as I say that he gets blown up on! I looked at him and then the rod, the bend of the rod said everything.
As he gets this fish close to boat side, I notice it's a tiger musky. A tiger musky is a rare hybridization between a female musky and a male northern pike. In this state, they are not able to reproduce. This is why they are so rare. Over the last few decades, there has been stocking of these beautiful fish into lakes. The Iowa Great Lakes is one of those places.
As he gets the fish on the top of the water, I scoop the net under it, and it slides right in. We are so jacked after this. This is a nice fish! As a musky fisherman, you can notice at a quick glance of just how long a fish is. We were taking guesses, 44, 46, is the range we were guessing. Got her on a bump board and measured to be just over 46 1/2 inches. Got a quick picture and sent her back in the water with an aggressive tail kick. Right back to the bottom of the lake she went.
We get all cleaned up net put back and we started fishing again. We started to talk about how big that fish was when we started to talk about the current state record tiger musky. We both thought it was 49 inches and over 30 something pounds. Pulled it up on our phones and our mouths dropped. 47 inches and 27.13 pounds. We started to read about some length to weight ratios for the muskies and our stomachs are hurting. Musky fishing is about taking advantage of the time you have while the windows of opportunity are present. The next day was a full moon, so we knew that the opportunities to catch fish was in the present.
Here is a look at fish! Let me know what you think.
You never know what you might encounter in a day! Take full advantage of it!
Comments
Post a Comment