I Wanna Do That Again

I've found that I like to sneak into those little fishing niches that seem to get overlooked by other fisherman.  I discovered one.  There's a lake not far from my house that gets stocked with muskies.  From what I can tell, practically no one even gives them a second thought when the lake is iced over.  This lake gets a moderate bit of ice fishing attention, but they're all chasing gills and crappies.  On a recent trip to this lake, I asked a few local guys about the muskies in the lake and every single one of them talked about catching or seeing them in the summer.  I asked if anyone ever went after the muskies in the winter and I generally got a shrug and a "not that I know of."  Apparently the local fishermen don't believe that they'd catch anything if they tried to pursue the muskies.  This works for me.  I'm pretty sure that I can.

I have a friend who fishes this lake in the summer and he gave me a good idea on where to start.  The lake has two main bodies that are connected by a narrow stretch.  There is a tiny island in the middle of this skinny section.  The portion of the lake to the north is basically a big weedy flat that doesn't get more than 15 feet deep.  The section to the south is a huge bowl that drops down to 50 feet.  The narrow stretch is only about 5 feet deep, but it drops off quickly just after the island.  My friend said that he catches a lot of bass in this area when they come up off of this drop off and head into the shallows to feed.  He figured that the muskies used this area in the same way.  It sounded like a plan so I worked on the wife until she gave me a half day's leave to hit the hard water.

I found the drop off just as he described it.  I set one tip-up in the shallows near the drop and another just off of the drop.  I then got my new jigging pole and picked another spot off of the drop.  I had a jigging spoon on this rod and I hooked a shiner through the lip with the treble hook.  I set this on a stand and positioned it near the bottom.  I jigged it occasionally, but I noticed that the shiner was doing a lot of moving on his own so for the most part I let him do the work.

I fished for 3 hours with no action, moving my tip-ups now and then, but leaving the pole where I originally placed it.  Lulled into a bit of a haze from the hours without action, I absent mindedly gave the spoon a shake and then dug into my backpack in search of my sunflower seeds.  When I looked back at my rod, it was bent towards the hole and making big, slow bobs.  I grabbed the rod, stand and all, and lifted it.  I felt the weight of a big fish.  I fumbled to get the rod out of the holder and dropped that out of the way.  The fish at first didn't budge, but then slowly moved out, taking drag.  I could feel it shaking its head and tried to stay with it as it swam for awhile in one direction and then reversed and took off the other way.  I eventually got the fish somewhere near the hole, close enough that it sent a huge cloud of bubbles through the hole with the swish of its tail as it went on one more run.  Then, just like that, the hook pulled out and it was gone.  I never even got a look at it. 

Exhilerated more than disappointed, I sat there for a minute with a stupid smile on my face.  I wanted another go at one of these submarines and I almost immediately started thinking about adjustments that I'd need to make to better my chances.  As I went back over the fight in my head, I realized that I hadn't really set the hook.  I was using 10 pound test and I couldn't know how deep into the mouth the spoon was.  Knowing that those sharp teeth just had to nick that line to end the battle, I think that I babied the fish too much.  I'll be beefing up my line and I'm definitely going to let her have it when I get into my next one.  Something else that I realized is that I probably would have had a lot of trouble getting that thing out of the hole if I did manage to steer it to the surface.  I don't want to use a gaff, but I'm going to start bringing a pair of mechanic's gloves to give me a little protection and confidence when I reach in after my next water wolf.  I'll be replaying that 5 minute fight over and over in my head until I can get out next.  Better start working on the wife again.