A Go At Campau Lake

I spent Wednesday evening on Campau Lake in hopes of tangling with a muskie or two.  I brought all of my big lures and my muskie rod and reel, along with some smaller bass gear.  It was a nice night with a lot of sun and quite a bit of wind.  I did forget my temp sensor, so I'm not sure of the water temperature.

I dedicated the first couple of hours to fishing the bluegill pattern Super Shad.  I was kind of feeling out the lake to get an idea of the topography.  I noticed that it is quite shallow on the north end with weeds already reaching the surface in places.  Most of the shoreline was bordered by a nice shallow flat that ran 4 to 6 feet.  This should be the place where the spring muskies are holding.

Something that I noticed right away was that the lake felt pretty small, and even smaller with the 10 or so boats fighting for real estate.  In addition to the people fishing, there were a couple of big speed boats circling the lake.  One blew by me so fast and so close I thought that I was going to start taking on water from its wake.  I had a few choice words for that guy.  After trying the shallows, I decided to do some trolling with the Super Shad.  I went right down the middle of Campau and then circled Kettle a few times.  I stopped to make a few casts before heading back over to Campau.  With my left hand wrapped around the reel, my pointer finger actually got sucked into the front of the free wheeling spool on one of my casts.  Oh that hurt!  I looked around to see if anyone had noticed, then pulled hard until I finally jerked it out.  I don't wrap my left hand around the reel when I cast anymore.  Anyway, there was no sign of any fish.  I switched to a Musky Mayhem Showgirl and fished it for a good hour, but she wasn't turning them on either.

I eventually decided that the big stuff wasn't doing it.  I traded to my bass gear and started slow rolling a spinner bait through the shallows.  Still nothing.  I tried a couple of shallow running crankbaits before finally trying out a perch pattern Storm Wildeye Kickin' Minnow.  Most of the boats had gone home, so I had the east shore all to myself.  This is the first time that I've fished with this bait, and I had some decent results.  The bass seemed to like it.  I caught 3 in about twenty minutes right at dusk.  My only concern is that the bass were really taking this thing deep, much like a plastic worm, and it has a treble hook on it.  It took a little extra work to get that mean hook out from deep in their mouths.  Luckily, I was able to release 3 healthy fish.

With my never say quit attitude, I decided to stay out until 11:00 fishing a live bluegill suspended off the bottom in 8 feet of water.  I set the clicker so that I could hear if something grabbed it and then went to the front of the boat and fan casted a buzzbait.  Fish were slapping the surface all night, but I don't know what they were and nothing ever hit either of my baits.  Didn't even have a brush with a muskie the whole outing.  I'm not too surprised.  I've had plenty of beginner's luck with these fish and it was bound to run out eventually.

With this trip as context, I read up on spring muskie fishing and I've come up with some new ideas.  It turns out that according to the articles I've read, the shallows were the place to fish.  What I was doing wrong was fishing too big of baits and running them too fast.  The guides who wrote the articles generally suggested shallow running baits retrieved in little bursts with long pauses.  One suggested jointed baits.  I picked up a couple of jointed Rapalas.  I'm eager to give them a go.  I also read about running Rat'l Traps through the shallows just fast enough to keep them out of the weeds.  Worth a try and I doubt that anybody else is using them.  The fish in Campau see a lot of the same baits day in and day out, so running something unfamiliar to them might just be enough to trigger a bite.

My final action that night was to probe the shallows with a spotlight to see if I could catch any muskies sleeping.  I found a few bass and thought that I had kicked up one muskie but when my eyes finally focused on the mass of fish shimering under the surface, it turned out to be a nasty old carp.  Campau isn't likely to become my prime muskie lake, but it's close to my house and they're in there.  It will be a nice place to try new techniques, hone my skills, and hopefully add to my muskie tally.