Doubleheader

After being on-call last weekend, I found myself with a full day off on Friday to fish my brains out.  I planned a two legged trip.  I decided to start out on Murray Lake in the morning and then sometime a little after lunch head over to the river to fish with Mort.  It would turn out to be a decent trip with a total of about 16 hours on the water.

I got to Murray a little after light and found that a few boats had beat me to the water.  There was still plenty of shore and weed flats left to fish.  I started out by casting a Super Shad off of and parallel to the drop off on the west shore.  After a little while I switched over to a blue X-Rap on a spinning rig.  I was cranking it down to the desired depth and then jerking it back to the boat.  It didn't take long before a really big fish grabbed on and dug in.  The fight wasn't vicious, but I could tell that the fish was good sized and strong.  It came with the lure at first and stayed deep.  When I brought it close enough to start to see its movement deep under the boat, it violently shook its head and was able to get unbuttoned.  I was pretty sure that it had been a muskie.  I can't be positive about that, but it sure wasn't a perch.

I threw a number of different lures at the weed edge and over the flats before deciding to dedicate some time to trolling.  I opted to tow the Super Shad.  I tried to stay just off of the drop, but had to occasionally go out to deeper water to avoid boats and a few floating docks.  When I got to the east arm of the lake, I could see a couple of other guys casting for muskies.  They were throwing huge plastic tiger tube type baits.  I didn't see them pick anything up.  As I neared the end of the east arm, I noticed a few boats fishing in the far cove.  I decided that I wanted to avoid them, so I cut in towards the far east shore.  This took me over 65 feet of water.  Somewhere in the back of my brain I had a flicker of a memory of Jim Lindner trolling for muskies in open water on one of my DVD's.  I thought to myself that I wouldn't be surprised if I got into one over this abyss.  So I'll describe my reaction more as panic than surprise when the rod got thumped and then started to go crazy in the rod holder.  Thank goodness that my drag was pretty loose or I'm quite sure that I would have lost the rod and holder in one big crunch of breaking plastic.  I cut the motor and fought the rod out of the holder.  It took a lot of muscle, way too much time, and just the right angle to finally get it free.

I felt instant relief that I was sitting in the middle of nowhere over extremely deep water.  I could fight the fish worry free.  I steadily gained ground on her.  The water was clear, so I could see the fish quite a distance out from the boat.  She made a couple of nice runs, but with my heavy gear I was able to get her into my new muskie net in no time.  I quickly threw on my protective gloves, grabbed my pliers, and went to work on her while she sat in the net in the water.  I've heard plenty about muskies going crazy in the net and this one was no exception.  She started with just one hook in her mouth, but as soon as I wrestled it out of her she went ballistic and ended up with both of them in her.  I stayed after it and finally freed her.  I pulled her out of the net and did a quick measurement.  She was 38 inches.  I felt that I owed it to her to skip the picture and just get her back into the water.  Besides, I just took a picture with a 38 inch Thornapple Lake muskie a few weeks ago.  I'm sure it looks about the same.  I look about the same.  What would be the point?  She made a strong surge and shot right out of my hand as soon as she found herself once again submerged.  After I released her, I remembered that an old grandpa and his grandson were fishing not 30 yards away.  I looked up at their boat to collect my congratulations.  They sat side by side facing away from me, apparently oblivious to the drama that unfolded a few first downs away.  I went ahead and congratulated myself.  While I stumbled across the muskie on Thornapple, this was my first muskie that I was targeting and able to fight on my muskie gear.  It was sweet.

The shallows were covered with panfish and I messed with them for just a little while.  I caught several and kept a few gills for my late night flattie quest.  I spotted one more muskie in the shallows, but it saw me too so there wasn't much use trying to catch it.  I trailered the boat and headed west to the river.  I stopped at the gas station to fill up the tank to make sure that I could run as far as I needed to put Mort on some channel cats.  It ended up being a good decision.  The river was still a little high, so I decided that I'd better take him to those snags way up river where I had recently caught some high water channels.  It was about a 3 mile ride.  When we got just past the Knapp Street bridge, we saw a lot of smoke blowing across the river.  What we thought was a huge bonfire turned out to be a house that had just about burned completely to the ground.  A large group of firemen had apparently done all they could do and were standing around in the yard watching the fire finish it off.  God be with those people as they face the daunting task of rebuilding their lives.

The same snags that I fished a few days earlier continued to produce.  We got lots of bites on cut creek chub, most of the time just about as soon as the bait touched bottom.  We decided to fish for them with my bass gear, so we really enjoyed feeling their incredible strength.  By the late evening we totaled out at 4 or 5 fish.  Our biggest was 6 pounds and the others weren't far behind.  Channels on the Grand provided us with another solid night of fishing.

I dropped Mort off a little before dark and decided to dedicate the rest of my time completely to flatties.  This meant fishing a big live creek chub on one rod, a live gill on another, and a big chunk of cut sucker on the third.  It turned into a lot of sitting in the dark, but wasn't quite a complete bust as the live gill finally got tagged by a smallish flattie in a hole just below the Northland Drive bridge.  I finally called it a night at around 1:00 AM.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the excitement.  I dropped the boat at my parents' and as I maneuvered around in their driveway I noticed one of the front wheels making a clicking sound.  The clicking evolved into a full blown thumping as I sped down the expressway.  I finally decided to get off of the expressway and then prayed myself the rest of the way home on side streets.  People in the know say that it's a CV joint.  I took it in tonight to get worked on tomorrow.  No Jeep means no fishing, so I'm out of commission for at least a day or 2.  The tremors will start if it's much more than that.