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Posts: 2865
Location: Brookfield, WI | I get my haircut at a barbershop in Waukesha. I have had my hair cut at this place in one incarnation or another my whole life. In fact I have had just two haircuts outside this barbershop in the 45 years I have been on this earth. My father had his hair cut there for much longer. It is an interesting place. The current longtime owner is an opinionated Vietnam vet and the conversation is usually quite interesting.
He is also a fisherman so I went today looking for a lucky hair cut. I want to look good for my Eagle trip. I also was looking forward to talking about my trip with him. As I sat in the chair, I told him to give me a lucky musky cut as I was heading to Eagle. At the time there was just one other guy in the shop, a huge, scruffy looking older gentleman.
Upon hearing my comment to Dick the barber he chimes in, f@#% muskies. Being the gentleman I am, I politely inquire as to why he would say that. What followed was a long rambling story about how he hates muskies because most musky fisherman are holier than thou jerks. He told about an argument he had at a DNR meeting several years ago with a Pewaukee Lake musky fisheman, he described him as the head of the f@#$%&* Pewaukee Lake musky club. He claims this fellow told him he would vote against some duck hunting point or something like that.
Anyway, (this is starting to get away from me), he rants a bit about catch and release and claims he would kill any musky he could get his hands on. This led to a rant about trout fisherman, etc. Obviously, this guy is a lunatic, and my attempts to have a conversation with him fell on deaf ears. It got me thinking, however, about the attitudes of people toward fishing and fisheries in general. After the last two fish I caught, I mentioned to two different contractors working at my house that I had landed two 37"+- fish. Both wanted to see them, and were astounded when I mentioned most muskies are released. It was beyond their ability to grasp that a fisherman wouldn't keep a legal fish if he could.
It occurred to me that since most of my exposure to the fishing world has come from these sites, and the musky fishermen I've met through them, that I may be living in a dreamland of happy anglers and released fish.
I guess I don't know exactly what I'm getting at here. Is it possible that C & R musky people are looked at with disdain by many? It is possible that we, and I hope no one minds that I include myself in the we, are naive when it comes to how the fishing world views us? Have all my positive experiences left me happliy skipping along whistling a cheery musky tune, only to be jarred back to reality from one encounter with a complete @ss%ole? Hopefully, there are very few people like this out there.
By the way, I look fabulous. Nothing like a twelve minute, $13 haircut to make a musky fisherman feel just super. Plus it has a week to grow out, so it won't look fresh cut. Those big Eagle girls don't stand a chance.
Kevin
Last minute grooming, last minute planning. | |
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Posts: 2091
Location: Stevens Point, WI | First off, muskie's don't care what style hair you have! LOL!! Most people who fish for muskies practice catch and release as are many other anglers who are conservation minded with other species such as trout, walleye and bass, etc.... I don't think there is nearly the stigma it once had for all species of fish. This person who was in the barbershop sounds he would complain about his mother if he had the chance. All you can do is either ignore these people completely or hopefully somewhere in the back of their feeble minds they will remember your conversation and think twice about keeping a fish. Obviously if it's a legal size fish anyone has the right to keep it, you would be hard pressed to find a muskie angler in this age who would keep more than maybe their first real trophy. To quote my favorite Dirty Harry line...."Opinions are like #$$%^&*@ , everybody has one!" | |
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Posts: 327
| Nicely said Medic !! I've heard all sides of it too , it's a personal preferance kind of , as long as its legal , do what you want , it's your right . Argueing with some idiot isn't going to help anyhting , he's still an idiot and he/she is still going to do what they want , whether it's legal or not . The other people who chose to practice cpr are making a difference , and it's awesome , I am proudly one of them . I don't sweat it , besides , I've had encouters with all kinds on the water , and it did bother me but I just laugh and go my way . 1 quick example .... Muskie Mike and i were out at Shabbona one day , apparently this guy shore fishiong thought I got too close to his bobber and scared away none of the fish we saw him NOT catching . He picks up a med. weight spinning rod and fires a suick at me !!! I told Mike if he did it again I was going to hook that spinning rod and suick with a real fishing rod and I'd have a new bass rod and a new suick !!! Needless to say we just went around the corner and laughed our #$%^ off !!
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Posts: 1529
| im safe from the old school rant. im bald. anyhow some are not in the loop on sportsmen like conduct. here on l. st clair that image has changed drasticly. education and knowledge is the key. some will never change but just think what m.i. and m.c.i and other clubs have achieved. if it was not from the hard work from sportsmen from this forum and many others we could have the hindsight scenario. cpr muskies | |
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Posts: 20212
Location: oswego, il | My job puts me in front of alot of people. When muskyfishing comes up, I get asked if I keep them or eat them more than anything else. I get asked at the boat ramp to see a fish that I caught and I get asked if it was a pike and it's on a lake(s) I have never seen or caught a pike from. The internet community is just a small portion of anglers in total and not all of them even share catch and release values of any kind. We are but a sall portion of the fishing community and catch and release is still in it's infancy by far. | |
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Location: Athens, Ohio | What's a "hair cut"??? m | |
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Posts: 8772
| Thank God Mikie
I was gonna ask that too, but I was too embarassed!
Hopeful -- there are a lot of people convinced that the muskies eat all their walleyes, bass, etc. As the top predator in the food chain they do and will eat anything. Studies have shown however that they're preferred forage are suckers, bullheads, ciscoes, shad (depending on location), and that when they DO eat a popular game fish it's the slow, sick, small ones...
There will ALWAYS be the guy who says "We used to catch 50 crappies oput here in two hours for our Friday fish fry and now we're lucky to catch half a dozen, the #*^@ muskies are eating them all!!!"
(do 'ya think the FISH FRY y'all have EVERY WEEK might have something to do with it? NAWWWWWW)
There are the hard core musky elitist types out there, and they do seem to be the loudest of the bunch. But by and large, C&R is the norm. Don't let either one get to you. Go forth and fish my brother. And if you're putting them back, know that you're doing their part so other people can catch them too.
And when you run into the guy who says he cuts the belly of every musky he catches politely remind him that if everybody ate all the fish they caught he'd be a carp fisherman. | |
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Posts: 20212
Location: oswego, il | Was aksed yet again today if I eat the muskies I catch. To the non or casual angler, they have no concept of what we do and why we do it. | |
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Posts: 2865
Location: Brookfield, WI | That's kind of what I was getting at Todd. I'm wondering if most casual anglers even realize that a good percentage of musky fishermen practice C&R.
Kevin
T-Minus 6.5 days and counting. | |
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Posts: 8772
| I have a few musky pictures in my office.
Everyone who walks in here says the same thing:
THEM: "wow, that's a HUGE fish!! What kind of fish is that?"
ME: "That's a muskie"
THEM: "holy COW did you catch that??"
ME: (wanting to say "no, would you believe it, the $%#^ thing jumped out of the water right into my hands, and my friend was holding a camera) "Yep."
THEM: "Oh my GOD, what do you use for bait, small dogs?"
ME: (wanting to say "actually, cats work a LOT better -- they splash around more than dogs. Dog's just kinda sit there.) "Big lures"
THEM: "do you eat them?"
ME: "Naw, we put them all back"
THEM: (really puzzled) "You do? Why? Aren't they good to eat??"
ME: "They're probably ok, I never ate one. They take a lot of years to get that big and only about one out of every thousand actually lives that long. If we didn't put them back there wouldn't be any. That's probably a 10 year old fish right there..."
THEM: "wow".
Then about once every few months someone will walk in my office and say "wow, nice musky! How big was it? What did you catch it on?"
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Posts: 189
Location: Barrington, Il | I was in Heckle's in Eagle River last weekend buying a new battery. As I was leaving the guy told me to make sure to catch and release. I said I fish muskies so of course I catch and release. He then told me I should keep every musky because they are eating all his bass. My reply-No, they're not. and walked out. Northern Wisconsin still has a long way to go.
Jeff | |
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