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Posts: 265
Location: McGuire AFB, NJ | "Sometimes its better to be lucky than good"
This year I had the pleasure of catching and witnessing musky being caught with a little bit of luck.
First fish was caught while my good friend still had a fat 44'' in the net. We had been talking about a top waters and such and I showed him the new weagle I had just picked up. He had asked about the action and how to work it. We had been fishing all day in typical miserable conditions(rain/wind/cold). I just netted a nice fish for him (44'') and we were both in high spirits. I moved off the spot while he worked on the release and decided to bust out the weagle and show him. I took one cast and it took me a second to get it going. We had moved into twenty five to thirty feet of water and I had made a rather short cast. No sooner did I get it working that a fished absolutely hammered it. I was in complete disbelief. It was rather humorus and I landed a nice 38''. We just had enough time to get his fish out and mine in, his lure was still in the net when we put mine. Lucky for us the fish didn't freak out and hook itself.
Second fish,
I have a tendancy to find wood if its within a mile of my lure. In regular fashion I got hung up. My good friend set his rod down and ran the trolling motor while I got my bait free. As I moved back off the spot I was re-sharping my hooks when I hear a yell from the back of the boat "I GOT 'EM!!!!" Confused I turned around and said ok you got what??? When my buddy had set his rod down to help me he had left his bait in the water. As we moved off the spot he apparenlty slowly retrieved his lure which had been dangeling in the water for some time when a fat 45'' abslutely creamed it! I have never laughed so hard in my life or seen my buddy so poorly fight a fish. It caught him completely off gaurd, I had to yell at him to put his his rod in the water as the nice fish made some huge head shakes boatside. We got it in the net and I promised never to tell anyone how he caught it 
Lets here your lucky catch stories~!
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Posts: 3
| I had weeds about a foot long at the end my shallow raider and I was slowly reeling in and I wasn't paying much attention. I lifted my bait up slowly out of the water and I skipped the figure eight because I had a bunch of weeds on it, and a 38" came out of the water and grabbed my bait and almost put me into water. Scared the heck out of me!!!
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Posts: 182
Location: musky waters of SE, WI | It was the beginning of July this year I took my cousin out muskie fishing for the first time. He had just landed his first a 38" on a topwater. We were on a shallow weed flat abot 5ft. This lake has tons of carp in it that surface alot. I saw what I thought was a carp swirl on the surface. Jokingly I said Huge musky just surface by the boat!! It was only 20 ft away so I casted my cowgirl 4ft to the left, two cranks and it was on. I only fought it a few feet and suddenly my abu 7000 just locked up and wouldn't turn. I was just cussing left and right as the line was going slack with the fish was thrashing. I threw my rod down and hand lined it. Amazingly he already had the net ready and he scooped it up in seconds. Turned out to be a 50" and was I was really lucky it stayed hooked after the reel broke, and having him net it like a pro.
Edited by Ryan_Cotter 1/8/2010 1:58 PM
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| I hooked into a nice fish while sucker fishing. Fought it for awhile and we got a couple good looks at it and new we had a good fish on. Finally got it to the boat and I tried to lift her head a little to get her in the net. As I put pressure on her the rig flies out of her mouth and right at me. Depression immediately set in, I knew it would have been a PB. Oddly enough she just laid there for a second and my buddy simply scooped her up. I went from utter dismay to sheer joy in the matter of a split second. She wasn't as long as she looked in the water, I think when they get thick they look longer....maybe it's just me, but she matched my previous PB of 49.75" and was quite a bit heavier. | |
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| I had been fishing a small river and was not seeing anything when I cast in under an overhanging bush. I banged my bait off of some debris and kept floating . I had dislodged some sticks when I hit the debris .Then I heard something smash the surface. I figured I hadnt seen anything so I hit the trolling motor and went back upstream . On the third cast I nailed my PB because she hit some sticks on the surface to let me know she was around. | |
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Posts: 313
Location: Bemidji, Lake Vermilion | Went back to a fish I had scouted out earlier in the day, near sunset, moon not a factor but by myself, felt good about it. Had her smash a hawg wobbler in about 1.5 of water on top of some shelf rock, not boatside but close. Nuclear bomb kind of hit. Fish immediately runs for deeper water (20ft deep mere ft away) and takes me in a path from right to left across the bow. With the fish now on the left side, my electric trolling mtr grinds into the rocks, bumped it on moving in the bow. I get it turned off with my foot but I am jammed and fighting a beast. Decides it didn't want the depth after all and comes back from left to right smack in the middle of my boat. I am hanging over the port side and arms deep as this fish is going wherever it wants, trying to keep the rod off the boat, and hear it now splashing and thrashing like mad on the other side of the boat, turn my head and see it. Imagine already that I am totally screwed and my easy PB is going to be gone.
Not done yet, she decides to go from thrashing to racing across the rocks to the bow of the boat. Remember, fish is on right side now, I am on the left side arms deep, with a bow trolling motor jammed in the rocks. Decides after running past the bow to go back deep again. Which proceeds to perfectly wrap the line around my rock jammed trolling mtr. I am now cursing very loudly and still can't believe I am hooked up. I know I have to immediately release the line and let her swim. When I let off her, she actually completely stopped and is basically swimming real slow down the left side of the boat, madly shaking her head but down like 2ft, but otherwise barely moving. I lock the rod/reel with the reel behind my knees, still in freespool, get the trolling motor up and locked and was able to get the line from around it. I tightened up the slack and the fish went nuts again, but I was free, nothing to go wrong, got her pointed correctly and scooped her.
51 inches, pic taken by a guy and his wife who had pulled up at the opposite end of the reef and saw the whole thing from blowup to net. A few other spectators also. How everything went from great to horrible to even worse and back to great I will honestly never know. Whole thing took no more than 1 minute. Most exciting minute I'll probably ever have. Should have never got that fish in a net. But did. Have already trumped the fish but it will be tough for me to trump that experience. I'll keep trying. Good reason that even though its not a PB anymore a cropped version remains as my profile pic.
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Posts: 2865
Location: Brookfield, WI | I think my Wife got pretty lucky when she snagged me after long day of County Stadium tailgating and a Packers game back in 1988. I'm sure she agrees.
Kevin
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Posts: 1286
Location: WI | This spring I had a nice fish strike a topwater earlier in the outing. We put slow moving topwaters on before moving back to that spot and I took one cast just to make sure everything is working right and bam! First ski of the season, a smaller one. Pretty funny.
Two years ago I was trolling and stopped to do a weed check and right after I grabbed the rod out of the holder it doubled over and I caught my first and only 50". Had that one hooked to the outside of the net for a bit too, but luck was on my side that day!
Also this year I was leaning over the bow looking for weeds to waypoint and casting a topwater. Nailed a 47" in the spot I had just drove over.
Our muskies inc group had a take a veteran fishing outing and we had to troll due to awful weather. So I troll along and break, cut across to the other side and start going the other direction and the rod goes off. Turns out the break doesn't start for a few hundred yards and we were out in the middle of nowhere and my guy gets his first ski, a 35 incher.
Edited by JKahler 1/9/2010 1:13 AM
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Posts: 203
Location: Alexandria, Minnesota | I had a guide trip this fall, We were dragging some meat most of the day. I had a client casting off the bow while we ran the structure. After 6 hrs of fishing we did not have a hit , Just one lazy follow. I noticed that the TE that my client was casting with starting making some noise. So when we decided we were going to hit another spot, I thought I would make a cast with the reel, to try to see where the noise was coming from. I made a half cast and starting reeling in a glitterspin. I was shocked to see that I had a large fish chasing the lure. I got the fish to the boat and after making about 8 loops I got it to hit the lure. It was a 50.5 inch fish. I felt pretty bad, The guys in the boat were busting their butts all day and I made one cast and had one in the boat. Luckily, We were able to get a 47.5 for one of them a few hours later. Or I think they would have been a little upset.
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Posts: 279
| I was throwing out a new blade bait I bought to show my friend made a cast and told him to look at the action and he would not do it he refused said he didn't like the lure. So i threw it out again and told him to watch it and again he would not turn and look at it. At this point I was getting mad cause he wouldn't look at it so I made one final cast out and he was still refusing to look so I just started reeling as fast as I could as the bait got about 4 foot from the boat I said just @#$%ing look at it about that time I was reeling so fast the lure came about half a foot out of the water and a 38" jumped out the water and ate it right as he looked down. | |
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Posts: 85
| My catch was one of the coolest catches I’ve ever caught in my life. I have been going fishing to Canada every year with my Dad since I was 6. This summer will be our 20th trip together. When I was younger we went fishing to this one lake in Eastern Ontario that had a great population of Muskies, but they were mostly 28-36”. I always fished for anything that would hit and used spinning reels/ultra light tackle (take into consideration this was ages 6-12). Now that the back story is out of the way:
We were fishing in a bay that had great rock structure and lily pads. On one side of this bay there was a tapering rock shelf and on the other side was a steep rock shoreline. In the middle of the bay there were thick lily pads and broken rock with about 6 feet of water surrounding the shoreline. Needless to say, this area was perfect. We were fishing along casting small crank baits for largemouths and had caught a few that morning. I make a cast right next to a piece of broken rock in between lily pads. I made 3 cranks of the handle and the lure stops dead in its tracks. The water erupts with fury as a massive head breaks the water and this sea-monster shows itself. It had dark yellowish eyes and a green/black face. It looked right at me (remember this is an 11 year old) and scared me half to death. I hold on to the rod for dear life and this musky makes a mad dash for what seemed to be forever (probably 30 or so feet) and then stops, headshakes out of the water, and then makes another run. I was using a 5’6” ultra light rod, with 6lb test and that reel was singing the entire time. Eventually everything just stops. My heart sinks, but I still feel tension, my fear set in…He was hung up. My Dad turned the trolling motor on and we went to where the line was hung up. The pain was so bad, you know the pain that crawls up your back through your feet and your breath gets short and you have trouble seeing straight. My line was hung around a floating piece of driftwood with my little bass crank bait floating. The fish was gone. That was the last day of our trip that year in July 1996.
My Dad feels bad that I lost that fish, but happy that I had the experience. We talked about that fish probably 1,000 times over the year and we always wondered how big that fish was. I dreamed about it at night and thought about the things that I could have done differently. Well my Dad bought me my first Musky book, “Northern Pike & Muskie” on a business trip and gave it to me as a present. I read that book so many times and tried to learn as much as I could before our next trip. Needless to say, I know the exact moment when I caught the musky bug.
Well we went fishing the following year in 1997 to the same lake during the same week. The first morning out, we headed out in the boat and went directly to that same spot. We crawled around the tapering rock shelf point, making a few practice casts before I saw the rock/lily pad combination that was the point of my greatest defeat. My Dad positioned the boat so that I would get first cast. I had the exact same set up as last year. Even the same lure was tied on. I casted out and the lure landed in exactly the same spot as last year. I made 3 cranks…BAMN!...I hooked another musky! I fought that fish with all of my might and you better believe that fish was in the bottom of the net. It was the first musky I ever caught and it was the same spot where I hooked my first musky. It was caught 7/12/1997 at 7am on a Bomber Model A crank bait in Fire-tiger color. It was a massive…wait for it…28” long and it was the biggest fish I had ever caught. Unfortunately, the camera was back in the cabin, but I let it go with pride. I had conquered the beast! Looking back the first fish was probably a 35+- fish, but I was absolutely hooked.
This fish was my luckiest catch and most memorable. Since that day, I’ve managed 79 more muskies with one topping 51” and 19 that are 40”+. That’s not a large number of fish, but I’ll take it since I only fish for muskies about 2 weeks out of the year. Out of all of those fish, that first one was the luckiest/coolest/most memorable/meaningful fish!
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Lucky Catches....lets hear your stories!