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Posts: 8
| Wondering if anyone has experienced a stretch as disappointing/underwhelming as I just had.. I spent 6 days up in Northern Wisconsin and never caught a fish. I moved fish every day but never got one to eat. I tried EVERYTHING, and couldn’t make it happen. I spent at least 12 hours on the water each day. Tried clear lakes, dirty lakes, super shallow, deeper edges, and never made it happen. Lots of northern and bass. Just looking for some trauma bonding.. I expected a couple fish minimum but they had other plans. |
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Posts: 1304
Location: E. Tenn | Caught a 40 yesterday, and two runts earlier in the week.. Hopefully things will heat up next week. |
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| I fished in a league on Wednesday this week in northern WI, 50+ anglers, 5 hour window, 2 fish caught in total. It was a tough bite. I and my partner didn't even have a follow. I did have what appeared to be a nice walleye hit a 9" Suick but I somehow managed not to get a good hookset. |
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Posts: 579
Location: deephaven mn | typical typical muskie fishing is hard you are fishing for a rare fish that is stubbborn. moving fish is the key.. its being in the right place at the right time. keep doing what you are doing and it will happen |
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Posts: 2370
Location: Chisholm, MN | Definitely had some tough trips. I wouldn't plan a musky trip to a real destination before the 4th of July. Sometimes june can be good but it's more hit or miss until July. |
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Posts: 8
| Yeah, it's just a tough start when you plan to come out and slaughter them and you can't muster a single fish. Last year I think I ended up with 13 fish, so I thought at least 1 fish would be a lock for the week. The goal this year is 10 fish over 40 in the boat. Likely too big of a goal, but you have to set the bar high. Now that I'm back in central-ish WI with some water temps in the mid 60's I have a little more hope. |
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Posts: 238
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota | 2 years ago on vermilion I fished vermilion 8-10 days over July and didn’t catch a single fish with only a few follows. Every season I will have at least 1 weekend where I don’t even move a fish up there. Thankfully my first time getting out this year I was able to get 2 yesterday over in Wisconsin, but up until this year I went 2 seasons without catching one for northern wisco opener |
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Posts: 24
| Spent a week in late July on Cliff a few years ago, my partner and I each landed 1 40-41 incher. We were after muskies most of the trip. Only caught a few average walleyes and pike, nothing big. We were told Cliff is an action lake, but there wasn't much action for us that particular full moon week. There were a few other musky guys there, nobody was seeing much. |
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Posts: 47
| If you have fished muskies for a long time, I think we all have had this happen to us! it does really suck however! it is just how muskie fishing works sometimes unfortunately. Here are a couple of quick stories... Bad muskie fishing has happened several times to our groups in Canada over the past 35 years. And it has happened more often to me in Minnesota and Wisconsin than I like to admit. It took me 4 years to catch my first muskie from Cass Lake. And I tried and tried. And I tried and tried. I got frustrated by all of it. All of my muskie buddies were catching them there - but not me. I finally got a 41" fish and that took the pressure off. I look back at the hard work and really great times going through that however and feel fortunate to have been given the ability to try. I also learned a really good body of water that I now fish every few years and feel like I could get a fish anytime I am there now. And I have caught quite a number of really good fish. A group of us went to the French River back in 2009. Instead of going to our normal LOTW destination we went to try a different famed piece of water just to try something new. My boat partner and I fished hard through 90-degree temps daily. It was #*^@ hot every day! We fished approximately 75 hours and saw 5 fish! I did manage to miss one well over 50 so that was on me. Still to this day, it might have been the largest muskie I ever lost! And I lost a nice 42-inch pike at the boat. There were 6 of us together and we managed a 47" and a 47-1/2" fish between 3 boats in a week. To add insult to injury some of our buddy's went to our normal LOTW destination over the same time frame. They managed to catch 14 over 40" and 2 over 50". And they only fished 4 days! Do you think we should have went to the French River? I only know I have not been back there since! We went to Lac Seul in 1993 and had a horrible cold front blow through the first night we were there. It was like 75 degrees on Sat when we arrived. We stayed at Chamberlain Narrows and boats were starting to have water fill up over the back of them due to wind, heavy rains, and waves that first night as it was storming hard. Heavy lightning and rain and heavy winds rumbled across the sky. We went out at 1:00 a.m. trying to bail out the boats as the camp owners were in a panic. Everyone in camp was soaked by the time we reset the boats and went back to bed at 2:00. Back then (maybe it is the same there now) you would just pull your boat on a sand beach peninsula as there were no dock systems. The next day the temps were in the 40's or even colder. And it stayed that way all week. The sun finally came out on Friday and the winds we had all week died down! It was a welcome sight but was too late! Fishing was slow and tough, and we did not fare well at all. While there were some nice fish caught via trolling in camp we were not set up for any of that. We certainly are now though! We ended up catching zero muskies between the 2 boats we had for our group. And just like the French River trip, I have not been back to Lac Seul. It is crazy to think that you plan for a week-long muskie trip and then nothing goes quite right. We could feel the pressure building as far as not having any fish in the boat. No matter what we did, it did not work. Every night we would discuss the lack of fish sightings and lack of success. I feel everyone's pain who has gone through this. I only hope it does not happen again when we go to Canada at the end of June this year. Good luck to all the rest of the year! Hopefully the fishing will get better... |
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Posts: 8
| Update: Tonight I broke the fishless streak.. pulled out a 52 incher on a swimmin dawg.. well worth the wait, and not something I’ll top for quite some time. I guess that means only 9 more over 40 to hit the goal for the season. |
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Posts: 2056
| Congrats!!! Ya never know you might top it the nexts time ya hit the water, the allure of what a "new day" brings a muskie fisherman is sort of this crazy game in a nutshell |
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Posts: 1525
Location: Brighton CO. | July 24th 1976 my grandparents picked me up at the airport in Milwaukee and drove me up to a lake in the Eagle River area.
As we almost got home it was night and I stuck head out the window of the car and looked at the narrow sky that followed the road and looking at the stars and thinking "this is going to be great". My grandpa put a old 1950's era row boat in the lake for me. It was painted green and made of wood and leaked. It was my dad's cousins boat at one time and nick named the barefoot boat. I found a old glass Bass rod in the garage and put my Grandma's Ambassdeur 5000 on it. (it had some old black line on it) Found some Daredevals, Johnson Silver Minnows, a Globe, Cisco Kid Topper, Burmek surfacebait , Pikie Minnow old round bottomed Suick, and a brand new Bobbiebait in the garage. I rowed around all summer, picked out a million backlashes , bailed out the boat, and collected weeds out of the lake. I had no idea how to work the lures or kept my lures out of the weeds or cast without getting a backlash. Never caught a Muskie that year but was hooked for life. I did catch a 22 1/2 inch Northern on the Bobbie it was on a glass Muskie rod I bought at Crossroads in Eagle River for 16 bucks. On the 28th of August got on a plane back to California. |
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Posts: 3910
| My worst trip was overdosing on mushrooms sitting third-row center at a STL Dead show. ****ing demon monkey-like creatures crawling around on the scaffolding above the band, and once they realized I could see them they pointed, frowned, grinned and hissed at me. (Yes, auditory hallucinations in addition to the visuals.) So close to losing control I nearly raised my hand to be escorted to the medical tent. Ended up keeping my eyes closed while waiting for time to pass. What a terrible waste of a third-row seat.
Edited by Ranger 6/6/2025 6:06 PM
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Posts: 16
| Ranger - 6/6/2025 5:54 PM
My worst trip was overdosing on mushrooms sitting third-row center at a STL Dead show. ****ing demon monkey-like creatures crawling around on the scaffolding above the band, and once they realized I could see them they pointed, frowned, grinned and hissed at me. (Yes, auditory hallucinations in addition to the visuals.) So close to losing control I nearly raised my hand to be escorted to the medical tent. Ended up keeping my eyes closed while waiting for time to pass. What a terrible waste of a third-row seat.
If you wanna run cool, you gotta run on heavy, heavy fuel. |
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Posts: 8820
| Ranger - 6/6/2025 5:54 PM
My worst trip was overdosing on mushrooms sitting third-row center at a STL Dead show. ****ing demon monkey-like creatures crawling around on the scaffolding above the band, and once they realized I could see them they pointed, frowned, grinned and hissed at me. (Yes, auditory hallucinations in addition to the visuals.) So close to losing control I nearly raised my hand to be escorted to the medical tent. Ended up keeping my eyes closed while waiting for time to pass. What a terrible waste of a third-row seat.
Compton Terrace Dec 8, 1990. Lawn seats. Hotter than 7 hells. In my more than slightly altered state, I started to worry that I might melt from the heat. Like okay, nobody else seems to be melting, but can you melt if it's this hot? No, you got this. you're just trippin' out, man. Wish I only ate one of those... Yeah, stuff looks kind of melty, but that happens. Ok, ok, it's good. You're at a dead show! It's cool, you're not going to melt. That big fat dude will melt before you do. Kept checking the fat dude just in case. Had it together until the blue in the fat dudes tie die started to warp and shift. Then my buddy looked at me and laughed with this wild ass look on his face and said "Dude, you're MELTING!!" That did it. |
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Location: Athens, Ohio | College days, ate some blotter that - turned out - was contam'd with Strychnine. Totally bummed thru Fantasia, then spent the evening barfing up many, many unpleasant colors. m |
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Posts: 1149
Location: Minnesota. | WebSki1724 - 5/30/2025 8:10 PM
Wondering if anyone has experienced a stretch as disappointing/underwhelming as I just had.. I spent 6 days up in Northern Wisconsin and never caught a fish. I moved fish every day but never got one to eat. I tried EVERYTHING, and couldn’t make it happen. I spent at least 12 hours on the water each day. Tried clear lakes, dirty lakes, super shallow, deeper edges, and never made it happen. Lots of northern and bass. Just looking for some trauma bonding.. I expected a couple fish minimum but they had other plans.
And people wonder why we do this...
Keep the faith, keep it fun and enjoy even the non-catchin'....there's always a good burger on the grill if that's yer bag. |
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Posts: 1149
Location: Minnesota. | Kirby Budrow - 6/1/2025 11:28 AM
Definitely had some tough trips. I wouldn't plan a musky trip to a real destination before the 4th of July. Sometimes june can be good but it's more hit or miss until July.
THIS!!
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Posts: 1525
Location: Brighton CO. | We have talked about what's picture worthy, I don't know about the rest of you I have pictures of hamburger's and Pizza from hole in the wall resorts and of course photo's just driving down a county road. So much more then fishing. |
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Posts: 151
| I've had more struggle bus trips then good ones. I admit that a little over roughly half my trips I end up catching nothing. Don't care; went fishing. Rather be on the lake than at work. |
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Posts: 195
| Last year on Nip we hit a 5 day heat wave in late Sept that was just brutal. 30+ degrees, bluebird, zero wind. Talk about the fishing getting shutdown lol.
Edited by BillM 6/11/2025 1:48 PM
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Posts: 1525
Location: Brighton CO. | We've had some brutal Sept. trips if it's hot and the water temperature goes up instead of down you might as well throw your lure in the parking lot. We used to have many great Sept. trips but we wait till mid to late October now. It can be a pain to find lodging and restaurants open in the middle of the week but the fishing is better. |
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Posts: 195
| Yup, we're thinking of postponing a bit this year. Sept has been much warmer the past couple of years. |
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Posts: 8820
| Worst Day Trip:
Went next door one Sunday to sit in my buddy's boat and have a beer. BEAUTIFUL day... "Today would be a perfect day to fish. Wanna go? Yeah, why not??" So we load up the boat in a big hurry and decide to head to Madison. It's a 2-1/2 hour drive. Not too far for half a day on the water...
So we get to 290, and traffic STOPS. Accident. 45 minutes gone. Get through Rockford and almost to the state line, traffic stops AGAIN. Road construction. Sat in traffic for another hour. Should have been fishing by now. Looking kind of dark up North. The closer we get, the darker it gets. Definitely got some weather moving in.
Get to Madison, Drive past the Monona Launch, wind is howling. White caps. Hmph. Let's try Waubesa. Dumped the boat in just as it was starting to drizzle. It's okay, we still have a couple hours to fish. Thunder in the distance. We get out past the Bible Camp, maybe 50 yards from the landing, and the wind picks up even more. I see lightning. Yep. Here it comes. "Let's fish until the lightning gets bad..." *BOOOMMMM!!!* crap, that was close! We make all of three casts, and it starts raining buckets. Lightning hits a tree right in front of us.
So we hunker down and head back to the landing, WOT. Rain HURTS at 40 MPH. Hail hurts worse. All three of us are yelling "OW! OW,%^&$, OW!!" We basically ditch the boat, hop out, and RUN to the little fish house. Stand in fish house for well over an hour. It's the storm that will not end. Temperature is dropping by the minute.
Finally head back out at around 6:00. First cast, my buddy gets a backlash, *SNAP!* Brand new bait gone. We search around, can't find it. He clips on another bait. *SNAP!*... Boat's blowing all over, we can't see anything, we're soaked, and cold. Too windy. "This is stupid. Let's go fish Wingra."
Pull the boat, head to Wingra, dump the boat, storm has finally dwindled down to drizzle. If it wasn't blowing so hard and I wasn't soaked, this wouldn't be so bad. We head down to the East end of the lake. First cast, the other guy who was with us gets his line all wound around the trolling motor. It was so bad we had to take the blade off. Lost another 30 minutes. Finally get back to casting, nearly dark now, and my buddy runs head on into the thick milfoil. I smell something burning. Trolling motor is smoking. So we fire up the big motor. It's that or nothing. I step up to throw a cast, slip, and land on my back on my tackle bag. Racked up my back pretty bad. Dark by now. We finally say "f-it" and give up.
15 minutes outside of Madison it starts raining. We basically drove home through that same storm in the direction it was heading, for nearly two hours. My buddy is white knuckling it the whole way. Since we're all so soaked and the heat is on in the truck the windows keep fogging up and we can't see. At one point about 45 minutes from home, the guy in the back says "Hey, turn off the radio. What the hell is that noise?!?" I see sparks! What the... Oh %*%&!!!"
At some point on the highway the trolling motor deployed. The noise was the skeg grinding on the pavement. Got home at 11:30pm. Everything at home was bone dry. Didn't rain a drop. Spent the next two hours dumping water out of my plano boxes and hanging lures on everything I could find. My bucktails were dripping. Tools soaked, clothes soaked, underwear soaked, tackle bag soaked, camera soaked, I even dumped water out of my boots. 7 hours on the road for maybe a dozen casts...
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Posts: 544
Location: NW WI | ^ Been there! Got myself n a buddy stranded on an island seeking shelter from a freak pop up storm. We weren't the only ones stuck either. I've never seen Inland waves that big ever. We would've sunk in our 16' in seconds ( we tried). Sat there bow and stern tied off to trees on private land and flipped the bilge on every once in awhile. Pretty cool though, sitting there watching these downblasts just smite 4' rollers as if invisible bombs were being dropped. Not sure how long we were hunkered down, maybe an hour. Looked like we had a bit of window to get out of there and we took it. Fricken hammered the throttle and said "F*** the no wake zones Today, sorry". Other guys on island and boats we passed mourned on mainland followed suit behind us. I've never seen a boat launch operate so efficiently without a word being spoken. Everybody wanted the heck out of there, I think all of us figuring it was far from over.
Drive back I could've sworn a small tornado must've been near based on all the trees and branches down. Made it a little ways SW and roads looked dry n clean. Turns out we were on the Northern Tip of a freak large developing storm. We would've been better off being in the middle of it. Those storm edges can WINDY.
I think dumb luck and pushin our luck to get these stories just comes with the territory. Almost a right of passage. I'd rather not make any new ones, but what the heck right! Can't catch em from the couch. |
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Posts: 13
Location: Wright County MN | I have had a decent amount of time on vermilion and last year was pretty rough. We used to shoot for early august but now hit mid september early october. We only boated one last year and only had maybe 10 follows in three days of fishing. The year before we probably saw 40 fish with half of those being around that 50 inch mark or bigger. My worst august trip up there was 2020 when most guys were struggling with the amount of pressure on that lake with canada being closed. |
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Posts: 7069
Location: Northwest Chicago Burbs | Not catching fish for ME at least is not the sign of a bad trip.
Things that make a bad fishing trip (that have happened to me)
-Trailer bearing blows up on the way home. Leading to a $300 hotel room and a 20 hour round trip to get it fixed (happened 2X)
-Trailer wheel shears off the trailer while backing up ON the ramp
-Trailer 15 hours to Canada, engine will not give power becasue of a bad oil senor. Lesson learned, Suzukis cannot be serviced most places. Went back to Mercury
-Both of us thought the other one was bringing his boat. At least this was just a half day
Trust me, I could go on. |
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