| Here's the report on the Greater Wisconsin Muskie
Tournament for Oct 6 and 7.
After much discussion and checking around prior to the tournament I decided to fish Big Arbor Vitae. I haven't been on the lake before but, you gotta start somewhere. I have heard good things from several people about it. I also got a few starting points
from some "good friends".
The weekend started off with a "bang" so to speak. We were fishing out of my buddy Dan's boat. He had battery charger problems prior to leaving so we dropped the boat to be repaired. When we went to pick up the boat on Thursday, we found his front locator
(x85) and the GPS unit (Eagle) were gone. We ended up stopping at Ganderland on the way up to replace the locator. Ended up with a Garmin which turned out to be pretty decent at least in the short run.
We stayed in Rhinelander due full bookings in the Eagle River, St. Germain and Minoqua area. It was Fall Color Weekend and Cranberry Fest. I tried since July but couldn't find anything reasonable from St.
Germain or Minoqua. The drive back and forth from Big Arb to Rhinelander about killed me. There are definitely advantages to staying on the lake you are fishing.
Friday morning I spent in the parking lot of the hotel mounting the new locator. After several trips to Home Depot for tools and supplies we got 'er taken care of. Fished Friday afternoon trying several patterns including deep weed edges, rock/sand and deep water to about 17 feet. Went to one of the bays to get out of the wind for a bit and raised a small follow out of about 7 feet of water from some green sand grass. Water temps ranged from 57 to 52 degrees.
Saturday we were greeted with a pretty good frost and temps around 25 degrees. It wouldn't have been bad except for the 30 mph winds. We did our best and I tried to learn from watching other boats. We fished
Buckhorn point and the area east of that. I did have one small follow, maybe 25"-30", on my black Striker jerkbait but no takers. We then hit the rockpiles on the north end, the whole shoreline south to Buckhorn again and then drifted across to center bar. Trolling
motor just couldn't keep up. I started the big motor to run us to the weed edge and in the process managed to tangle up my line in the prop. I wasn't sure how much got in there so we pulled the boat out in order
to untangle. Decided to grab a warm lunch and discuss the afternoons plan. Over lunch we opted to forego the tourney for a few hours and hit Snipe lake (water temp 49) for a looksee. Not a hit or follow.
Sunday was colder but low winds. We were happy. Water temps were consistent at 52/53 all over the lake. Again we started at Buckhorn Point. Fished the, transitions on the west shore, the humps, center bar and the north bay where the inlet is. We were fishing deep over about 20' and found 2 schools of baitfish and marked a fish or two but not even a follow. On the way back to the ramp we found one of the other tourney boats broke down. Towed them back to the ramp and while talking found that their other
partners from another boat had boated 9 on Saturday morning, 8 undersized and a 41 incher, over the weeds. Found out later that most of the Big Arb fish came out of the weeds. The biggest fish from Big Arb was a
45 incher on an orange bucktail believe it or not.
Anyway, there were 14 fish caught from 303 entrants. Biggest was 47 1/2 from Lost, the 45 from Big Arb and another 45 from Lost. Lost Lake had the best weekend with 6 of the 14 fish. The biggest fish and team winners were husband and wife with 4 fish from Lost.
They had a 34, 42, 43 and 47 1/2.
That's the report.
Thanks for the Report, Theedz
[:bigsmile:] |
