fishingisliving

It's looking like a long season this year. Go get em Steve! bring back a few pictures!

yup. my wife and I just welcomed home a baby boy. I was hoping to get more into part 3, but my time on the water is cut short if not cut off entirely until ice up.

Mid to end summer was uneventful as scheduling issues stopped me from being on the water, but the cold fall slime makes you forget all that. So should I go on and say all kinds of musky blabla that we all heard from someone else already or read in a magazine somewhere, or should I just skip to the main course? Well I cannot help but blurb a small entree first: We all stress proper manipulation with this species of fish to ensure our safety and so they release healthy. In the cold pre-winter temperatures this becomes a whole new challenge, the operation of removing hooks in a net can prove frustrating with cold numbing finger tips, this can make us want to take shortcuts. Well don’t! Take your time, focus on what has to be done, before letting yourself get consumed by the excitement of what just happened. Keep a towel in the boat to dry your hands from the freezing water. It might seem silly, but when you have a giant in the net, think about the pictures and where you want to position yourself in the boat and how you will hold the fish before hoisting it out so it’s safe for both of you. Wear gloves if you have to, make sure hands and fingers are warm. When you pull a freezing giant out of the bag you will be surprised that you cannot hold it as straight and as neatly presented as you hoped for the picture. When you do this you do not want to risk holding the fish out of the water too long or risk dropping it and end up with an injured fish, with poor pictures to remember your once in a life time experience. Did I mention, when the sun goes down, all of this becomes a bit more “fun” if you do not have proper lighting. They say 2% of musky anglers catch 98% of the fish, well I say in those people part of the 2% maybe 5% of those are experienced with holding true giants. These slippery, heavy, toothy finger wreckers are very rare, so if you want to have a picture for your memories, then hold the fish properly. Get a good grip on the gill plate, and suppport the rest of the body with your arm and help of your legs while sitting down. Try not to hold them verticaly, the bigger they are the more gravity affects them. You can follow all the techniques you read or learn from people who share their knowledge, keep trying new things, keep a log, use your lures properly, fish zones that show promise of fish activity. Eventually you will catch muskies, sooner or later everyone gets a bite… but the giants? This is what I have always been told: “Nobody catches giants, they catch you!” One of these behemoths still had a small hook on the side of it's mouth, with a long stretch of monofilament along with a sinker. Seems like this girl took a walleye jigger for a short run and snapped the line. We were happy to remove the hook and line from her face and release her. Another small favour in return for letting us have a go at these giants was that we removed a big lamprey from it's back. We hate those things! So we showed you the small ones in part 1, the mid sized in part 2, and the giants in part 3, one last class remains... Maybe we will see those in part 4.

some great shots!! love the hold where half the fish is in the water. Nice fish! thanks for sharing.

great way to start the obsession!!! nice clean fish!!

lol I'd love to lose 50 pounds!

As mentioned in part 1, we stumble on certain spots where bait fish is stacked and looks like a giant snake looking cloud of bait, yet we cannot get bit in those places. It often occurs that when we move away from these clouds we get a good bite. There are many possibilities of approach in the fall, some will find bait fish, near structures and if they see (on the sonar screen) big hooks scattered around it they will stay there for a long time until some sort of weather change (even a minor one) may trigger a musky to bite. This approach can pay off, but sometimes what we think look like big hooks on the bottom can be deceiving. It is a gamble, no matter how good you know your electronics you can still interpret screen signals the wrong way (how do you even know it's musky?). If you are wrong, you will waste your time, but if you have hooked a fish on this spot in the few days prior that helps knowing if you are on fish and combined with the proper spread of bait and hook signals. Then spending a lot of time in that spot may just be a matter of time before a giant nips the lure. A second approach is better in my opinion, but if you are not on the water regularly it is very difficult to be effective, since you cannot follow the bait fish and see where they are over time and you will be just guessing by looking at the map. Don’t spend more time then you need to cover the area and then move on to another zone. Do not keep focus where the clouds of bait are simply overwhelming. These areas seem to be too crowded and the odds of your lure will be targeted for a meal is quite low. If you find an area that has even just one or two small clouds of bait or random hooks, these deserve your attention but do not waste your day on one area. Leaving a good area for a few hours and returning later on using slightly different baits can be the difference between one fish or four fish in your boat during the day. So the quest continues for a fat fall “fatso”. We had arrived on a spot and found just the right amount of activity on screen, the bigger fish are starting to show themselves. As soon as we passed the bigger bulk of the sonar activity we got bit, twice! The backgrounds have been changed on the pictures above to preserve the spot These fish were a lot of fun, very agressive and gave us a good fight, even some out of water acrobatics which doesn't happen often in the cold. If you are trolling for fish, pay attention to the current on the area you are fishing. Understand your baits are not behaving exactly the same moving up current as they are down current. Make sure you try both, fish the spot up current and down current. Keeping a detailed log will help you develop patterns over the years and get a decent idea of what to do on your spots for each type of weather and conditions. No but seriously, where ARE the giants? in part 3! Stay tuned

The summer is behind us, the water temps are dropping to the low pre-freezing mark and the fish metabolisms are slowing down. This means the fish are retaining their body fat which they will need to survive the cold of winter. It’s great to remember the traditional but flawed “rules” of musky fishing many of us believed to be the way things worked: “muskies only feed in the fall”, “they only have teeth in the fall”, “ they feed more often in the fall so they can get fat for the winter”. Although there is some small truths buried within each of these quotes, it’s not as it once was believed to be many years ago. We set out in the cold, the wind, the sun, the rain and snow to learn, experience and catch giants! The biggest key in the fall like in the early season, the more time you spend on the water the more successful you will be. I am not referring to the odds, but rather becoming tuned in to where they live, what they are eating, what makes them move and when they are more likely to smack as sometimes it's a territorial thing. All these things are very difficult to figure out if you don’t spend time on water regularly and often, bait moves around, some spots have bait but will not produce muskies. Why? Your guess is as good as mine, but the fact remains they don’t produce muskies. So you can waste a lot of precious fishing time trying to locate bait then when you do, you have to figure out what they want to eat, or at least bite. Weather, winds, pressure, water temps, sunrise, moon rise, moon set, sun set,up current, down current, deep, shallow, wow it’s a lot to process. So how to get started? Spend some time on the water… So where are the giants? Well on our quest for a giant we had to go through the little guys Umm.. yeah this fish is held out as close to camera as possible, ( gotta squeeze every inch out of this fish for the viewers so we look good. Ahh come on, everyone does it ) This one looks very similar to the first one, could we have hooked the same fish twice? it's possible! The little fish gave us such good fights, it was incredible. They pulled drag out of our reels so fast and hard, we were convinced we had a fatso every time. After each fish make sure you check every inch from your knot to the leader, then the hooks, even the split rings. The fish can damage or bend things which weakens the whole setup. You dont want your leader or hook to give out when you have a big fish on. It's a lot of fun when you hook into multiple fish in the fall, but what about the giants? Patience, they are coming... Stay tuned!

Like the first one! good fish, great markings. Sucks when you miss out on a trip like this.

great great shots! looks like an awesome place to fish! I've been drooling over many pictures from other anglers out there, like Nate Andrychuk, Linda Rice.. but i'm sure that is just scratching the surface of what is there.

One of the best reports i've seen! awesome! Great shots!

Speak up, I cannot hear you from down there... I hear you caught a few of your favourites lately? 8 inchers in the prop wash? You complain about splinters, dont use wooden baits! but seriously.. speak up

saw some Sun monday but no slime! lol dont complain you love not having us around. Just like we love it when jew man goes out of town! Hows your average these days? nice to hear from ya :-)

Just saw Aaron's post of this trip on his site. gotta love those!! as I said there, it's exotic!

I have not fished from Sep 7th to October 20th so reports have been lacking on my end. Went out to Ganonoque twice this past week to learn the waters in the area and have a look at that famous 40 acre shoal. Different style of fishing than I am used to. So we haven't gotten a pull yet, but the fish we mark out there are simply enormous!! We have been running the typical setups, with very long flat lines, burger king rigs, and even mixing up things from our home waters and trying to make them work out there. Anybody familiar with the big water troll for muskies out there? I plan on spending a few more days out there again this fall, so I am willing to risk sacrificing my usual musky days localy in hopes to maybe get a spotted 45+ pounder out there... even tho I might just come back empty handed at the end. So while I am learning a new way and new waters for big muskies, I was not missing much localy, seems to be a bit tough, but my buddy got himself a nice 30 pounder.

Awesome!!! Makes me wanna go!! cant wait to get out there!!

I could not of said it any better. landing a musky in a craddle will lead to embedded hooks in your hand, arm, or maybe even worse. Of all freshwater species, muskies are the ones yo do not want to take shortcuts with. Do it properly, for the fish but most importantly for you.

Well if the rods were loomis i would cry.. :-)

Good fish for sure! I want one!

I consider myself vey lucky that none of my musky posts have never been bashed.... but maybe one of the future ones once the season is over will make people bash... :-)

cant wait to see the pictures.

I agree, but I beleive that these "andre the giant" muskies would be 60-65lbs. Most fish we have seen in the last couple years have been in the mid 50 pounds. just my opinion, and not bashing anyone's fish, in fact I am very happy for anyone who has hooked a 50 pounder, regardless if they think it weighed 70 pounds. :-) good read ya scots.

summer 80lb braid. fall, 65lb braid, because of slower speeds and fishing deeper (generaly) so the thiner diameter helps put baits lower. but you can use wire line for that as well. leader, depends where I am fishing. But 130lb flurocarbon is all around a safe bet.

lol Do you also recommend dancing naked in a thurderstorm with dead chickens?

Hahaha damn that was cold and bumpy! But you are a tv star now, you might not want to fish us lower middle class people anymore. :-)