Dontcryformejanhrdina

Great catch, especially for the first of the year! Nice oil painting, too.

Very nice fish! If it's that fat now, I'd love to see it come late fall, that thing would be morbidly obese by then!

Bit off. Spooled. Threw the hook/bait. Head shakes. Death roll.

Skunked.

This thread has inspired me to finally get around to taking pictures of all my tackle/gear. Did a quick tally in my head.....I should lay off buying new stuff for a while lol. I can't imagine what some of you guys must have invested in tackle. Insurance is pretty necessary.

Was her name Barb, by any chance?

Do you guys put anything on the bucktail jig or do you just use the jig by itself?

Just consider yourself lucky you found it again lol.

Very nice fish, big head on it! I'd say it's closer to 50" than 45. Can hardly fault a person for not having a net big enough to land a fish that size when they don't target musky, they're not exactly cheap and would take up a lot of space in a canoe.

Some people are idiots. Great catch though!

Yeah it would help a lot if you narrowed down the area you'd like to fish, plus how you'd like to fish them (troll or cast).

Those are huge! I saw a ton of them the last couple of days while musky fishing. Even had a couple inspect my sledge before swimming away, but none were even close to that big!

I use both, I like the split grip but it doesn't really matter, doesn't help you catch any more fish lol. While on the subject of musky rods, St. Croix legend tournament rods are a dream to use.

Awesome day Simon, way to go!

I find pike to be incredibly easy to fillet. I actually like filleting them better than I do walleye.

Haven't even seen a musky yet, just got a 29" pike. I've been splitting my time between walleye and musky though, getting 1 walleye. I'll be going to a much better musky water on Monday though

I have to commit to using topwaters for musky more this year. I usually give up though because I see something following it and it turns out it's just a smallmouth. Or seagulls take an interest in it and I have to put it away or else I'll catch them.

Cold weather: insulated rubber boots. Warm weather: crocs. They don't keep my feet dry but with those on I don't care if my feet get wet or not. Also saved me from hooks once or twice. I'm too disorganized to fish barefoot. That would just be an accident waiting to happen.

Casting either buck tails or jerk baits for musky, or casting husky jerks for whatever will bite. That's fun because you never know for sure what it is when you first feel that strike.

Fish porn, for real! Just missing the cheesy music.

I just use my fillet knife. Slices right through it.

By "light" I mean on a 7' bass rod with 50lb braid, not the must rod that I have caught one on.

Nice haul! I've only caught 1 by accident, it was a decent sized one at 14". A buddy of mine caught one 15.5" in the same area before too, those are the only crappie I've ever seen personally.

I've tried jigging for walleye this year in deeper water, only got bass/perch. Tried casting diving baits for walleye in deeper water, only got bass. Went to shallower weeds and caught 6 pike on jerkbaits but also got bass (even a rock bass), didn't seem to matter where I went or what I used, there was the odd bass. Hard to fish exclusively for 1 species in these shallow lakes and rivers, different species all occupy much of the same water where I fish. I've used small musky baits for pike fishing once before (all of my biggest pike have come on musky baits) as a way to avoid the bass, caught an OOS musky instead. So I switched to using husky jerks the next time out, ending up catching 3 pike, another OOS musky and even more OOS bass. Not to mention I've had bass hit 9" musky lures, seems like you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. The only time I DON'T catch the odd bass when they're not in season is when I'm fishing for lakers. If I'm catching walleye or pike, you can be damn certain there's bass there too. Am I supposed to avoid fishing pike/walleye because I can't stop the insanely aggressive bass from hitting too? I don't even target bass anymore, once June comes around I'm usually musky fishing so it's not like I love catching them and can't help myself. It's actually frustrating getting a hit and finding out it's just a bass. I wish I could hammer 1 species while avoiding all others, but I've never been able to figure that out. At the same time though, I'm not pitching docks either lol. By the way, I figure 8 for pike too. My biggest pike came on a figure 8 and I've caught more pike boatside than musky.

Got this one on a figure-8. Not nearly as big as many of the ones you guys have caught but I'll get there some day.