squirrel tails

[fish_fishburn]

My question is can I use squirrel tails on home made baits for musky or pike. I have picked up a few road kills from my neighbour hood roadways and thought they might make some nice baits for muskie and pike. They are nice big black bushy tails. All the gray squirells in my neighbourhood are black and there tails look awesome. I think it should be okay since fly fisherman use deer hair etc for tying flies and this is no different. I did some work for the MNR this summer and had a chance to ask a C.O. if this was legal and he just smiled and said his father used to do that years ago with great success shrugged his shoulders and said lets not go there??? I left it at that. What is your opinion. I thought this would make a nice little winter project to make some prototypes and give them a go next summer.

[Roy]

Not the best dressing for a pike or muskie bait but perfectly legal. The way you obtain the tails is where you have to be careful.

 

This might be a little bit interesting for you.

 

http://www.mepps.com/squirrel_tail_program/

[GBW]

Go for it! Considering you can buy them it's got to be okay to use...

 

http://lebaron.ca/pdf_files_sp10/fishing/superfly.pdf

[fish_fishburn]

Thanks Roy. Thats what I figured but the response I got from the C.O. left me a little puzzled.

[basskicker09]

if i can find one i made using a 8 inch squirrel tail ill take a pic but i have caught a few fish on it make it like a pike or musky bucktail the only problem with the tail is the fur comes off really easily it has to be properly cured i guess

[Kawartha Kev]

Perhaps you should read this story. Enjoy!! LOL!!

 

 

Kawartha Kev

 

 

The Musky and the Squirrel

by Don Jordan

 

Muskies are the baddest things that swim in fresh water, especially to potential diners like perch and walleye, ducks and ducklings, small mammals and frogs and even other muskies. Muskies aren't afraid to tackle prey larger than they can swallow, and they will attack human swimmers. Humans report musky bites in Wisconsin about once a year, and lots of muskellunge attacks never get reported. You just hear about them. Most people never see the victims or experience a musky bite in person.

Once when hosting a company cookout for some colleagues at Amnicon Lake, Wis., one of my guests was bitten on the leg by a small muskellunge.

We all heard screams from the lake where several guests were swimming, floating on inflatable rafts. A young woman who had been floating in my fisherman's belly boat was screaming bloody murder and flailing away at the surface with her hands and arms.

"Something's biting me! Help!" she screamed, again and again.

Of course, having just told my guests about the 100-lb. giant muskellunge alleged to live in the lake, nobody rushed to the victim's rescue. I considered leaping into the lake, but only momentarily, because by that time, the woman was out of the belly boat and running in knee-deep water to the shore.

She was hysterical as she collapsed on the lakeside yard, face beet red, sobbing, groveling in pain and babbling incoherently. Everyone there dashed to her side, and I pried her hands away from the spot on her lower leg where the musky had delivered its bite.

At first, I couldn't see a mark, but as the water drained, pink began to show around the edges of the wound. On her calf, about five inches above her ankle, blood slowly revealed the bite marks. The fish's tooth marks spanned only about three inches at what would be the back of the musky's jaws, and the entire bite wasn't much bigger than that of a small dog. But it was there, and it did bleed a little.

The attack had come from a fish I estimated to be no more than two feet long, an aggressive youngster. The victim's legs, dangling from the surface must have appealed to it. Later, I figured the attack had come when she floated over the top of a fish attracting brush pile I had sunk about 20 feet off the end of my dock. Small muskies often hang about there, waiting to ambush the many small perch, bluegill and crappie that reside there.

We all joked about it later, but not a single guest returned to the water that day, and I haven't been skinny-dipping at night off the end of my dock since then. Wise Amnicon Lake skinny-dippers have long since adopted the backstroke as their swimming stroke of choice.

Muskies are bad, and probably the small ones are more willing to make such Charlie Chicken Hawk-like attacks. Attacks on humans by muskies big enough to do real damage are rare, and it is foolish to worry about some freshwater jaws down there waiting to rip unwary water skiers, swimmers and jet skiers to shreds.

Other critters have more to worry about as a fishing buddy from Freedom, Indiana, Dennis Knoy, and I discovered during one fall musky fishing trip.

At the time, I was fishing strictly from my canoe. I had come to believe, and still do, that the canoe's stealthy approach creates more chances at musky lounging in shallow water than is possible with a larger fishing boat.

Knoy and I were casting top water baits, following the shoreline, working shallow weedbeds and points. We had seen a few fish and even raised one or two, but we hadn't hooked a keeper in three days. So, when we paddled over to begin casting the Boy Scout Island shoreline, we were fishing by rote--not really trying to make mental contact with the lake and all its various life forms--and casting mechanically.

There are a few oak trees on Boy Scout Island, and their acorns are of course great squirrel attractors. It's not unusual to see a gray squirrel working an overhanging oak tree where they often drop acorns into the lake. They make small splashes. You've probably heard the sound--kind of like a nice bluegill striking some surface-riding insect.

Knoy and I had stopped talking. We were at burn-out and ready to call it day, maybe even a week, when something else hit the surface, somewhere up ahead along the shoreline we were following. It wasn't a bluegill. It sounded like a large mammal, maybe even a human tossing big, flat rocks into the lake.

"My god, did you hear that Don?" asked Knoy.

"Are you kidding? Hell yes I heard it. It was big, whatever it was," I said while picking up my paddle to head on down the shoreline to where the noise arose. We could see big ripples coming from along the bank, and more crashes echoed through the late afternoon fall air.

We closed to within about 50 to 60 yards and spotted the source of the disturbance. A huge musky was working the shoreline. We could see enormous ripples and turbulence where it had just been.

Some trees had been felled there during low water two years earlier. But heavy recent rainfall had swollen Lake Amnicon and raised the water level well over a foot. This put the tree stumps in the water. About two feet of lake separated the stumps from the bank. The bank itself had been adversely affected by the combination of tree-cutting and high water. Wave action had cut a steep vertical bank there that rose straight from the lake, rising about three feet above the surface.

There, among those stumps, this fish we guessed to be at least five feet long, was leaping and rolling. It's head was massive, and from even our distant vantage point, we could see its golden-green, irridescent flanks as it worked the shallow water.

"It's huge," whispered Knoy as we stopped paddling to make a cautious approach and avoid spooking the musky.

I picked up my small sculling paddle and Knoy reached for his casting rod when something unusual happened.

A gray squirrel that had been rustling the leaves on the forest floor had gradually worked its way to the edge of the cut-away bank. Acorns were dropping from an overhanging oak. Most hit the water, but some hit the stumps and stayed there.

The squirrel had spotted this untouched hoard of acorns. He made a few nervous paces, and even ran out on a log trying to reach them, but they were just out of reach. This was a determined squirrel, and any bird feeder can tell you there's no way to deter a determined squirrel.

It back-tracked off the log and returned to the cut-away. The feast below was in reach if the squirrel could leap from the high bank to the stumps, and that's just what it did.

Afraid the rodent might spook our fish, we remained still in the water, hoping the critter would stuff its cheeks and depart. It didn't. It sat there on its haunches munching acorns, and that decision was its undoing.

The stump's top was only an inch or two above the water, and we saw the musky before the squirrel did. As Knoy and I watched, a big hump appeared on the surface about five feet from the squirrel's stump. Anyone who's ever seen a musky trail a lure near the surface has seen this wave the fish makes as it swims just under the surface. This one made an unusually large hump, and it moved fast. The fish was on the stump in an blink of the eye. It leapt from the water, grabbed the squirrel and disappeared on the other side of the stump.

"Did you see that?" we asked each other simultaneously.

Just as we spoke, the squirrel suddenly popped to the top and swam like crazy toward the cut-away bank. The musky hit it again, but only got its tail. The squirrel reached the bank and was clawing up it when the musky tried again, this time stripping all the fur off the bushy tail. But the squirrel held fast and clawed its way desparately up the bank to safety.

"Jesus, that's a monster," I told Knoy. "And I don't have a thing that looks like a squirrel in my tackle box."

Neither did Knoy. I tied on a big Mepps Musky Killer with a gray squirrel tail treble hook dressing while Knoy opted for a big white buzz bait.

When the canoe got to within 20 yards, we started casting. We beat the water to a froth, dropping lures over the entire area where we'd seen the squirrel attacked. No follows, no rolls, no strikes. This was a big musky and had no doubt been suckered by angling tricks many times during its life. It wasn't buying our presentations, and after about 30 minutes we gave up and headed on down the shoreline, chattering about what we'd seen.

"I've never seen anthing like that, have you?" asked Knoy.

"Nope. Never. That's one to tell the grandchildren, for sure," I replied. "That squirrel was one lucky dude, eh?"

"No crap. Bet he doesn't go near the water again anytime soon," said Knoy.

We had gone about 100 yards past the site of the incident and were chuckling about the poor squirrel's bare, pink tail when the crashing and thrashing started again.

"He's back! Let's try one more time," I whispered to Knoy, excited once again about a chance at this trophy-sized monster.

I turned the canoe and headed back to the stumps. This time as we approached, we could see the musky leaping around the squirrel's stump. When we closed to within about 20 feet, we could see what the fish was up to.

The fish wasn't leaping after another meal, it was clearing the water just enough to reach the top of the stump where it opened its mouth and dropped a mouthful of acorns.

Neither of us could believe what we were seeing, but we watched the fish make several more trips, repeating the process until there was a visible pile of acorns atop its squirrel trap.

Stunned, we made a few half-hearted casts, but we never saw that fish again. It was after fresh meat and knew how to get it.

Go To Musky Links

1/16/97.

-30-

[troutboy]

Squirrel tails are great for bucktail jigs,on the mepps website they pay you to send in squirrel tails for their spinners!

[Fishnwire]

This past summer I was in my boat fishing and all of a sudden the dog jumped up and ran to the back of the boat and was about to jump in the river when I grapped him. I looked where he was looking and saw a squirel swimming about ten feet behind the boat, crossing the river.

 

I only got a quick look at him and then he made the shore, but in the couple of seconds I saw him in the drink, I could swear he held his tail straight up out of the water. I remember noticing that the tail appeared dry and bushy as it pointed up in a gentle arc held above the water line.

 

If squilrels don't normally drag their tails when they swim, maybe fish won't key in on this unnatural presentation. On the other hand, maybe a dangling tail is so desirable to fish that squirels have evolved to lift them when swimming for just this reason.

 

Good luck and let us know how you do. I'm curious myself.

[musky66]

Squirrel tail hairs are fairly short to use- would take a lot of work. If you plan on stripping and curing the complete tail as a single unit and hanging hooks from it- that would be interesting!