Last Week's Fishing w/ photos

On August 16th I spent 10+hours fishing various areas of the flowage for the esox masquinongy species. Per the recommendation of Bill I had my eyes set on working the Murray's Landing area but following the S L O W travels down the dirt road, we found an access site that wouldn't allow a front-wheel drive minivan to launch (at least to my belief). I'll have to wait a few weeks till my friends with trucks can get us in there to launch topwaters at the reed lines.

After this 40 minute detour we hit up our plan-B destination. Launched from fisherman's at 7:30am and we fished several areas along the Mani channel, and then deep into Townline & Horseshoe basins. I tried all of these areas for the first time in 2010 and all showed promise, hence the return trip.

Our first few hours were DEAD slow but everything changed for the better as soon as some wind and chop accompanied the cloudless sky. Smallmouth bass up to 18" were hammering our glide baits and bucktails meant for muskies and despite the oversize tackle for them they all fought like hell. Like Blue mentioned in his weekend report all of our fish were coming from unusually shallow and weedy water. This was the first time I had ever caught smallies in shallow weed cover from the flowage. Besides the smallmouths a few hammerhandle pike came in as well.

Only one single musky (low 30's) was moved at around noontime from a shallow rock & boulder point that was getting hammered by the wind. It's unfortunate that this was the only one. However, all the bonus smallmouth bass (12 total) and the black bear we captured on film made the trip worthwhile.

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I think we saw your house, Bill.

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Freakin' awesome! My friend has high-end camera with big lenses and was able to get this bear swimming across Townline.

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Following the flowage my friend and I fished a nearby lake in town until evening when the front came. I blew a hookset on a chunkster 40" that lazily came in on the figure 8 right before dark..... Always happens....

I'll be back in the area again this coming weekend with another friend who wants to musky fish. This is his consolation prize because his trip to Minnesota was canceled. Hopefully we bang into a few bruisers if we do this again.

And for the entire week of fishing, just two muskies were boated. Got this 42" fatso several miles downstream of the TFF.

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Enjoy!

Great pictures! Thanks!

Nicely done, and nicely photographed. The weather on the Flowage last week was absolutely PERFECT! I feel sorry for everybody who was someplace else. I did get one hit fight up close from a long, skinny fish of some sort but he (or she) managed to tear the hook out of its lips. Hence, the reason for the nickname imposed upon me by Earl Tomek a few decades ago: "Musky Mauler." If you catch a lip-torn musky, the odds are that I was the guy who did the damage. Sorry 'bout that. One of these days I might perfect the technique of setting the hook "just right." Until then, I continue to live-up to the nickname.

That is an impressively, well conditioned musky.

The kind that hit 40 at 50.

Sorry for sending you on a long drive down a bumpy road, but it didn't occur to me that you'd have trouble putting your boat in there... Looks like you made up for it by beating up on my pet bass. Those islands get fished so often by so many people, and those poor fish just keep biting things they shouldn't. Cool bear shots!

That's okay! It was worth checking out anyways since I had never seen that area before. I've got all fall to check it out. If those bass are your pets, you do a pretty good job of training them to eat musky hardware :)

OH - - those were bear shots. I kept banging on my computer thinking that it had refused to let me see the bare shots that were hidden somewhere. It's amazing how smallies DO have a propensity for chomping on baits that are almost bigger than they are. Please refrain from showing big muskies. It causes me to get the urge to go out and wear myself out casting for essox, er, - - oh, whatever. Once again, nicely done!

Very nice report Andrew. Good to see you are still fishing the lights out up north.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by seebass

Very nice report Andrew. Good to see you are still fishing the lights out up north.

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ALWAYS!

Thanks. :)