Thanks to everybody at AML!
I fished three weeks from September 18th through October 8th and thought I might provide a personal report on the late season musky fishing. But I must begin by thanking the entire AML staff for the extraordinary service they provide. I had a medical crisis that could have landed me in the hospital, and the kitchen crew responded for weeks by serving me special meals at breakfast, lunch and dinner that saved my trip. The dock hands customized my camp boat into a fishing machine. The guides are not only fantastically knowledgeable, they are great company and still get as excited as any of us about catching big fish. And Herbie teaches me more about muskies and life every time I fish or talk with him. No wonder I wouldn't think of going anywhere else on my big annual fishing trip.
2010 was a weird year for seasonal patterns, weather, weed growth, turnover and, with all that, weird fishing as well. Eagle had the earliest ice-out people could recall. Some great weed beds didn't come up at all and others were much bigger than usual. Turnover in the fall was early and fast, but accompanied by weeks of unsettled weather with big fronts bringing heavy wind from a different direction almost every day. When the wind would drop the lake would go dead still for a day before the next front came through. We joked that the wind had just two speeds: 45 kph and zero.
Not too surprisingly, the fishing was tough. The prevailing theory was that all the fish just stayed deep where things were more constant and comfortable, and with no real wind pattern the fish were spread out widely. The walleye fisherman were chasing small pods of scattered fish off of the humps at 45-50 feet, and working for their catches, though the smallmouth fishermen were enjoying world class action on big fish about 10 feet higher in the water column than the walleyes. Muskies were seen and caught in 4 feet of water and also down with the walleyes. From their girth and the fact that they were spewing fish and excrement all over the boat when we landed them, it was obvious that they were feeding well even if we weren't seeing very many of them. It would have been disheartening for an amateur like me to go out alone for the day and see none or two or four fish if the same thing wasn't happening to the guides and their experienced clients.
But here is the thing: the fishing was wonderful. At the end of any cast there might be a truly enormous fish coming in to eat. We were seeing record class fish fairly regularly. Mike saw one on Muskie Point one day that would have been a lifetime fish for him (and if you know Mike, you know that was a big fish) and the next morning I was fishing the reef off the first island and saw the largest muskie I had ever seen up to that point...enormous shovel head and gigantic body that was, nevertheless, long enough to look snaky as she swam. Wow! I don't really think it was the same fish Mike had up though it might have been. On another day Cal and I were chasing an easy 55 incher that we had both seen several times on a spot where we were also seeing another over 50 that had us standing on our heads doing boatside maneuvers. Finally we decided to give it a break and fish a nearby island. There we pulled a high forties fish and a heavy one over fifty off the island, and I decided to throw a cast across a break line out away from the island; the cast brought in a fish that made all the others look like bait. It was of a whole different class altogether. I think most musky anglers would trade numbers of smaller fish for encounters like those any day...I know I would.
And it wasn't all just looking at them. I got a 51.5 with a 27 inch girth alone in Portage Bay that basically gave me a brawl. I hooked her at the boat and thumbed her down to about twenty feet and then engaged the reel again just in time to have the fish dart under the boat. She nearly broke my rod before I got her under control again. When I brought her up to net her she made me throw down the net and fight her again five times before I could land her. All the while it was totally silent except for an eagle that was crying nearby. That is what I am looking for when I go out alone. One morning with Herbie he put me on a 50.5 and a 49 that we landed on Heiting's before we had been fishing half an hour. Who could ask for more? Thanks to everybody at AML for a fantastic trip and thanks to the musky gods for Eagle Lake.
Bill
