Is this odd? (I'm new at this)
So it was a routine white bass fishing trip on Shelbyville this past Sunday for my brother and I. We put in at wolf creek and headed out to point 3. The wind was blowing and we were working the wind blown flats and points with very minimal luck, when the bright idea dawned on me to work my way around a very shallow point and back into a cove. This strategy worked as we picked up 5 or 6 whites in about a 10 minute span, then nothing.
Suddenly I had a bite. I reeled it in thinking it may be a walleye or a larger white bass, but not thinking it was anything out of the ordinary. I started to pull it toward the top of the water and into the net when I saw a tail swirl the top of the water about 3-4 feet behind my line! I knew at that point it was a nice muskie. He did not like the net, however, and took off. I gave him line and fought with him for a while, but feeling like I was overmatched due to only having 8 lb. test line, no leader, and an ultra lite rod, I knew it was more or less pointless to try and boat him.
I did not want to let him go without at least seeing him first though, so as I felt him coming to the surface, my fisherman's instincts told me to give him line to avoid him jumping but the fact that I felt so overmatched combined with my desire to see the beast made me decide to just keep the tension and let him jump. He approached the surface, gave a little wiggle, and his whole body cleared the water! Now this was my first muskie, but I remember what I saw and he was a giant. The closest pictures I could find online to what I remember seeing put him at about 42-44 inches.
What I want to know is, is it odd that I caught such a large muskie in the very back of a shallow cove in no more than probably a foot or two of water? I was using a 2 jig rig. I had on a 1/16 oz. blue fox vibrax spinner with a 4 inch twister tail on a 1/4 oz jig leading it about 2 feet up the line. Was it right place, right time? Or was it more than that? I would really like to take up muskie fishing after feeling the strength of this fish and would be very interested in learning some of their tendencies and some of the techniques used for catching them. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
