Eagle River PMTT Report

[Tom Dietz]

First of all, a HUGE congrats to my good friends, Jeff and Joe Andersen for their 4th Place Finish in the 2010 Mercury Marine Summer Challenge in Eagle River, WI this past weekend! Also, a HUGE thank you to my friend Garth Darton for letting me borrow his boat for the weekend due to a faulty oil sensor on my Ranger 618VS. Lastly, a big thank you to Chris Dutton from Vicious Line, who spent the weekend with us in Eagle River and got to learn what musky fishing is all about. Aaron and I very much appreciate your support, Chris!

Aaron and I pre-fished hard and found a cluster of fish primarily in two main spots. We decided not to beat up these fish and took my boys out to a non-tournament lake and did some "fun fishing" on Thursday night. Joe Andersen popped a real nice 39" musky on a bucktail, and my son Matt missed a upper forties inch fatty on a Topraider at boat side! Aaron saw this fish the best, and said it was at least forty-eight inches and heavy!!!! My other son John boated two nice muskies while pre-fishing with Joe and Jeff on Wednesday night, a thirty-eight incher and a thirty-four and a half inch fish on DC-8 bucktails.

Well, my boat had a slight mishap and Aaron and I were able to fish ok thanks to my good friend Garth Darton who borrowd us his Z-20 Ranger for the tourney. On Day one, Aaron had a forty-two inch class fish nip his bucktail close to the boat, but threw the hooks after two head shakes (nipped the bait). Aaron later redeemed this fish by hammering a nice thirty-eight incher (see pic) that put us around 15th place on Day 1. We had several more follows and had a good game plan for Day 2.

We got to our spot Sunday morning, and Aaron had a thirty-seven incher nip his bait on the way in, saw the musky still charging in on the eight, and he stuck him on top of the turn! As I reached for the net, the fish was violently head shaking all the way around the back of the boat, and than went aerial behind the outboard and threw the hooks!!!! Obviously we were really bummed but we had to keep fishing. About two hours later, I feel a musky "bump" my Bulldawg, but not eat it. I told Aaron to cast his lure to the same spot, and sure enough, the musky smokes him! He fights this fish all the way to the boat, and when it is about two feet from the net, we can see it as well is barely hooked (another nipper) and as he tries to get it into the net, it goes nuts and violently twists and throws the lure!!!!! It was a forty to forty-one incher too! This last fish loss was really tough to handle for both of us, and ultimately cost us a paycheck. Aaron did nothing wrong, as his hooks were razor sharp, his hooksets were great and he was fundamentally sound. The fish simply were not eating our baits, but rather nipping them, and it cost us big time.

As much as I love fishing the PMTT Events, this was as disappointing of an event as Aaron or I have ever fished, and it still stings that we couldn't at least double!!! We have to move on, put this tough luck past us, and head to the Chippewa Flowage in August for the next Qualifier Event. Things are bound to get better after this weekend!!!