So we arrived home from Bear Lake on Saturday, and the trip was very good! I won’t bore you with the details, but the weather wasn’t bad; it was mostly sunny with a little rain. The fishing was also pretty good. Jackie’s dad took us up into a back lake which we had to portage the canoe into, but I lost count of the number of Bass I caught up there at around 10, and that is not where the fish stopped either. We also went to Science North] one day. I was most impressed by the IMAX video we saw on the Great Lakes, which focused on the Lake Sturgeon and the attempts to restock its dwindling population.
*** WARNING, FISH STORY BELOW ***
On the topic of Big Fish I should not that while I was bass fishing with Jackie’s Dad, I happened to land a muskie (muskellunge). Let’s just say that was an experience and a half!!! I was fishing with a buzz bait on the top, hoping to get some largemouths to strike, but what I happened to get was much mroe than I bargained for. A large fish, which I first assumed was a Pike, rolled out of the water and slammed the lure. I knew it was a big fish, but estimated only about 15-20lbs from what I saw of it originally.
I’ll skip the 15 minutes of battle with the fish, and just note that I was using 8lb test line with no steel leader. This fish could have escaped me with a wrong move! By the time I got the fish up the boat Jackie’s dad informs me that we have a muskie, not a pike, and that it’s almost four feet long ( about 35 - 40lbs of fish ). I threw him the tape that I keep in my tackle box, but it only measures 36 inches. We estimated the fish was about 45-48 inches long though.
Now that we have the fish, we need to figure out what to do with it. We only have a small bass net, no cradle, and our boat is only a 12 foot aluminum. Any attempt to grab this fish is probably going to end up with us in the water, or even worse it thrashing around in our little boat! We eventually decided to beach the fish, and try to release it there. It was easy enough to get it into the shallows and on the rocks, but that’s when it got really mad. I tried to pull the hook with some pliers, but had no luck. Eventually it rolled itself up in my line and it didn’t stand a chance vs 35+ lbs of fish and no water for buoyancy.
I left the lure and pushed the fish back into the water, where it sat in the shallows for a few minutes gathering its strength again. Soon enough it skulked back into the weeds to continue on its merry life. All in all the whole episode probably took us 20 minutes or so, but it’s an experience of a lifetime I have to tell you!
To top it all off, this was the only night I *didn’t* bring my camera fishing with us. That means there is no picture, just the word of myself and my father-in-law. I caught enough fish up there during the week I don’t need to exaggerate, but I know how some people feel about fish stories!!!
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