As some of you know, I'm a fairly avid musky fisherman although that's been in decline for the past few years due to the car and rally racing addiction. Well my company closed for a week for 4th of July and that gave me the opportunity to go back up to lotw - my musky mecca. A previous trip had gotten me my biggest to date, a healthy 47" fish. We (my dad, my friend frank and myself) left Tuesday afternoon, stayed overnight in Roseau and were on the lake and fishing by around noon on Wed. The day started very slow, the past week had very poor weather - extremely cold with 40mph winds. The lake was just starting to warm but was still fairly cool and I was reading about 63 degrees on the main lake so we fished mostly shallow south and west facing bays. First fish for me was this nice 32" northern that came off a gold showgirl the next notable fish was a bit amusing - 21" walleye hit frank's bucktail coming off about 4' of water in the weeds my dad boated a nice 32" northern that came out of 6" of water - the fish were all holding very shallow around 8pm we inadvertantly got into some very good walleye action. frank got another 21", I got this nice 22" and we also kept 5 fish that were under the slot limit (2 19", an 18" and 2 smaller ones) Thursday was our first full day and frank and I went out with a guide (I always get a guide for the first day so we can quickly develop a pattern for the following days). We raised about 20 fish throughout the day - mostly low 40" fish and one in the 50" range. Caught several small pike and at the end of the day I boated this very fat 36" off a musky mania burt. franky caught a clam or mussel or whatever this is on a dare-devil. it legitimately "bit" it. my arsenal these were very typical pike. we boated many in this size range (30") over the week on Friday I boated this 40" musky while using my bass/pike set-up (medium-heavy 7' baitcaster spooled with 40lb suffix). hit a 1/2 ounce red spinnerbait - this fish actually broke the spinner bait in half as we netted it not long after my dad caught this 34" on my smallmouth rig (medium action 7" spinning rod with 20lb spiderwire) - quite the fight! oh yeah, it hit a buzz-bait lol I started saturday off right with a skinny 38" musky - I had raised this fish the day before but couldn't get it to hit. Tricked it on an 8" mann's jellyhoo and flathead jig (this set-up dominates reluctant fish). the fish struck, missed, followed, struck and missed on a boatside jig/figure eight and then finally smashed it when I gave it a long drop. we were finding a ton of pike in shallow, weedy bays that were out of the lake's natural current. in one of these bays a well aimed cast with the jellyhoo created a huge explosion - we knew I had a big fish but we couldn't tell how big as it was staying very deep and in the weeds. I fought this fish for maybe 10-15 minutes on my fairly light jigging rig (medium heavy 7.5' st. croix with a daiwa spinning reel spooled with 40lb spiderwire and a 75lb leader). when we finally got it boatside we could see it was a giant. 51" musky (it may actually be longer than 51" - possibly 52". we didn't get a girth measurement but I estimate this fish to weigh 45 to 49 lbs). biggest ****ing fish i've ever caught! (was a pain to deal with with 3 guys in our 16' lund rebel) only way to follow that up is with one of these! I followed up with a 36" fish on my first cast at a new location - fish followed to the boat on a spinnerbait and took the first turn when i figured eighted ended the night by boating several 20" walleyes on a spinnerbait lol all in all, an excellent trip to lotw (staying out of angle outpost on minnesota's northwest angle)
whoa, that musky is huge! we were planning to go to lotw at that end of the month but after seeing how big it was, we settled for the same lake we went to last year, kabetogama. hopefully we will see fish of similar sizes. how dry did it look up there? hopefully there wont be a fire ban when we go at the end of the month.
fire warning was low. lotw is very intimidating due to size. we have a small boat, 16' Lund Rebel with a 40hp Evinrude. We top out at about 30mph. I would not want anything smaller or slower on this lake. the northwest angle and up into canada where it's mostly islands isn't so bad as the water is really broken up but it's still big water. when fishing with our guide out of his pro-v we were able to cover a lot more water than when we were fishing out of our own boat. (I typically figure out the pattern of where the fish are holding and then only fish small sections of water that have those areas. for most of our trip we were fishing spots in one main bay primarily)
hell no, musky fishing is about conservation - catch and release all fish. in fact, that fish is too small to meet the minimum length on lotw
Nice fish. I love LOTW. I go fishing in Sioux Narrows every year. Beautiful lake and consistently good fishing the past 5 years.
Damn, looks like you guys did great. Quite a few nice fish. It makes me really miss being back home and being able to go fish everyday...
Wow some nice fish you guys got into. Congrats on the 51"-52" fish, I would love to catch one like that sometime.
thanks guys, going back to the office is going to suck tomorrow! I just did some estimates and I figure the girth on that fish is no less than 27". probably a 48lb fish
Very nice Carl. Are you going to get a replica of that fish for the wall? I need to get back up there one of these years.
musky, muskies have a few various color patterns. the light silverish fish came out of stained water, the others came out of clear water
crazy. i have never seen a musky like that. wow, well feel free to adopt me next time you take a crazy fishing trip!
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/fishing/staterecords.html the DNR website says 54lbs and 56in long and 27.8in in girth. it was caught at Lake Winnibigoshish in 1957.
this fish was actually caught in Canadian waters. actually, almost all our fish came out of the ontario half of lotw.
