From: gdw@moose.cccs.umn.edu (Gavin Watt)
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.fishing
Subject: First Muskie
Date: 21 Aug 92 15:23:22 GMT
Reply-To: gdw@moose.cccs.umn.edu (Gavin Watt)
Organization: CCCS -- UofMinnesota


Last weekend while fishing the St. Croix river I tied into my first muskie.  The St Croix forms part of the Wisconsin, Minnesota border; it is designated a wild and scenic river which it is.  I had left the wife and kids sleeping and paddled upstream from St. Croix State park at dawn.  Exquisite day (I'll skip the mosquito part), right off a calendar -- blue and crisp and clear and the mist rising off the water. The river in this area is canoe water: 50 to 100 metres wide and generally shallow (10 to 50 cm



) with a hard sand bottom, bordered by 2nd growth mixed forest (loggers removed the pine monoculture 100+ years ago).  The St. Croix is good fishing water, trophy smallmouth, walleye, northerns etc. -- as we say "everything that swims swims in the river".  As I paddled upstream I trailed my favorite silver Rapala 6" minnow but the river was generally too shallow and I used the upstream leg to scout for holes and savor the morning.  Watched a bald eagle as it cruised overhead and another watched me from its



 perch high in a dead tree.  I turned back down stream and stopped to fish the hole  at the mouth of the Clam river -- nothing was interested in minnows, leeches or the Rapala.  So I drifted down, wedged the boat on the upstream side of a big snag, and checked the depth -- can't touch the bottom with my paddle so it is 2+ metres.  Again nothing interested in the live bait -- drifting a leech or minnow thru the current and eddy below a slip bobber, in fact the damn thing got stuck on a log under water so I 



said hell with it.  Let's try the Rapala (careful readers will note I am now technially in violation of Minnesota fishing regs, two lines in the water, but I was on the Wisconsin side).  So I cast the Rap out into the stream and reel it back in several times then all of sudden WHANGO something hits -- oh boy a big smallie I hopes -- but close to the boat and I look down and there it is.  A muskie!  Yep a muskie, I know it is, for 10 years I've studied those pictures in InFisherman and in the fishing regs -



- vertical striping and a beautiful golden color.  Now what!  This is a big fish and I have forgotten to bring two things -- a net and the camera. This is my best rod and reel but it is only 6 lb line and there's no steel leader.  Well I played him adjusting the drag and trying to keep him from running under the boat and into the snag and tried to figure out just where and how and what I was going to grab once I got him boatside.  So I worked him in and I was ready and with the rod in my left reached out w



ith my right, but the fish wasn't ready he swirled and twisted and cut off the line.  I tried to grab his tail as he swam under the boat but no.  So off he went with my Rap in his mouth which I felt bad about mostly for the fish it was a new one but I figure I got my $5 worth I heard him splash downstream and I hope he was able to shake it.  Here's the wierd part -- as he came to the boat and thrashed I saw out of the corner of my eye another silver Rapala floating by.  After the fight, I fished it out and



 it was a brand new Shad Rap -- I figure the fish had been carrying it and managed to shake it in the struggle.  Haven't had that much excitement since one night in 1965 in the back of the old man's Pontiac station wagon; as I recollect I didn't boat her either.
-- G. 
/*Gavin Watt -- Colon Cancer Control Study, UofMinn. -- (612) 627-4151 */
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