A Prehistoric Dinosaur

Although I had only been on the water once this week, it was a successful 5 hours of fishing. Today I was back out again with Norm and his faithful companion, Buddha. We launched just after 7:00 A.M. and were on our way to an unbelievable fishing day. We would be trolling for pike & walleye once again and hopefully catching more walleye than pike. The weather was overcast, though we were suppose to have mostly sunshine and the air had a cold chill to it too. The temps were only 60 degrees at best and the water was pretty much the same as we began our troll. I was surprised to see that the water had cooled off almost 10 degrees in just a week and wasn’t sure how the fish were going to react. As always, the first reel to go had a small northern attached to the lure but that’s alright, the skunk was gone. We managed to only catch pike throughout the early part of the morning, but did have a guest appearance from a big largemouth bass. It hit the same presentation where I had been catching pike & walleye and was quite the surprise! Not until some time after 10:30 did we encounter the elusive walleye! Lately they were above average in size and this one wasn’t any different! At around 24 inches in length it was a solid 4.5 pounds with the full belly it was sporting. Not long after, doubles and a mixed bag was taken. Both fish were decent size with the northern running above 6 pounds and the walleye in the 5 pound class once again. We landed a couple more walleye in the next half hour along with many, many more northerns and decided to move to newer water in search of more fish. This was to prove to be a slower than expected ordeal as we didn’t have too much success other than more pike. We managed to make our way back to the zones we were doing so well in when the long line began screaming once more. To both our surprise, it wasn’t anything either of us had expected and just peeling line from the reel, nonstop. I was thinking Muskie when this beast took to the air and I realized it was a huge sturgeon. Norm hadn’t seen the leap but it was quite spectacular! First thoughts were that we had snagged it with the lure, but it actually had the hooks in the mouth. I knew I was going to have to stay on top of this dinosaur and dropped the electric motor to be able to follow it around. The battle lasted for about 35 minutes before I was able to grab her by the tail with both hands. Man, are these things strong! We lifted it up for a couple of quick picks and released her back to where she belonged. Back to trolling we went, both hoping that this wouldn’t happen again! For the remainder of the afternoon, we managed to get into plenty more northerns but weren’t able to find any more walleye. We did however catch several of their cousins the perch and they were rather large too. Somewhere after 4:00 P.M. we decided to call it a day and head back. Of course the sun had finally come out, just in time for us to leave. Gotta love the weather forecasters! Overall it was quite an impressive day with a few surprises thrown into the mix. We had managed to get into plenty of fish and the prehistoric beast was the icing on the cake!!