The One That Got Away

Fred & Chris joined me this morning for a difficult day of fishing. Instead of the usual 3 to 4 footers, we were blessed with flat calm and dog pecker knats. Throw in air temps in the upper 80’s with high sunshine and you have a recipe for hell. They decided at the start that walleye was what they wanted and we went trolling immediately. At first there was a light wind out of the NE that gave us a little chop on the water and I thought it was going to be easy. I soon found out that it was anything but simple and covered all kinds of water in order to get bit. Shallow to deep and everything in between was where we fished and it was tough. I’m sure I could have switched to bass and done well casting elsewhere, but we were committed to trolling and I would make it happen! Chris had first crack at the walleye and almost got it to the net before the hooks just pulled free and away she went. Fred managed to get a couple of others into the net a little later and at least they had dinner for tonight. I eventually moved out to slightly deeper water in hopes of locating a school but it never happened. Instead the reel fired and I knew what Chris had on the other end by the way it went out. It was to be his first musky and we all hoped it would end well. After several minutes we caught a glimpse and it was definitely a good one. Too bad it was on 12lb test! After a few more minutes it came up to the surface and the hooks pulled free. It was to end in disappointment, but at least we got to see what was on the other end of the line. We resumed the troll and I eventually found some fish for them. It was a mix of bass & walleye and they were getting a few more hits, finally! We stuck to the area until the end and had a couple more fish that hit hard but just got off. Today was one of the most difficult days so far this year and if it wasn’t for the wind picking up slightly in the afternoon for about an hour, it may have been even worse. Most of our bites occurred when this happened and went dead when it died. Despite these conditions, they managed to land several good fish and ended up taking some of them home for dinner. It was still a good day to be on the water!