The Fish of 1000 Casts!

Where to begin?...It was a cool smoky morning as my friend Ben and I headed out to Newton. The air had a stench of musty cigarettes from all the fires and the temperature had dropped to 50 degrees last night and the wind made it a little chilly. We arrived at the lake just after sunrise and were soon fishing. I threw a worm out and immediately caught a perch, which is what I wanted to catch for use of bait. I threw out perch meat on one side of the boat and decided to try a perch spinner first but wasn't getting any hits. In the meantime Ben threw out a buzz bait (which clacks above the water) and right when he pulled the bait out to recast a tiger muskie surfaced chasing after it and giving Ben a good scare. We switched baits and both put on plastic baits. I have never really fished with plastics before but Ben said they are awesome to fish for bass, and who am I to second guess? The guy knows how to fish! Sure enough, soon after we switched, we started catching bass. At one point, Ben had a hit and the bass took his plastic worm; he set up a new one and cast out the same area and caught the same bass. We know this because the worm was still in the bass's mouth...if you look close to the picture you can see it.

The fishing died down so we started trolling around the lake pitching our lures as we went, we caught a few as we went but nothing hot so we kept going. Eventually we got to an area where we could see at least three tiger muskies in the water but couldn't get them to take our bait so we moved on. We got further down the lake and started getting a few more bites when Ben gets a good tug and says "Oh I hope he's a keeper (for fish tacos), wait, it's a muskie!" He brought it in, it got off, and then immediately struck again and Ben made sure the hook set good. We got it in and finally, after trying all year, were able to get Ben a muskie....

That got our adreniline running and we started pitching the same bait (plastic baby brush hogs). We had a few more nibbles but not much, I also caught a few perch on my perch meat. We decided to head back to where the bass fishing was hot and fish along the way. My perch meat pole's drag started going off and at first I thought it was a muskie, but then after it didn't fight and was heavy, I thought it was seaweed. Once it came out of the water, we thought it might be a dead muskie?>>but no, it was just a really old plastic bag...

Then, we noticed a muskie surface in the near distance...

We cruised on over near where it was at and pitched our lures. Ben threw one out that scared it under water; mine was in front of it and I saw the muskie swim past my lure then turn around and slam it. "MUSSSSSSKIIIIIIEEEEEEE!" I yelled, then I hooped and hollered. We got him in and pictures were taken. he measured out to be 32 inches long and felt like a good 8-9 lbs.

After that we went towards the boat ramp and caught a few more bass for fish tacos, we ended up keeping 6 in total...

All in all it was a great day, probably one of the most fulfilling fishing adventures I've been on yet. For another version of the story, see my friends blog here