I celebrated the news that the DWR now has VHS free muskies for the tiger musky program by doing…. what else?.. fishing for tiger muskies at Pineview. This time I took the “Franken-raft” out in the same general area I had a break off a couple weeks ago (faulty leader, and lure was spit by that fish so no worries) and motored along the shoreline. Fished from 2:30 to 7:30 pm with a mix of trolling and casting. At about 4:30 I came to a nice little area with about a dozen flooded tree tops in 10 feet of water. My new lures weren’t turning up any muskies, so I went to the old standby #5 Mepps Black Fury bucktail spinner that I caught 2 on in the same day last fall. After hours of no fish, it sure was exciting to feel that fish hit that lure like a train upon darting out of the branches. After wrangling it in I did a one arm scoop with my giant net that would fit a person and took a sigh of relief knowing the fish was firmly netted. It was hooked in the corner of the mouth which made for a relatively easy release except for the constant splashing. Great fish and not a small one, but not big. Can’t really tell from the picture cause my knee is pushing its belly up but it was nice and fat. I didn’t measure, but I would guess up around 36”. A tiger musky growth chart I have puts that around 10 to 12 pounds. Still waiting to break my personal best of 42”.
On a side note, I got stopped by two sheriffs in their patrol boat. Never been “pulled over” in the water before. Turns out they were just wondering how the fishing was.
[inline “The spot.jpg”][inline “In net.jpg”][inline “In net2.jpg”][inline “Tiger Musky.jpg”]
