Emboldened after my surprise musky encounters this year, I decided to end the season where it all started, right on the banks of the Wisconsin River. I arrived kind of late around 12:30 PM. It was a nice warm day for November with partly cloudy sky. I decided to start slow and before throwing heavy I pulled out my light trout spinning rod with a jig and plastic hoping maybe for nice fall walleye. Big mistake! As I slowly worked the jig through a weedy spot, suddenly there was a “strange” log following it; a log with fins that is. Although back then I thought it to be “huge” right now I think it probably was upper 30’s-40inch musky. The fish only lazily followed my jig and then disappeared back in the weeds. After I fought off the initial shock, I grabbed my proper musky gear and proceeded to churn the brown stained waters of the Wisconsin River for the next few hours without any effect.
It started to get dark, and then right there half an hour before sunset they started to bite. First one was a upper 20 little ski, he hit my lure right when I was about to pull it out of the water and then unhooked itself equally fast when I got him to the shore. Undeterred I made another cast close to the bushes and after few twitches bam!! This time the fish felt a lot bigger, turned out to be a nice mid 30’s ski. I switched to my orange Rapala subwalk and threw it to the shallow creek mouth and got slammed almost immediately. This ski was a little smaller probably pushing upper 20’s, close to 30″. I switched again to my Dorado glider and proceed to catch 2 more small muskies before it got dark.
All that action happened in about half an hour. Looking at it right now I realize that I just got really lucky and utilized the narrow feeding window. Even though all those muskies were small, with only two being around 30″, I still felt like Julius Ceasar coming back from his conquests during my drive back home. Catching 5 of those elusive bastards in such a short time period is a rarity and honestly has not happened to me ever since.
Now I wish I could tell you that I did not get lucky that day but I was really that good and since then I became a musky god that catches 50 inchers on every outing. Unfortunately every honeymoon ends, and in the seasons that followed I was humbled many times with the dreaded smell of a musky skunk or one missed strike after whole weekend of chucking brick sized lures, or even worse seeing my friends standing next to my getting bites and follows while I was being blatantly ignored despite changing the lures like madman. Muskies, I love them and I hate them at the same time…
