Last week I told you about the start of my summer fishing vacation. A quick recap: on my way to the Winnipeg River in Ontario, Canada, I stopped to fish Lake Vermilion in northern Minnesota. It was kind of a drive by fishing outing but a productive one because I dealt with a few fish in the short time that I was there. After that it was on to Ontario, Canada, where the real musky fishing started.
I was fortunate to spend about 10 days north of the border and it was worth the time, money, and effort to get there. My designated netman for the trip was my friend Ricky who showed time and time again that he was well qualified in netting fish, cleaning out the boat, replacing the bum prop, cooking meals, and washing dishes. Oh, he caught his share of muskies as well.
I could easily write an article for every single day of the trip but that would take us into the rut of the deer season. I need to keep this space both open and diverse and take the outdoor outings as they come. For those reasons I will single out the best catch of the trip. Calling it the best catch doesn’t mean it was the biggest but rather that it was the most incredible and extremely unexpected fish of the trip.
Before I go any further, I will explain a little about the intricacies of the sport of musky fishing. If you’re a musky head, take the rest of this paragraph off. When a fish trails behind a lure, that is called a follow. Sometimes the fish eats the lure but most times it does not. If the fish follows the lure all the way to the boat and still doesn’t hit, the angler then uses his/her fishing rod to pull the lure in a huge figure 8 pattern, trying to keep the fish interested and hoping it eventually hits the lure. Sometimes it works, but most times it does not. Also, if you’re reeling in your lure and the hooks get tangled or weeds get on your lure, the chances of catching that fish diminish.
What I just described happened to Ricky, but in my favor. I jumped in behind his tangled lure and began my own figure 8. Guess what? The fish hit my lure! With only two feet of line out it felt like I was holding a tiger by the tail. The fight was a brief one. Ricky slipped past me to grab the dipnet and eventually netted the fish. Certainly that had to have happened before but not to me and not to Ricky.
We caught a dozen more muskies during the course of the trip. Each one was as treasured as the previous one, except for the one that Ricky handed off to me. That catch will always be the first one that comes to mind when I look back on our trip.

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