June Trip
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I’m slacking on my posts. Here’s a camping trip my buddy Knox and I made in early June. We set out to float as much unfamiliar water as we could, so the Crawdad/Raft combo helped us connect the dots between portages. With a 10 mile float on Day1, and a 6 mile float on Day 2, we covered some ground. We floated through some amazing backcountry. Found some incredible musky holes. Between the high pressure cloudless sunny days, and the bright full moon pushing through after a 1000cfs spike in the river flow in 24 hrs, the fish stayed laid up and tight lipped. We did, howeve, find a couple nice windows of fish activity during the AM hours around the moonset. We found some incredible structured musky haunts, spotted numerous fish, and had a couple heart-break moments with the infrequent aggressive fish.
Fishing into the night, it was apparent, the water conditions had every fish shut down. Not even a dimple in the glassy water surface appeared. The only activity we found were aggressive DOBSON FLIES!!!!!!!!!!!! Several of them swarmed the boat and tried to take roost on our upper torsos as we tried to fish. I wish I had an audio recording of all the obscenities of us swearing and swatting down the bird sized demon bugs as they flapped near our faces. It was too much, so we decided to call it a night. On the way out, Knox randomly shone his headlamp on the bottom near the takeout. It just so happened that his light shone right on the glossy eyes of a HUGE musky laying in a foot of water. The fish just stood like a statue, until we woke him up with a topwater fly. He finally bolted when he sensed the boat, making a wake like a dolphin on the flats. We looked back, saw another Dobson fly, and got the hell off the water.
It looks like Knox is standing in his musky fly bucket.
Day two: Crawdad day
Hooked a hellacious strike musky( mid 40’s) with 12” of leader remaing out… on my second cast of the morning. The darn fish came from under the boat and scared the piss out of me!!…he came off before the net after destroying the surface of the water for 45 seconds. We were sure this was going to be a great day. Shortly after, Knox raised 3 different fish out of a hole, including a double follow…as he fig 8’ed a fish for about a minute and a half. All that happed at the AM moonset, and afterwards, the action died. We still found some amazing habitat, and plenty of places to revisit on another excursion.
When you’re strung out from 48 hr musky fishing, the RedBulls have worn off and the countless hours of fishing and little sleep from camping set in. After a while, judgement lapses, and you start doing stupid things……like driving straight to break down camp, bypassing your launch vehicle by 10 miles…too lazy to double back and get it. So we packed up the Tundra, and hauled out to Knox’s truck loaded down like gypsies.
Til the next outing in Muskyville…If your not a strung out gypsy at the end of a trip, YOU DIDNT FISH HARD ENOUGH! Well done as usual T.
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