Finally got my first Musky
Well after a few months and several trips targeting musky, I finally got my first one. The fish of 10,000 casts turned into a lot more than 10,000 casts for me..lol I have had a bunch of muskies follow my lure back to the boat without striking my lure and one tail swipe my bait at the bank, but this is the first one that decided to sink it's teeth into my lure. Most of my trips up until yesterday have been out with Chrisper4696 on his John boat. We had a bunch of action while musky fishing together lately, and last trip Chris managed to put the first musky in the boat, which was a beautiful tiger musky.
Yesterday I made the best bad decision ever by deciding to go out for musky solo on my Kayak. Well my kayak isn't built for fishing or musky fishing in any way. I have a sit in 9ft kayak that has zero room for anything including a net suitable for a musky. Well after a few hours of fishing I decided to move to deeper water and fish a weed edge, and a couple casts later I get nailed. The fish brought my lure and line to a dead stop soon as I hooked up, and that's when I realized it was a big fish. the fish didn't go crazy and take off on a run until I started trying to bring him in towards me. I couldn't believe the power of this fish I was amazed how hard it was for me to even budge him or turn him in the right direction. Before I casted, I noticed there was someone swimming all the way across the lake wearing one of those head condoms. By the time I landed the fish the swimmer had already made their way to where I was fishing and even stopped to watch me with my struggle for a little while before heading back. The swimmer made it all the way back across the lake before I landed my fish. Not having a net or another helping hand made it very difficult to land the fish, not to mention the shear power of the fish had my boat going whatever direction he decided to go.
Once I finally got a hold of him he was exhausted to the point where I was actually able to grab his tail without him trashing out of my grasp. I tried taking a few pics which didn't come out to good due to how big the fish was and I was still shaking from the adrenaline rush of my first musky fight. I started to try reviving the fish after I got a pic, and the fish went belly up on me. I tried reviving him for a few minutes and realized that there was no hope and this beautiful musky wasn't going to make it. I had no intention on killing the fish or keeping it, that's the last thing that I wanted to do.
After I realized the fish wasn't going to live, I had to get him back to shore which wasn't and easy task either. I held the beast by the gill plate with one hand and paddled all the way back to the boat launch with my other hand. By the time I got back to the launch I thought my arm and wrist were going to fall off. I had another fisherman that was launching his boat take a few pics of me with my fish and by then I was soaked with water, fish slime, blood, and sweat.
This was the greatest catch of my life and I was thrilled, yet I was very disappointed at the same time because I killed this trophy. I definitely learned from my mistake, and I don't plan on going muskie fishing solo on my kayak without a net ever again. I think I'm going to end up mounting this one so I can remember this epic battle every time I look up at him on my wall.
I couldn't be happier to have this 41 inch extremely girthy Tiger as my first Musky, and I hope to catch many more without compromising any more lives.
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06-30-2015, 11:10 AM
Hybrid Mode
