NJ Muskie Hunt

[Gerry Zagorski]

Got an invite from The Revenant aka Joe Santiago to do some Muskie fishing along with a buddy boat Chris Chrisper and Gen Genchinowong. Fished from noon till dark and just like Shark fishing, it was several hours of boredom followed by a few moments of holy crap excitement.

First part of the day was pretty dead and we got our fist shot probably around 5 pm where Joe had 2 Skis follow his lure and we knew they finally woke up.. We got our next 2 shots on live sunnies. Bait gets nervous, big swirl and thrashing behind the boat and Bobber down! This one never came tight but the next one did. We get him alongside the boat, see him, net in the water and I made the huge mistake of trying to horse him into the net by high sticking, fish came out of the water and pulled the friking hook!! What a heart breaker, sorry Joe a rookie mistake that won't happen again...

Earlier that day Gen comes up in our conversation and Joe says I love fishing with him because every time we go out something strange happens and this day did not disappoint.

I'm fishing for bait with a small piece of worm on a bobber with a 4lb pound test ultralight and get slammed by and land a 26 inch catfish.

Gen comes tight on something big and his line snaps a few feet above the bobber. That's strange enough that the line would snap there but all day we watch hysterically Gens bobber floats up out of nowhere, swims around and goes down again just like Jaws.

Those two Ski bait bites I mentioned above were all on the same bait and this bait is pretty beat up but still alive so we throw it back in and I say to Joe, 3rd times a charm. A minute later the bait get nervous again, bobber down and we have our shot at redemption! We get this fish alongside the boat and it turns out to be a 19 inch large mouth.

We're probably 20 feet from Chris and Gen and watched this whole thing go down. Chris reels in a bait to check in and it gets followed in by a huge Ski. He quickly drops the bait back and a few seconds later, swirls, some thrashing, bobber down but the fish misses the hook!

That's Muskie fishing I guess and you can't make this stuff up folks!!

All in all a very fun day of fishing with some great guys. Thanks for the invite Joe, the Ski will have to wait until next time...