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View Full Version : Finicky muskies, jerk convention



BlueRanger
08-22-2010, 08:09 PM
Got up there Friday afternoon, just in time to watch the last of the rain and lightning go through. Saturday I hit the water, and like SBoulden reported earlier, muskies were very active on the Solunar periods. But they didn't seem to be in an aggressive feeding mood. During the Saturday morning major, I had a fish in the 40" range boil twice on a Jackpot, but it didn't really go after it. I immediately threw a bucktail over the fish, and it took a lazy swipe at that but didn't grab it. A few minutes later, a larger fish surfaced quietly nearby. I worked that area over for more than an hour and didn't have another strike or follow. In the evening, I had the same thing happen in a different area - a fish took a swipe at the Jackpot, then took 3 more swipes at a couple different bucktails on subsequent casts. Again, it didn't really seem to want to bite. The fish were in cabbage on sand bars in about 3 feet of water.

Today was a different story. The water was dead calm and the fish were nowhere to be found. Surface temp was at 74 degrees and the Springstead Landing gauge was at -.4 feet. There was also a lot of pollen on the water this morning. There's plenty of water coming down the Manitowish and Bear, and the Flambeau looked high at Park Falls. Surprisingly, there was already quite a bit of red starting to show up in the maples along FF and 70 west of Park Falls.

Unfortunately, a couple beautiful days were marred by being on the receiving end of two of the most blatant examples of boater discourtesy I've ever seen. Saturday evening, I headed over to the bar where I had seen the two fish earlier in the day, but found a family sitting on the prime spot fishing for walleyes or panfish. So I started working the shoreline behind them, giving them a good hundred yards of space and casting away from them. Imagine my surprise when the guy turned on his stern-mounted electric and proceeded to slowly back right in front of me, not 30 feet from my boat and directly in line with the area I was casting to. I just shook my head, took in the wife and teenage son's embarassed looks and headed out to the spot I wanted to fish in the first place. Then this morning, I was working the saddle between the point and rock pile out at the end of the channel to Springstead Landing when two boatloads of jerks cut between me and the point at about 10 mph. They were less than 50 feet from the point, so on top of the rudeness, it was a gross violation of the 100 foot law. And if the water had been a foot lower, they'd have had an expensive lesson in the meaning of karma and they'd have been picking several very young kids off the floors of the boats.

I posted some pictures of moonlight and lightning from Friday night and a few nice loon shots.

ToddM
08-22-2010, 09:01 PM
On my last vacation up on the TFF I was surprised at the amount of times I was cutoff. Three times in one morning alone! I always return the favor never had any words with anyone but I even have 1 or 2 of my kids in the boat and sometimes my grandfather and it does not matter. Some people are just that clueless.

LundAngler
08-22-2010, 11:06 PM
I probably drive a little faster than I should on the flowage, but I always make a point of slowing down around other fishermen. It has happened to me many times....fishing peacefully, minding my own business, and another boat comes by at about 20 mph 30 yards away...nice! There will always be a few jerks out there, but take solace in the fact that the majority of us are "the good guys."

DonH
08-23-2010, 03:58 PM
A couple of years ago, I was fishing a new area with my nephew and his dad. We had landed some nice walleyes on a certain drift so we dropped a marker to accurately locate the starting point. Since we had to be in at a certain time for lunch, we decided to make one last drift. As we reeled up our lines and started up the motor, we looked back and a boat had anchored right on top of our marker. We decided to skip the last drift and pick up the marker while doing some 360's. Of course we didn't do that, but what are people thinking? They had to connect the boat with us as the drifts were short and we were the only boat in sight.

I've also had guys cut off my drift, but that's a pretty rare occurance on the TFF....or at least it was! You have to just shake your head and move on.

Thanks for the pictures. Always enjoy them!

AndrewR
08-27-2010, 10:50 PM
I like to give people with bad courtesy the finger. But 100% of the time, it's the driver that never sees it, but the passengers do! HAHA

Already spent close to 60 days fishing majority of the lakes around Vilas/Iron/Oneida and it's probably happened 10 times since middle of May. The worst was when I happened to yell a bad expletive at a driver who was pulling a water-skier out on Minocqua in July for running full speed less than 50 feet from my boat while close to shore. Guy's wake almost flipped over my little Lund!

A-holes are everywhere. What can ya do. We can only police ourselves.

Sweet photos Bill. What type of camera/lenses do you shoot with?

George
08-28-2010, 10:30 AM
You'd think with a body of water the size of the TFF this kinda stuff wouldn't happen....oh well. I was on Lac Des Milles Lacs in Ontario a few weeks ago and it happened to me at three times during the week. Twice on Monday when all the folks from Thunder Bay come to spend their "we're just taking Monday off" day in Ontario, and once on Wednesday. Lake size? Just shy of 100,000 acres. Guess size really doesn't matter! ;)

RyanP
08-29-2010, 10:24 PM
I don't remember the year for sure, about 2005 or so, I was fishing by campsite C8 when over a dozen jet skis went between me and the shore at high speed. Not a one bothered to even slow down. When returning to Springstead landing they were lined up next to the landing. Good ole' Dennis was there writing out tickets for each one of them.

BlueRanger
08-29-2010, 10:30 PM
But this time it was just Tiny Fisherman, Fluffy and the grandkids being sarcastic and coming over to visit.

I had a slow weekend on the musky front - released two in the mid-30s but didn't see any bigger fish. Visibility is poor, making it hard to see follows. Caught a few bass and a 16" walleye while throwing bucktails - apparently the walleye was really hungry, because he managed to get all 3 hooks in his mouth. Should have taken a picture - it had a beautiful gold color in the murky water. I saw Josh when I was taking out, and he said some campers he talked to had caught a 45-1/2", and while they were releasing it, a fish in the 50" range nosed up to the lure that was hanging in the water alongside the boat.

Andrew - shots from prior years were taken with a Fuji S5100. This year I'm using a Nikon D40 with 18-55mm and 55-200mm lenses. I posted a few new pictures, including some shots of another demolished campsite.

AndrewR
09-01-2010, 06:07 PM
Just saw your recent photos in the album. Impressive.

Within the last few weeks I inherited a barely used Canon Rebel XTi with a 28-135mm ultrasonic lens. Still a noob with operating this and I'm not a fan of this lens it has, but I'm sure it will come around. Eventually.

I wish I had a different lens to work with but they aren't cheap!

Here are a few I've taken with it:

http://fishing-headquarters.com/gallery/albums/userpics/aug81.jpg

http://fishing-headquarters.com/gallery/albums/userpics/aug82.jpg

http://fishing-headquarters.com/gallery/albums/userpics/aug64.jpg

http://fishing-headquarters.com/gallery/albums/userpics/aug49~1.jpg

George
09-02-2010, 08:37 PM
What a beautiful color on that smallie. Nice pics.

AndrewR
09-03-2010, 02:04 PM
Thanks George! It was a first try on some technical piece of technology... :)

BlueRanger
09-03-2010, 10:23 PM
I bought my camera 9 months ago and I've already taken over 13,000 pictures - probably 3/4 of those were just experimenting with repeated pictures of a particular subject, going through the whole range of menu settings in a systematic way so I could compare results and see exactly how each variable affects the results under different conditions. I made a conscious decision when I bought this camera that I wanted to learn the technical aspects better and try to think about what I wanted the output to look like and choose settings accordingly instead of just relying on the Auto and preset scene modes. Sometimes it makes a huge difference, other times I really only want a snapshot and I'm sure the camera would do just as well on its own.