7/26–8/3 Musky Hunt

[Red Childress]

We just got back from visiting my dad down in Virginia. The newly developing ATV trails down there are world class. Many of the old coal mining sites have been turned into revenue producing trails. We powered our way thru some serious rain/mud last Monday and crossed the finish line in just under 8 hours. We wanted to get on the Hatfield/McCoy Trail connector but the mud was to slick for us to get there so we rode on the ‘Plan B’ trail.

In other news.........Andy, the Horseshoe and I pull out tomorrow for 7 days of fishing on St. Clair. We fish the Bondy Slam tourney on Saturday and Sunday then I will (once again) try to hunt down a 55” spotted musky the following week. I will try to post daily reports of our efforts.


Good luck and stay tuned.

[ttabaleulb]

That sounds like a blast of a trip in Virginia!!

Good luck on the Musky hunt at St. Clair. I may have asked you before, but do you plan to get a repro done if/when you got that 55" spotted? That sounds like it would be a hell of a fish to put on a wall or another type of scenario.

[Red Childress]

A repro is the plan, Jay. I realize that devoting only 1 week per year on a body of water with 55+ potential really reduces the likelihood of my goal ever happening......especially since we are not trolling. Hopefully, my health continues to hold into retirement and I get to increase the number of yearly trips to waters that hold fishable populations of 55’s.

[ttabaleulb]

Good deal. Seems like I am following a similar plan for a Tiger in the mid 40+ range with nice markings to get a repro done. Hope you guys get into em out there.

[Red Childress]

We have been pretty happy with things so far. Our largest fish is yesterday’s 49 I stuck on a Medussa. We have only seen 1 fish that was definitely 50+ and it was 2 hours after the 49 hit.

We have prolly seen 30 fish in 2.5 total days of fishing.

The tourney went OK on Sat and Sunday. We placed 20th out of 38 teams while losing 4 total fish and 1 was a stud that I never saw. Been some rough water to cast thru and our bodies are starting to heal from the weekend pounding.

Time to go. Stay tuned.

[gfishes]

Keep on slugging! LSC is not always a picnic. I heard from club members about this past Saturdays blow. Good luck on your quest. Are you on the Canadian side? I spent a week fishing out of the Thames earlier in the summer.

[Red Childress]

We hustled out earlier this morning so we could set up on 1 of 2 waypoints but we hadn’t decided which one until the last minute. Finally we go to a spot where I raised the largest fish we had seen. Andy fires his second cast of the morning and sticks his first 50 measuring 51.5. He stuck a 44 just before the East wind kicked in and things shut down around 1:30. I had 1 nice follow doing some unconventional stuff and that was it for my day.

Our bodies are healing up from the weekend so we will do 2 shifts over the next 3 days capitalizing on both primary windows.

Fyi, We are several miles offshore on the Canadian side. Casting in 3-5 foot waves has been challenging but today was very tolerable.

Stay tuned.

[Red Childress]

Since the East/Northeast wind change and cold front dropped on us Wednesday, the fish activity slowed down. We did catch 3 yesterday but nothing over 44 and we did move 2 fish in the upper 40’s to low 50’s early in the day and another very nice fish last evening but no eaters. Very rough water yesterday morning.

Stay tuned.

[Red Childress]

Some tough fishing yesterday. We lost/missed 3 total fish yesterday....1 in the AM shift and 2 during late dusk. Just a handful of lazy follows but at least they were very nice fish. We are into day 3 of this cold front and our final day of fishing..

Stay tuned.

[Red Childress]

Playing catch up here....

Thursday nite shift started at 5pm and we moved 2 small fish right off the bat with 2 new color combinations we had just melted together. (Both have the birth name, Frankenstein). After 4 more hours, I decided to go with a odd-ish bait that I had been tweaking/playing around with here on the river for a couple weeks and on the 3rd cast, I had a solid fish swing broadside to me and flat missed the bait. (Short striking/nipping fish were making us frustrated and that fish was at least the 7th fish to do that to me. Andy probably had a couple more missed/unbuttoned fish than I did.). Anyway, that happened at 9:11. At 9:19, I had a very nice fish come in super hot and high in the water column and just as I went into the 8, she struck and just nipped the tail while breaking water. After I gave CPR to myself, we made a few more casts as the waves began to swell even higher, we headed home at 9:30.

Another early morning casting attack brought us zero action on Friday. We had planned on fishing until 11 then evaluating the situation since things had been locked up pretty tight for 2.5 days. We decided to fish for 3 more hours hoping the warming water would be the catalyst we needed. Wishful thinking. We threw in the towel and left the premises until next year.



A few thoughts about the trip.......


Anyone who thinks LSC is an easy place to fish needs to grab a 19ft. aluminum Walleye boat and drive 30 miles a day for 7 days in 3-4 ft. waves. Then, pull out a 9ft. rod and cast as often as possible while trying not to get thrown out. :)

I have never fished a shallow-ish lake that did not get much tougher during an East wind. I do not think the same effect would have happened had the change been so severe. (Leading up to the big N-NE switch, we had S/SW winds with lots of humidity/T-storm warnings and climbing water temps.). Almost an exact opposite change.

We had 2 charter captains yell to us that “we needed to get the fbomb back to NY”. It appeared we were a thorn in their side. 75% of the boats around us are guides/charters during the weekdays and I am sure it was our fault the bite was bad as a result of the increased fishing pressure. :)

When the bite gets tough for you over an extended period of time, as long as you are certain there are fish around, just keep on grinding. Color, size and speed changes are all good ideas. Adding personality to your retrieve is an art and VERY important regardless of the bait.

I cannot stress the importance of proper figure-8ing. The 49” I got really had no intentions of eating my Medussa and these clear water fish are tough to convert (during an already tough bite) but if you can get them to boatside, you must have some plans. Figure out your plans and practice them with all the baits you are likely to have in the water. From transitioning thru direction, speed and depth changes to understanding the blow-out/limp biscuit tendencies that some baits have, maximizing opportunities is the name of the game. Back to the 49” and largest fish I caught......this fish comes in super slow and very low at 1:35pm....super bright sun but at least the boat shadow is casting the other way. I did not even see her until a full 8 and half of another then she showed up about 7ft. down. I did a couple quick upward twitches with no response then I immediately free-spooled right back into her face. She had 2 choices.....open up and say ahhhhh or move her head. She ate it but is still looking straight up at me shaking her head and thrashing the surface which is the worst situation possible. 5-6 headahakes later Andy shows up with a great net job. The point is you will likely need to have other tricks besides “deeper in the straight-aways and deep to shallow banking turns”. Many times the fish may hardly move or stay deep or lose sight of the bait because your turns were too tight. Making split-second decisions takes practice. Practice x 100.


If you are fishing clear water, get yourself some excellent polarized glasses. If they cost 19.99, it is likely they only have a small amount of polarization. Pay attention to lens color as well.


For such a big lake, there are only a few public launches and all close at 8:30, an hour before dark. We had to get creative towards the end of the week in order to fish into dark. :)


Spending an entire week fishing the same lake is always interesting and informative. Observing the impact weather has on lakes (especially shallow ones) is easy to see.

The smallmouth bass bite out there is red hot at the moment. We have a bass guide friend who works out of the marina we stay at and he was consistently hauling in 22-25 inch bass. We will likely follow him out and chase smallies (aka....take a break from musky fishing) near him for a day next year. These bass were studs.

Seeing the sturgeon jump is always cool.




I am not planning to fish until Tuesday.....Andy and I will likely musky fish Chautauqua. Wednesday kicks off a month with lots of night trips. Big walleye are on the agenda.



Good luck and Stay tuned!

[Red Childress]

Here are the 2 largest fish we netted last week. (I think this is my 49 but could be the 47. We were in such a hurry to get them measured/released that I am a bit confused.) Andy’s 51.5 was the largest and absolutely hammered his Medussa. My best strike/fight came from a 47 during the tournament. She hit close to the surface and immediately went airborne 2x. These fish seem to fight harder but do not have the thickness of the Ohio/Prendergast strain.

At the beginning of the week, both of us were raising several fish per day and by the time we left, we were seeing 1 fish per 4-5 hours of grinding.


30778

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[ttabaleulb]

Those are some nice fish Red, congrats to you guys. I love the markings on them.

I got a good laugh about the charter captains. That sounds a lot like what you run into with the striper guides at Raystown. Some of them do their best at taking the fun out of fishing.

I do appreciate your synopsis on fishing that lake though. I have kicked the idea around for a few years to make a trip there with the flyrod but have decided to stay closer. Thats some big water to attack with a flyrod and the wind could shut me down pretty easily. I think my next "big" trip might be to the Keys for Tarpon at some point.

[gfishes]

Red, I had the same experience with musky charter captains when I was there during my week in late June. Two times during the week I was casting an area when one of the big trolling boats came by really closely and somehow I was in the way even though I had been in the area for at least an hr casting. On one of the occasions the I overheard the captain yelling to his clients about "all these A-holes that cast around here wherever they please"...