Josh’s first Musky

Aug 06, 2011

Once again the family did the 4 1/2 hour drive from Ottawa to Cameron Lake in Fenelon Falls for the annual MCI family outing. This year we booked a cabin so that I could take my boat.

Saturday morning I woke up Josh and we lugged the equipment down to the boat and headed to the far end and settled in for a troll.

I gave Josh the inside and had him chose the spinner bait. After about a half hour of no action I looked over at my tackle box and thought about this one lure I really liked and it has this story to it.

A few weekends before this we had the Arnprior outing and Mike was coming from Mississauga and posted on the MCI board that he was stopping along the way at Stacy’s for some lures and asked if anyone needed/wanted any. So I asked for 2 shallow raiders and 2 of whatever he chose for me. Funny but at the Motel he threw 4 lures on the table and asked me to pick the 2 that I wanted. Ironically the 2 that I didn’t pick were the ones he wanted to keep. One of these lures that I picked I really liked as a trolling lure. So when I took Josh out I put it on the end of his line. First time seeing water too.

At last year’s family outing Kert took Josh and I out for about an hour. Josh said he enjoyed trolling so all last summer I tried to get him to go out but at 10 years old video games and friends took more priority so we didn’t make it out even once in 2010. But Josh was very keen this year.

We had our lines in the water at about 8:15 and we settled back and enjoyed the scenery. I have to admit I wasn’t so sure how it was going to go when the rod went off but Josh was a real pro. In the video you can see that I have been preaching to Josh that the hook set is so important. Unfortunately I didn’t think to mention to him that when trolling the fish pretty much sets the hook on it’s own. Thank goodness he didn’t pull the lure out of the fish’s mouth. I also knew that he wasn’t going to be able to get the rod out of the holder under power so I had thrown the boat into neutral and thankfully we didn’t lose the fish because of the either. I had also added a lanyard to my net just for a moment like this.

I have to admit while we were trolling how the picture taking was going to happen. We got lucky, there were several people on their decks enjoying the morning coffee and a couple of guys came down to their docks to watch the action. As well there were several people at the cottage next door that watched and asked if we could give them the fish for their breakfast. So this picture was taken by the guys who came to watch. Lucky!

 

On Saturday evening Brian and Jason climbed aboard the boat in search of our own toothy critter and all I got all weekend was this guy on a 9 inch BullDawg.

The best part of this story? The MCI Family outing had a Swan trophy to the kid who gets the biggest musky. Another kid had a 43 and josh wanted to beat that. Sunday morning he gets up on his own and says “lets go fishing” So off we went. On our trolling run we did hit a couple of weed patches that made our lures peel off the rod. After the second false peel Josh looked at me and told me he wanted to go back home.  When I asked him why he told me “My heart can’t take it anymore, I get too excited when I hear the line peeling off” We now have a hooked musky fisherman in our family.