Saturday June 05

Musky opener

And I made the 50 inch club.

It was 5:30 am opening morning and on the drive to the launch I wasn't saying too much because I was trying to decide which spot I wanted to hit to start the season. We were on the water and under power just before 6 am when that little voice in my head finally decided for me to always go with your first instinct.

Many times I have reached into the tackle box to get a lure and then got distracted by another lure but decided to go with my first instinct on the lure choice and it has paid off. Now I can say the same for fishing locations. Go with your first instinct.

We were washing lures by just after 6 am. Topwater was the lure of choice as we were fishing shallow over top of the new weeds. I remember telling my buddy Jerry that I just could never imagine catching a 50 on topwater.

I have hooked into 2 musky before on topwater but lost them both at the boat. I have also had a few fish take a swipe at my topwater lure but come up short on hooking into them. When I fish topwater i am always watching for the wake of an approaching fish.

This fish came out of nowhere and took a huge swipe at my lure. before I could finish saying "whoa" it took another swipe and before I could finish saying "WOW" it took a third swipe and I felt the pull on the line, so I pulled back.

This fish was strong and even took a run under the boat. I wish I could say I enjoyed the fight but I would be a liar. I was terrified of loosing this fish and the last thing it wanted to do was get into the net.

Once in the net it thrashed and rolled a few times but the Stowmaster nets are so big that it quickly calmed down. I had one point of the treble right in the corner of it's mouth so the hook release was quick and painless.

We always take a minimum of 3 pictures. Inevitably there's always one of the 3 that doesn't come out well and just think if that was the only one you took. This fish was not happy being photographed and gave me a huge body wiggle and there was no way I was going to drop this fish. Tough to say who has the more teeth.

I was pretty freaked about picking this fish out of the net. It was huge and heavy and I thought for sure my hand was going to get raked by the gills. I must have done a good job because it thrashed during the picture taking and I managed to hold on pretty good.

I really like that we put the effort into taking release shots. Jerry was about a half second away from capturing the tail splash.

I like to think we did a good job with this fish because it was a really short revival and I got one of the best tail face washing goodbyes I can ever remember.