Granny Checks Musky Off Her List

It was an enjoyable 7 hour drive home from Nipigon on Friday.  I daydreamed about the incredible fishing run of the last two months from Bhutan to Colombia to Canada.  It was unbelievable.  But it was great to finally be home for a normal dinner with Granny on the back porch.

I unpacked on Saturday.  Edited Canada photos.  Mowed the lawn.  Paid bills.  All the usuals.  There was no time for rest.  And Sunday and Monday were more of the same.  I had the house to myself while Granny worked her in town job.

Tuesday was Granny’s day off and she’s been chomping to get out fishing.  I had our Outcast Striker packed and ready with a couple of Winstons rigged.  One with a medium sized white and gray streamer attached to wire for pike.  The other with a chartreuse and white Clouser on 0X Fluoro for smallmouth bass.  We launched our portable two person raft from a sneaky cool spot at 5:50 AM.

Just being on a remote river at sunrise in early June in northern Wisconsin is enough to make your day.  The birds are beyond belief.  Their songs and varieties of colors.  The wildlife.  We saw a bear when doing the shuttle last night.  This morning we had this deer swim the river in front of us.  Numerous turtle species sunning.  And a first, a pine squirrel swam across the river as well.  It’s a wonder he wasn’t dinner for a big pike or musky!

To start, the fish weren’t exactly jumping on the line.  The first mile of this unique fishery is accessible by foot.  But after that, unless you’re willing to hoof it through bog, mosquitoes and ticks, you’re not going.  That’s when we started picking off handsome hard-fighting smallies in the deep bouldery runs.  The smallie action lasted about two hours.  Once the sun was high the bronze backs were hard to find.

With me being gone so much there’s lots of yard projects to do at home.  We had a goal to catch one pike for dinner and be off the river by noon.  We had water to cover so around 9 AM there was no more back rowing.  Granny switched gears from smallies to pike and scattered quick casts to weedy areas.  The pike fly drew attention and in a short time her rod was bent deep.

Somehow, Granny has gone her first two summers living in “Home of World Record Muskies” without catching her first yet.  Its mostly because she doesn’t hit it hard like me and friends.  But she’s had her shots.  The musky has simply been her menace.  But that ended here.  We thought she had a pike but lo and behold, Granny landed her first musky.  Small, but check it off the list!

When you catch one musky be ready because what I’ve learned in my short time here, is that when one musky is hungry so are others.  It wasn’t five minutes later when a larger musky eased from a deep bank behind the fly.  We’ll never know if the beautiful specimen was going to eat the fly or not because our dinner pike shot out of nowhere and snatched it.

Yeah, we’d loved to have caught a second musky for the day.  But it would be weird to go two summers without and then land your first two in less than ten minutes.  The pike put up a great fight and he was no slouch.  And we had the perfect size pike for dinner.

I had to row my butt off but we were packing up before noon.  The timing was actually perfect because today was a scorcher.  And we got a good five hours of fishing.

At the take out we had one more wildlife encounter.  A female common snapping turtle cruising the dirt road searching for a place to lay her eggs.  It’s that time of year.  Drive slowly and if you see one crossing give em a break.

What a fantastic start to our season here in Hayward, Wisconsin!

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing