I always try to go big on my birthday so Granny and I started the celebration a day early and made it a two day one night camping trip. Today is the day before and we fished with Bob and took on a long float. We were hesitant and nearly cancelled last night due to a forceful wind forecast. But life is short. October is even shorter. We said screw it. Our plan was get an early start with plans to get off the river before the gales got too bad.
The one thing about starting early in the second half of October is that it’s not warm at push off. When we left the launch it was a mere 34°. Granny took the back of the boat and didn’t even pick up my Winston for about two hours until the sun warmed us up to the upper 40°s.
We had a peaceful windless float for at least 20 minutes. Then at 9 AM you could hear the tall trees of the Great Northwoods begin to sway. What few leaves are left rattled and most ended up drifting down the river with us for the rest of the day. Most sunken by the turbulent upstream rolling whitecaps. The lovely wind was listed as a steady 18 mph and gusts were as much as 38 mph. Rowing was HELL!
What was the worst was we weren’t catching fish. Not even moving a fish despite casting to great looking water. We had drop-offs, sunken trees, rapids dumping into deep pools with boulders – we had it all. But not a sighting of a following musky. I stubbornly stuck to my tan size 4/0 GT fly while Bob kept switching. Bob tied up some beautiful musky flies last winter.
Around 1 PM the wind had us beaten. When it’s bad like this not only does it hinder you casting and rowing, but the sound whipping through your ears is deafening and starts to mess with your mind. You can hardly hear each other talk and can’t enjoy the call of a bird in the forest. But as we pulled over in a somewhat sheltered area for lunch, I spotted a musky jetting upstream. Likely spooked from spotting us.
The sighting gave new energy and after lunch, literally five minutes in I stuck this little guy. He’s beautiful. And if it was his cousin the chain pickerel he’d be a dandy!
The wind only got worse as the sun lowered throughout the afternoon. But that one musky, regardless of size had even Granny casting on occasion. In our last half hour of the float Bob had a musky slam his fly. It was a swing and miss on a fish at least a little larger than the one I caught. Bob tossed it right back with hopes for the fish to come back. While that fish didn’t, a tiny musky volunteered. We don’t have a picture because we released him quickly. But now we had two. No matter the size – that’s a good day fly fishing for musky.
We wrapped it up around 4. This particular take out ramp provides a serious challenge but we pulled it off and had the boat on the trailer at 4:40. Bob headed home and Granny and I are camped on this beautiful river. Tomorrow we plan to hike and wade fish. It’s a birthday tradition!
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