There are many firsts you never forget. Your first love, your first car, your first heartache and especially, your first musky.
Much like other firsts, your first musky comes out of nowhere when you least expect it. The elusive fish comes with a bit of controversy, but is here to stay despite many efforts to eradicate it.
I have embraced the fishery and consider myself lucky for another opportunity to do what I love, catch fish on a fly.
My oldest son Tait was accompanying me on this trip that started at 5 a.m. with a drive through the sparsely populated countryside of Maine.
Fort Kent is our destination for these toothy predators.
The weather can be unpredictable in October in Maine. I’ve seen snow, rain and high winds, but I’ve also seen beautifully sunny days.
The weather forecaster was calling for occasional rain with a light wind. This seemed promising. I’m always up for a challenge and this day was no exception.
Tait had never fished for musky so l took full advantage on our four-hour drive north to explain what to expect.
We’d be using 10-,11- and 12-weight fly rods with 300- to 500-grain sinking lines, casting from 6 to 14-inch flies. For some, this task can be challenging. Fortunately, Tait has been casting a fly rod since he was 3, so I wasn’t concerned.
There are many aspects of musky fishing that are extremely different from other species. For example, the figure 8. The goal with each cast is to throw your line as far as you can, strip the fly in quickly with strategic pauses causing the fly to kick sideways and giving a larger side profile, finishing with the figure 8.
This is something I knew he had not done, but I was sure he could handle it.
After arriving at our location, Tait practiced casting and worked on the figure 8. Three casts in, he excitedly whispers, “There’s a three-foot musky following my fly!”
And as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared. “So much for practicing,” he said.
I quickly hooked up and the line slipped out of my finger when setting the hook. We continued to fish until 4 p.m. and ended our first day with three follows, three eats and none in the net. We were both exhausted.
Day two started much like the first day ended. It was 50 degrees with a light rain and wind. The boat ride was cold and miserable. We wanted to get casting so we could warm ourselves up.
We had been casting and stripping for hours without any hits. I was about to call it a day and head home early when we had a follow.
Things started to look up, the rain had stopped, the wind died down and the sun came out. We had a renewed energy to keep going.
I’ve found in my experiences, Musky seem to haunt the same locations and I find them close to where I have caught or moved musky in the past. We tried for that fish a few more times without any success. So we decided to relocate to where I had once caught a musky and had seen a 50-incher before.
As I rolled into the new spot, I could see the water level was up and what was typically out of water was now under water, making it hard to determine the drop-off. After figuring out the drop, we started casting and retrieving.
As my fly came into view right in front of Tait, a musky breached the water and attacked my fly. Much to my dismay the fish had only the back three-quarters of my fly in its mouth. The hook for my fly is in the front quarter of the fly, which translated into a missed fish.
Needless to say, it was a fly-tying mistake I will never make again. Two hooks are a must for these elusive fish.
After reliving what just happened, we got back to casting and retrieving as we covered the water and worked our way down the shoreline.
We came to an area where we could see some bait fish close to the surface and I told Tait to cast into the bait fish. His cast landed a foot away and with two strips, his line went tight. I asked, “fish?”
You could see him pull tight but nothing happened. Then it pulled back and he yelled, “it’s a fish!” There was a big swirl as the fish tried to free itself. I yelled, “set it hard and then set it again! Strip, strip it’s coming right at us!”
I frantically dug for the net that was buried under the Yeti cooler and bags. With the net in hand, I finally saw the fish. “I’m losing my sh!@#!” Tait yells. I responded with, “We got this, relax.”
The musky made a run for it. Tait wrangled it toward the net,but it quickly took off again when it saw the net. This made me a little nervous but before I knew it, the fish was in the net.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Tait exclaimed with excitement. We fist bumped and celebrated. He did it. Tait managed to land a musky on his first trip out for these challenging fish.
It measured 35 inches. A perfect first fish. We snapped a couple of quick photos and released the predator to be caught another day.
Musky fishing is unpredictable and frustrating and can challenge even the experienced fishers.
The key is to stay focused, even when it becomes tedious and robotic. Cast where you think there would never in a million years be a fish and finish with the figure 8.
It’s a technique I never would have thought would work and who knows, maybe you’ll find yourself in a tug of war battle with the infamous fish of 10,000 casts.
