11-21-2000, 07:02 PM
My Cousin (22) and I (19) fished a Pro-am muskie tournament<br>for the second consecutive year a couple of weeks ago. <br>Before this tournament I had never caught a legal muskie, which <br>in Wisconsin is 34 inches. The tournament started on a<br>Saturday morning at 7:30 and our game plan was set to fish the <br>same area we had the previous year and hope fully land a large<br>muskie we had seen there. We started to work this <br>area which is a small channel between lakes. The channel its <br>self is only about 60 yards at the widest point down to about 15<br>yards before it gets to shallow to navigate a boat. Starting at<br>about 7:45 we started to work this area from the widest part in. <br>At around 9:30 we were in the back of the channel casting into <br>2 feet of water with some muskie cabbage and lilly pads. I <br>threw out a cast with my bucktail about 20 yards from the <br>boat and began to reel it in at a moderate pace, just as my <br>bucktail reached the lilly pads I felt a sudden jerk on my line.<br>I set the hook with all the power I could muster and began to <br>fight the thrashing monster. I didn't exactly know if it was a big <br>fish or not until I saw its huge mouth and head trying to shake <br>out my bucktail. The hog thrashed and ran until I could get <br>him close enough to the boat to get him in the net. My cousin <br>swooped the net down and lifted the sow into the boat. After <br>some hooting and hollering we removed the fish gently from the <br>net unhooking it in the process. I quickly measured the fish <br>and set it in the livewell. The 38 inch beast barley fit but we<br>managed to get him settled in and took off quickly for the weigh<br>in. My first legal muskie a 38in 12lb hog combined with another<br>35 1/2in 11lb fish ended up winning our boat $4000 dollars <br>and second place missing first by a 1/2 pound or just 1 in.<br>All and all a pretty memorable experiance of my first legal<br>muskie. <br><br>by kurtzy : Thursday 21 September, 2000 <br><br><br>Submit your Fishing Adventure Stories to win great prizes at ReMemory.Com