Southern Musky On The Fly

The sequel to Operation Musky OTF featured ridiculous fishing to match the ridiculous cold weather. Snow on the ground, 15 mph winds, and a launch temp of 21 made pumping gas on the drive up suck really bad, so playing in the water seemed like a worse and worse idea the closer I got to the river. When you don't get a ton of opportunities to go fishing, you just have to go any time you can. We dropped 5 Jackson Kayaks into ice cold river water and started hucking quarter chickens, half chickens, hanks of flashabou, and all sorts of hand tied abominations at every pocket, eddy, and laydown we passed. After 5 miles of fishless, cold paddling we stopped on a bare bank for food, beer, bourbon, and built a fire to knock the edge off the chill.





After we dropped back in the water the fish turned on with Ryan boating a small musky not 100 yards below the launch on a big, black "hang time" I tied up last week. I was proud as hell that a buddy caught his first musky on a fly I tied. Josh's bleeding sucker fly evaded the chomping jaws of several musky until he stuck a hot musky that had just tried to chew off Corey's jig and fingers at boatside. Yeah, Corey stuck a musky on a biffle head craw!?




I tied on this skirted beauty "Totes McGotes" and started pounding laydowns.



I missed my first take when I couldn't catch up to the musky that ate it on the run heading straight towards me. Paddling and stripping big streamers in current is though. My second Musky take of the day was awesome and prototypical musky behavior 101. Josh and I parked up on a deep inside bend with tons of down timber when the faint, dark submarine slowly appeared tracking under my fly. I kept a steady pace and the fish never broke pace until I hit the bite tippet leader and began a figure eight. The water wolf flashed from 0 to 60 and pounded "Totes McGotes" with surprising speed, but somehow my hookset missed home. I fired back and stripped the streamer back at a slightly faster pace and he pounded it with only a few feet of line out. Luckily, I didn't break anything and put him in the boat.