I remember fishing with my brother-in-law on Silver Lake in Silver Lake, Wisconsin. 

What a great time that was. I have not done a lot of fishing there but I have heard about the muskys that some people have supposedly taken from that lake. It's built up with homes and business around the lake but still seems like a nice lake to fish. I remember it was pretty early on Saturday morning when Chuck and I drove out to Silver Lake in an SUV pulling his bass tracker boat behind us.

When we arrived to the boat landing it was about 5:30 a.m. The boat landing already had a few fishermen and women launching or waiting to launch their boats. As we waited patiently I walked over to deposit some funds in the boat landing box.  It wouldn't be long and it would be our turn to launch our boat. It seemed like it was taking people awhile but it always seems like that when your anxious to get out on the water. In the mean time we decided to unload our fishing equipment into the boat. 

 

Finally our time had come and it was time to put our boat in. I waited outside by the landing as Chuck backed the trailer with the boat into the water.  Because it was his boat he jumped in to operate the controls to back it out a bit further while I stayed on the shoreline and guided him with the rope. Ok that part is over. I pulled the boat in close enough and Chuck jumped out. He parked his truck and away we went. Ah, this is great I thought. Here we are heading out for the fish and I don't know about Chuck but I'm going to try and get me one of them muskys I been hearing about. After we got out a ways we were trying to decide on a decent spot to anchor and fish. Chuck had fished the lake a couple of times before so we went with his hunch. He drove us to an area across the lake at first about eighty yards off the shore line which was the east end of the lake closer to the left side of the lake.  We anchored in about 10 feet of water around 6:10 a.m.  We fished it for awhile hoping for something to happen. At first, I did not fish for musky. I used a crawler and some split shot hoping for large Wisconsin game fish. Whether it be a perch, gill, northern pike, bass, whatever, just so long as it was large and edible. A couple of good size game fish could be flilleted and cooked to perfection. 

After about a half an hour we started getting a few hits. I don't know why crappie always seem to be the story of my life but it sure seems to happen. We got lucky enough to catch a few keepers in about an hour or a bit longer. We had a few nibbles in between but small ones. Chuck did pull in a nice size blue gill. It was a keeper. We had about 3 good size game fish in the live well but those smaller hits were making us contemplate on moving to another area. I realize that you get small hits when fishing them kind of game fish but after a ton of them and only 3 keepers it was time to fish for musky. We had not moved yet though we were getting ready to but the morning was getting later and I just had to give it a try.   

I reeled in and started digging through my tackle box looking for that musky lure. I had a few with me. You know; bucktails, surface lures, things like that. At any rate, I started with a lure. One those split lures with the double hooks and tails on the back. Chuck asked "do you wanna move to another spot"? I said, "not just yet". I was planning on casting this a few times first. "Ok", he replied. So he kept fishing for the smaller game fish and I decided to go for the big boy of the game fish. After about 20 minutes Chuck pulls in another keeper, a crappie this time. Me, I'm casting and reeling for that Muskellunge. But nothing yet. Finally I start to give in. It's getting around 7:30 a.m. I'm thinking I should have tried fishing for that musky earlier, but I never have much luck with that. When the other fish start hitting I'm thinking well I don't want to go back skunked with 0 fish so catch some of them first.  After a short while I say to Chuck "Ok I'm ready to move". He jokingly said "Well I'm not". I looked at him and said "really"? He smiled and said "no I'm just kidding, I'm ready to move nothing is happening here". So we pull up anchor and try it elsewhere. This time Chuck heads out to the other side of the lake but bears to the right around the boat landing. Now we're sitting on the west side. Perfect, the sun is to our backs.

 

"Ok, lets try it again" he said. "I'm ready" I answered. So we did. "You want a drink?" he asked. "Sure" I said. "Ya got any beer"? I laughed. He looked at me and said "this isn't a water bar. You want a beer swim to shore and walk to the bar". We both laughed. "What do ya got"? "Well" he said as he was leaning over looking in his cooler, "I have Pepsi, Mountain Dew, root beer and water". "I guess a root beer will work". "That's what I'm having" he replied.  "Here" as he handed me one. "Thanks dude" I told him. He said with a chuckle "your welcome dude". "Sorry" I said,  "just a figure of speech". "Yeah" he said "Deans figure of speech".  I laughed.  Now it's getting to be about 8:30 a.m. and nothing yet as I'm casting. No game fish for Chuck yet either. Come on Muskellunge I said. Take the bait.

After a few cast I decided to try a bucktail. That lead to about 15 minutes of nothing. Chuck was not having any more luck either. "Some musky lake" I said as I started reeling in. "Why not try a different bait or lure" he said. "That's what I'm about to do" I replied. So off with the bucktail and and on with my lure, spit shots? small piece of fishing line ? through the eye of the lure with a jig and crawler? I laughed. Chuck looks at me and asked "What the He- - are you doing?"  "I don't know but I'll find out" I said as I cast it out. "You wanna go?" Chuck asked. "No" I said as I'm reeling in. I thought it was kind of funny as I'm laughing. I'm thinking as I'm reeling in, I'll change to a musky bait when I get this contraption in here. When suddenly... Whoosh! Just like that my rig disappears and my rod is bent and I'm fighting a large fish. Holy Sh- - -  !  What do I have? Chuck is shocked and so am I.  I had to play it for a minute. This thing was putting up a fight. "What do I got?" "Don't loose it"  Chuck said. "I hope not", I replied. As I got it up to the boat we could see it. "That's a musky!" Chuck said in excitement. He's reaching for the net, I'm reeling, it's half way out of the water, now along side the boat where we could see it. It's almost here. Chucks going to net it. Blam! It breaks the line and blows my lure.  No way! and those weren't exactly the words I used. Son of a bleep. It's gone. It's no wonder Chuck said. With whatever it was you had on your line. What a kick in the tail.

"Yeah" I said "but they weren't taking anything else." "No they weren't" he said "that was just luck." "That's a first I ever saw" Chuck said. "As a matter of fact, that's an only I ever saw." I kind of laughed with disappointment. "It must have been mostly on the jig" I said. "Yeah, but I don't think you would have got him this far if that were the case" Chuck said.  He went on to say, "I think it must have had part of the lure but not enough to hold em plus you didn't have a steal leader." "I guess" I replied. "Could you tell if he was fairly good size?" I asked. He said "I don't think he was huge but I couldn't really tell for sure. No way to know what type of musky he was. I saw him but he was splashing around to much."  "Yeah" I said with some disappointment. Well, it was stupid of me to do that anyway.  "Well I'll tell you what" Chuck said, "why don't we try for awhile longer, if we don't have any luck we'll leave." "All right" I agreed. I checked my lure and made sure everything was good to go there. Chuck was using the live bait. It was a pleasant morning weather wise. Not to hot. Pretty comfortable but the fishing seemed like it stopped after that little excitement with the musky. Man, that was unreal. I couldn't believe it. Out of a practical goofy joke I hooked a musky but never got it in the boat. Unreal.  Anytime after that I never played around rigging up my tackle again. That was stupid. I guess in all reality I got what I deserved. Since those days I have been more fortunate. I have caught some nice fish. Even a couple of musky including one tiger musky but nothing to brag about in size. A couple of no keepers, one keeper and plenty of other game fish including bass.

 

Good Luck Fishing.  

Whatever you do, don't rig up stupid rigs like the one I did. Even if you are just clowning around. You may come out on the loosing end.