The Lake is Calling and I Must Go – Advice From Avid Fishermen Jane Davis

My grandfather built a log cabin in ’37 so I grew up looking at the muskie over the fireplace.  I still spend summers up North and I’ve gotten into hunting muskies myself now.

Before I arrive I always ask my husband to print out the sunrise/sunset and moonrise/moonset calendars for June through September, and then I highlight days where the two coincide so I’m sure to fish those.  Keep an eye on your watch and on the sky because both the scheduled sunset and the sun falling behind the trees will produce.  Pre-storm is of course a given.  No matter what you have planned for the day, if you’re headed somewhere and you see black clouds on the horizon, you need to turn back and hop in your boat.  I try to live by the saying, “the lake is calling and I must go.”  Try to be out working the water when the wind switches directions.  Fish strike just before a change.

When the winds are from the West, I have a favorite places on the chain of lakes I like to drift.  On this particular day, I happened to arrive right behind another guy who was throwing the usual large lures.  I jumped in behind him and fished the same water with my small bucktail.  I like a silver blade in lakes with a tamarack stain.  The guy in the local bait shop makes fun of my small lure addiction, but hey, it works for me.  On the second dock I found this big boy.  The angler was kind enough to come back and help me unhook him as I’d forgotten my net.  He said, “I can’t believe it, I fished the corners of that dock thoroughly.  What are you using?”  “Just this little guy,” I said with a smile as he snapped a photo for me.

Don’t forget when you get back to your cottage to shake the water off the bucktails.  You don’t want your hooks getting rusty.  The shaper the better.  Muskies have hard mouths.  Now if I could just remember the net—but then maybe forgetting it is the real key to catching a good one.

The one drawback is I have trouble hooking them from a kayak.  I may fool more fish with the added maneuverability and the stealthy quiet approach, but I can’t see the follows, and losing them is frustrating.

Does anyone else have this problem?  Any ideas to hook more from the kayak?

– Jane Davis