Reports

Got out on Otisco Lake for much of the day today with my friend Jared and his buddy Kevin. Kevin grew up in Chicago and is an avid musky angler, having fished a lot in Wisconsin and a bit on the Niagara/Buffalo Harbor and St. Lawrence River. He’s fished with the editors of “Musky Hunter” magazine as well, so I was psyched to have him on board. We started around 7:30 am with cold air temps and plenty of fog coming off the lake. I’m a musky novice and am eager to learn more about the sport. Since this season I’ve been feeling good about being able to locate tigers on this lake and we set up on some deep weeds I’d found with electronics. Within about 10 minutes Jared had a hit from a nice fish probably in the mid-30(s) inch range on a crankbait. About 10 or 15 minutes later Kevin had a hit from a smaller, but still decent fish. We worked a few different areas without luck. Once we got back on the deeper weeds I had a hit and set into an 18″ smallmouth! Not what I wanted, but it was cool to catch a big bass on a musky lure. A few more bass were caught incl. a nice 3lb+ largemouth by Jared.

Water temps were around 59 – much warmer than usual for this time of year. Fish seem to be in an early fall pattern. As we continued working some mid-level to deep weeds Kevin was in the midst of a story when a nice sized musky grabbed his homemade bucktail right by the boat as he was “turning an 8″! It made the day! Jared netted the fish as I grabbed my camera. The fish was stocky and measured a solid 36”! After a couple photos we let the beautiful Tiger go. After I dropped the guys off I fished a bit more and managed to raise a small Tiger (mid to upper 20s). All in all a fun day and a great learning experience. The guys wished they could have fished all day – but they had no idea the fishing would have been as good as it was, so they had made other plans for the afternoon!