First muskies are special. It’s something you never forget. In fact, it becomes a story with every detail firmly engrained in your head forever.
Showing up for your musky charter and looking into a river that resembles coffee and cream can dampen your enthusiasm. Our Ottawa River has never had a spring like this one in my 35 years on it. This week brought new challenges as we awoke on to the results of a curious ‘weather trauma’ on Wednesday morning. Seems 3 to 4 inches of rain had been dumped into the hills on the Quebec side in just 4 or 5 hours and the result were both silt and trees filling up our river.
Dirty water is the enemy of the musky hunter and 99 percent of our river would become unfishable in the next 48 hours. The game becomes finding the last sections of water to hold any clarity. We ended up with only a couple of weed beds with fish in them that were fishable and we beat the heck out them for over 20 hours.
The result was 2 first muskies that will never be forgotten. Jordan the Dentist scored his 49 ½ inch trophy exactly 3 hours into our adventure. What a fish and what a start. It is easy to tell that Jordan fell deeply in love with his first musky by looking at the pictures. Once you go green…….
Kyle on the other hand preferred to add last minute drama to his first musky memory and waited until there were only a couple of hours left in his 2-day charter to pull the trigger. Hope was leaving the boat but Kyle kept casting his PDeez Inline like a machine. Ten hours into a 12-hour casting day it happened. Even better, it happened right a Kyle’s feet as she ate on the turn.
2 fish in 2 long days and we were all happy as could be with our results. More muskies that will live on in the memories of humans forever! Book it!
Three 49s this week and no 50s. Hard done by? I don’t think so…….. Wait ‘til next week!
Ottawa River Musky Factory 