August 19 fishing report

[Tony Scime]

Haven't been out for a few weeks as the near shore marine forecast water temperature has held at 77 degrees and I preferred that it was cooler before fishing for muskies. On Wednesday it finally fell back to 75 so I contacted Louis Long and we made plans to go out today. On Thursday the temperature did creep back up to 76, but it was forecast to be a cool, clear night so I anticipated that the temperature wouldn't be too high.

When we launched the boat this am the surface temperature was 73 degrees and never exceeded 74.5 degrees (at noon when we quit) on this bright, sunny day. Additionally, we didn't take any muskies out of the water.

We did catch two muskies, a fortyish and one 36ish. Both fish were measured in the water and released without taking them out of the river. Both took off immediately after being unhooked. 

The 40 looked like an old male warrior, scars and all. Was caught on a green tube below Motor Island.

The 36 was pristine and beautiful and made a couple of exhilarating jumps which I hope to display on video. Also caught on a green tube it was caught along the trench in the west river. She's the smallest fish we've caught this year and I hope to see more like her.

One thing I've noticed this year is that there seems to be a lot of bait and predators feeding on the bait, much more bait than I've noticed in a long time. At times I'm not sure if what I'm seeing is bait or floating weeds, as there's a lot of floating weeds in the east river and around Strawberry Island. But there's no floating weeds where we fish the trench yet there's huge clouds of bait, emerald shiners I'm thinking, along with a lot of things (fish feeding on the shiners or feeding on the fish feeding on the shiners) hanging around those clouds of bait. 

Most of the muskies we've hooked into, and we've hooked into a muskie or two every time out, have been around these schools of bait.

[Scott McKee]

One of the very first things Jon MacSwan and Tom Page told me was to fish around bait. Smart guys.