A Fly Day on the Upper

[John Jarosz]

I had the opportunity to go fly fishing with Rick Kustich on the Upper today. There's no way I was going to miss this chance. We decided we would alternate between musky & bass fishing, mostly to give me time to recover. The time on the water with him was invaluable!
Had three follows and a big cruiser in the morning. I had one that was nose to the fly until I started the 8 & picked up a weed. The other was hugging the bottom following my fly a few feet above. Rick had one that, as the pilots would say "came in 'hot'. It was "locked & loaded", then, last minute, turned & gave him the fin. Then came a beat up high 40+ incher just ambling along. Rick put the fly right at its nose & it didn't even flinch. His opinion was that it was really beat up & might have been mishandled earlier. It sure looked it.

All this by 8:30. Whew!! By that time my body was tired, my arm was tired & my brain was drained.

We hit three other UN's with nothing until the very last one where Rick picked up a feisty 24 incher that couldn't get out of its own way to attack his fly.

A few observations:

1. All the muskies were in the mid 20" to mid 30" range except for the one that was beat up. A good sign for the future.

2. Take care of your catch with proper C&R. Even though it's an apex predator, there's still one above them that can make or break them

3. That darn East wind is putting a ton of weeds into the river

4. Just because two-handed spey casting from shore is effortless, it's a whole different set of dynamics from a boat.

[Stephen Glassic]

John, I was wondering if the type of areas that you were fishing is where most smaller muskies are hanging out until they reach adulthood. So that also makes me wonder if what you experienced is a preview of a promising trophy class in another 5 to 10 yrs.

[John Jarosz]

Steve...no doubt it's a good sign for the future of muskies, unless water/forage/habitat conditions change drastically. Based on this year's YOY seining, we could be seeing quite a few of 20 & 30 inchers

We fished four different UN's, one even being on the Canadian side. Where we fished could have been small musky hangouts but we did see that one 40+ incher lumbering by. It's nice to get a big one but, when fly fishing I'll take whatever follows. The hunt was just as exciting as the catch

Stephen Glassic said:

John, I was wondering if the type of areas that you were fishing is where most smaller muskies are hanging out until they reach adulthood. So that also makes me wonder if what you experienced is a preview of a promising trophy class in another 5 to 10 yrs.