muskie opener on the River

Finally, a sign of summer. Muskie fishing opened on the St. Croix saturday morning to bright skies and lots of mid day wind. I Met "the Gooch" aka Todd Hess @ 5 am and we made our way to a few of the favored early season spots. Early season can be tricky for river muskies, with the high water and current that remains, the fish act a little and sometimes alot differently. That's one of the challenges of the river I love, the less predictable nature of the fish, as opposed to say Bald Eagle or White Bear where they tend to set up in more predictable patterns. I think lake fisherman struggle with the River a bit because of the ever changing nature of the water. I've been fortunate to have spent an enormous amount of time patterning these fish and have a pretty good bead on where they go and why. Part of my goal has always been to seek out the "B" spots. Everyone knows the community holes (afton, Kinni etc etc) but the trick is to fish the backups, and lots of em. The new anglers to the river tend to gravitate to the known spots, but rest assured there are muskies roaming just about every stretch of the river from Stillwater to Prescott. Trolling helps to locate some likely areas and perhaps a fish or two to target but my preference is always to cast. So How'd we do? Well Gooch got things started with a slender but scrappy 41" down at the Kinni, ate a swim bait on a figure 8, which is a rarity on the river. I got myself a nice fat 42" up on the WI shore, trolling a bucktail, a new Maina cowgirl type in funky colors. We did raise a couple others and in keeping with my namesake, I got myself a nice BIG PIKE. I shoulda whacked it, good pickling size at about 32" or so. There's more and more anglers targeting the Croix for muskies, the word kinda got out. I think it's got HUGE fish potential, there's just so much forage and space for them to roam, someones going to get a superfish this summer I bet. My personal biggest was a 51.5" from 2006, but there's been lots of 46-50" class fish seen and caught. Fished yesterday afternoon in and around the passing storms, nada. I thought it was going to be dynamite, playing the weather and all.

This week I'll be guiding trout all week, have a client flying in from the east coast for 3 days. I think we'll mix it up some both on start times and locations. Maybe I'll even talk him into a boat outing if he's game. weather looks good, fishing should be terrific!

have a great week all.

BPM