Recent Adventure

I made it over to my home lake this week. Even though I knew with all the rain we've had received in the last couple weeks that the water levels would be higher than I like but not having been out fishing for a few weeks prompted me to go anyway just to see how bad the conditions were. The water was up about 10 feet above summer pool but had been lots higher, judging by the drift lines in the parking lots. Most of the ramps were closed and the couple that were open you had to use the high water access roads to launch your boat. With the water temps in the high 60's and the water clarity pretty good I still had hopes of at least seeing a musky or two. After several hours of casting in, around, though, over and under, the massive amounts of flooded brush I have not even the first glimpse of a musky so I decided to try something a little different so I motored to one of my favorite weedbeds, which is normally in 6-8 feet of water but now was 16-18 feet deep. The best way to fish this spot, I figured, was to troll it so out came the rod holders and down went the deep divers. After a few hours of trolling, I had the same results as earlier that morning, nothing. With all the new cover in the water and every place looking like it should have a fish in bush I couldn't resist going back to casting. I seemed like every musky in the lake had vanished but the shallow brush was full of bass, they would follow my baits out to have a look and short strike at the surface lures. Most of the baits I was using were as big as the bass that were chasing them. With this trip the target was musky so I didn't have any of my bass gear in the boat.
All in all it was a very nice day to be out on the water and even though I didn't see any muskies, I cannot wait to go back and do it all over again. Just being out there is what make this sport so great, catching fish is a bonus. Days like this makes one understand why they call it fishing, not catching.