Muskie Musk.

We leave our family for 9 days for 10,000 casts toward a Muskie.

Muskellunge (Esox masquinongy) from the Ojibwa word maashkinoozhe, meaning "ugly pike". Muskie like to cruse “patrols” looking to destroy whatever critter they choose. This is no ordinary fish. They are the apex predator in any water they live. Eating anything they can possibly fit in their toothy mouth. This is not a fish for the light of heart, mind, or body...

North of Hwy 8 live the Maashkinoozhe. Tea colored rivers from the rust belt harbor the elusive fish.  We cast flies that are larger than some house pets to a fish meaner than a doberman pincer on Starbucks. We arrive at camp around 1am, since we had to catch the evening rise on the Driftless, we drive by night. We set camp, charge camera batteries, and rig our titanium bite leaders.

Sunrise and we rise, off to the musky river where hopefully the guy remembered to drop a johnboat off for us. Sure enough it was there. Now, nobody in the boat had ever casted for muskie before this, but it was easy to see why the fish loved this water. Slow pools with submerged vegitation haunted us as we casted furiously. We floated by submerged logs and gawked down into the amber water in hopes to see one. The river was very similar to home. Steep rocky riffles gently sweeping around the corner into deep slow glassy pools, we had confidence in this type water. Reading seams, drop-offs, shadows, submerged vegie, and woody debris there were fishing places everywhere! Yet….where were the muskie?
Two days straight of casting 10wts and flies the size of a muskrat and no toothy critters.
But...we did catch a few smallmouth bass that could have passed as bait in these waters. Powerfull dark and deep were the smallmouth bass here. We could catch smallmouth in the Ozarks so we quickly threw them back and kept casting, and casting, and casting.....all the way to Lake Vermillion.

This weeks photo is another from Matt Tucker at www.ozarkchronicles.com.  Matt takes incredibly awesome photos and it is seriously cool that he lets me (actually I just steal without permission...it's in the bro code) mess with his photos. 

Fishadelic Foto Friday....Evan with ANOTHER brown, edition.

Fishadelic Foto Friday--King in the Castle Edition

Last week I had a photo of the first day's big fish with  a fisherman of mine now this weeks photo of big fish of the second day.  The crazy thing is...they were hooked probably no more than 15' apart--on back-to-back days.  Pretty much as soon as he set the hook it was aparent that he had another nice fish (probably because it jumped twice it's body length out of the water right after the hook-set) and I was saying...."It was in the same spot, it was in the SAME SPOT!"

Fishadelic Foto Friday...Deja Vue 2 edition.

Fishadelic Foto Friday.....Silver Surfer edition, dos.

To listen to the podcast click the link below or the Liv2 Fly Fish Logo to the left.  While there check out some of his other podcasts and photos.

Click Here for the North Fork of the White Podcast with Brian Wise.

Anyway...

Before starting a crazy month of guiding coming up in March I had the opportunity to fish with a buddy.  Fly Fishing the Ozarks Contributor and Ozark Chronicles Czar Matt Tucker came down from St. Louis after I sent him several emails about the incredibly nice water that we have now.  It had also been a while since either one of us really had the opportunity to shoot some on-stream photos besides regular fish photos.

We started the day by putting the drift boat in at the dirt (read MUD) "ramp" at Kelly Ford which is always a fun experience in itself and I'm pretty sure I have donated several pairs of wading boots to the mud....never to be found again.  But as soon as the boat hit the water it started snowing...big snowflakes. Turns out that was probably the warmest part of the day as the wind really blew later in the afternoon and it was a "too the bone" kind of wind.

Water levels were around 740 cfs which usually equals crazy-good water for drifting. We rowed up to Lamb and nothing happening so we drifted through to Kelly--made 3 drifts at Kelly and landed as many fish.  We hit another stack of fish below McKee Bridge and caught several, several fish in one spot.

Ok, so pretty much every stop and pretty much all riffles produced fish the rest of the day so lets get on to the photos.

Even caught a nice......sucker.....yeah, that is a look of pure unbridled excitement on my face.  There is nothing like setting the hook and seeing that golden brown flashing from the depths to find out it's a sucker instead of a big brown.  It was painful.

Had a great time.  And for a little more info on the river, it does look like the really sexy water we have now will be holding on for a little while.  The fall-out is really slow and with some rain coming later this week hopefully it will hold on that much longer.  Don't be shy about fishing 700cfs and under, it can be some of the best water levels to fish the river.  It doesn't make wading an already sketchy wading river any easier so watch your step and remember....most of the time you won't have to make a very long cast to catch these fish at higher levels so wading out real far and casting into the SUPER fast water really isn't necessary (you wouldn't stand in it so why would a fish hang out in it for very long) hit the seam.

For the rest of the photos shot during this outing click here