The sky as we drive East towards tiger country. |
This is not how I envisioned I would be spending a Sunday
morning in November. But when an opportunity presents itself you grab a hold of
it and hold on for dear life, because you never know where you might end up.
And so it was no different this Sunday morning, except for the later than
normal start. An opportunity had presented itself; an opportunity for
redemption. It was literally time to hold on for dear life because today we
were going on a hunt; a hunt for a tiger.
A few months ago our friend Mark Modoski reached out to me
asking if I still had any digital pictures from our muskie trip from last
November. I replied by forwarding nearly every picture I had taken that day. He
alluded to a story he was doing about fishing in New Jersey and that he might
be able to use one of Ryley. About two weeks ago Mark made good on his promise
and published an article in On The Water magazine
about the awesome fish hatchery they have in New Jersey. At the end of the
article was a paragraph or two about our muskie trip last Fall and our quest to
fill a vacant IGFA small-fry tiger muskie record. It was humbling to think
about all the work the hatchery put into breeding and raising a small muskie
which was released into a lake in northern New Jersey that grew into the 53
inch monster Ryley caught.
Little did I know that the failed quest for an IGFA record
would lead us on a whirlwind of fishing adventures this past year and bring us
full circle back with Mark, nearly a full year later, out on the water in
search of our record again. This time we were more prepared for what might come
our way. Mark had the weigh-sling, I had an IGFA certified scale, IGFA
measuring tape and the necessary paperwork to seal the deal. We were fishing on
a different lake, in Pennsylvania, that only had tiger muskies and no pure
strains. All we needed to do was find a cooperative tiger muskie; just one.
Our plan was simple. We would through everything, including
the kitchen sink, at these muskie in hopes one of them would fall to temptation
and find its way into our net. We would again be trolling live rainbow trout,
casting large swim baits as well jigging in deep water. The weather conditions
were less than ideal but we were confident that we would be able to put the
bait and lures in their faces and hopefully get one to bite.
Why is it that weatherman can even find a job these days?
They are all-too-often completely wrong in their assessment of the weather.
During the week leading up to our trip I saw forecasts that said Sunday was
going to be overcast with light winds, forecasts that said it was going to be
partly clouding with moderate winds and even one that said it was going to be
sunny with high winds. With the way our luck ran with our bear hunt I was
convinced that we would have the worst weather possible for our trip. Sadly I
was right. Despite the weather, which turned out to be bright sunny skies with
high winds, we left the boat launch optimistic. We had an arsenal at our
disposal and we were prepared to use it all against these tigers.
I’m not entirely sure if I had explained this previously
when I wrote about our first fishing trip with Mark, but he has a rather small
boat; a 14ft sea nymph. The conditions on board are quite cramped for two
adults and a small child but we manage to make it work. As we left the boat
ramp I was slightly concerned with the wind and how it would affect the chop on
the water. Luckily the wind wasn’t much of an issue safety wise but it sure did
blow us all around that lake!
As we trolled our way around the lake we came upon a spot
Mark called “muskie alley”. This was a small sheltered cove at the back on the
lake which had a high steep bank but relatively shallow water. The winds weren’t
hitting the water as hard hear so we decided to pull out a swim bait and do
some casting as we trolled. As we left “muskie alley” for our drift back
towards the boat ramp we still felt like we had a chance at catching a muskie.
We still hadn’t used all of our weapons and it wasn’t even prime muskie feeding
time yet.
As we drifted we decided to troll a rainbow trout off the
bottom (we were already floating on near the surface on a large bobber) in
about 25 ft of water and switched out the swim bait for a jigging lure. The
jigging lure came up empty like the swim bait had but we saw promise in the erratic
behavior of the rainbow trout as we trolled it on the bottom. For a brief few
moments it would start to pull line out and it frantically swam in one
direction, as if it were being chased by something. We gave it a few minutes
each time and then hauled the trout back to the surface to see if it had been
hit by a muskie. Each time we were a little more disappointed than before when
we saw no signs of a muskie.
For the next 8 hours we trolled, drifted, jigged and cast
our butts off. We saw lots of baitfish and some nice marks on the sonar but we
never managed to move a muskie or get one to take one of our rainbow trout. But
all was not lost. Mark and I both talked to Ryley and he wasn’t upset at all.
Despite the cold the wind and the lack of fish he said he had a good time
fishing. He also came out with more prophetic words as we headed back in for
the day, “That’s why they don’t call it catching”.
As we packed up our gear and helped Mark with the boat we
talked more about the record that has eluded us for over a year now. It dawned
on me then that time was running out on us. By this time next year we would be
out of luck. Ryley would need to catch his tiger muskie before he turned 11
next September. As we departed Mark offered up to take Ryley out next May or
June and if that didn’t work he would try for early September. It seemed after
this trip we were all just a little more committed to getting Ryley that tiger.
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