In this video I spent 4 days chasing the fish of 10,000 casts. I hadn’t caught a musky since June and I knew I had to try and catch another one before the end of the year. These fish are apex predators with mouths full of teeth that will eat almost anything that swims… except for my fly apparently. The question is, can I figure out how to catch a fish that has eluded me for the past 5 months? Or will I end up frustrated and questioning my life choices? There’s only one way to find out, welcome back to another video.
On day 1 I fished with my buddies Seth harman and Micah bates. Micah and I were in his John boat and Seth was in his kayak. We didn't have super high expectations for the day, but within an hour our expectations changed rapidly.
So after our eventful morning of fishing we met back up with Seth and decided to change to a different river. The reason being is that there were at least 4 different boats on that section of river fishing, and it just wasn’t worth the competition. This river is one of the more popular musky waters in the state, and although it’s got a lot of fish they can be tough to catch. So we took off and decided to spend our last couple of hours on a different river.
And that’s how our first day on the water went. Seth also moved a really good musky on that second spot, which you can go over to his channel and watch if you’re interested to see his perspective. His channel is called Seth Harman Outdoors. But we ended up seeing quite a few musky and just could never get one of the fish to commit to the fly. Several days later I decided to go back out by myself and try the same general area we ended at on day 1. With some nasty weather forecasted I figured I should be able to get one of the musky to actually commit to my fly.
After several more hours of casting I hadn’t seen another musky and then it started raining. Winter time rain is the worst because it makes you wet and the cooler air temps make it downright miserable. I decided to make the executive decision to change rivers completely to an area that was supposedly getting a little bit less rain. That turned out to be partially true, but I had already gotten wet so the misery was already there to stay. But I’m stubborn, so I fished anyways.
After that total failure I pretty much gave up. As I said that one was totally on me, I mean I don’t claim to be the best angler but often times when I don’t catch a musky I can chalk it up to not having an opportunity or musky being picky. In this situation I had no excuse, which left a sour taste in my mouth. Which meant the next week I HAD to make another musky trip. At this point it was personal, and I had spent over 16 hours on the water without a fish hitting the net. So my plan was to go back to the river that I had moved so many musky on day 1 in hopes of actually getting one of the fish to commit.
So after that fish I did move one other musky, but you can’t see the fish and I barely even mentioned that I moved it, so the footage ins’t that interesting. But that day didn’t go any better than the first time I fished that river on day 1. IN fact it went worse arguably, which I should have seen coming. So that made it nearly 22 hours of fishing without a single musky hitting the net. I was seriously contemplating if I’d catch another musky in 2025 with the holidays approaching. But after a long week of deer hunting Seth invited me out to fish again and I of course jumped at the opportunity. With the miserably cold weather I wasn’t too confident, but I figured it was better than sitting around the house all day.
I figured I’d let those clips play without any context. But basically what happened there is I let Seth cast in the area for a while and I tied on that white baitfish colored fly. After he finished I paddled back to the spot, casted once to get the fly wet, and then a musky surfaced right next to me. At least that’s what we thought it was. So then we both pressed record as I launched a quick cast in the middle of the river. And, obviously, you saw the rest. We were both shocked and more than a little cold.
At 36 inches that fish won’t break any records, but after fishing for around 24 hours over the course of 4 or 5 days I was not about to complain. Shortly after that we decided to get off the water so we could warm up, and then made a unanimous decision to stay warm and not get back out on the water. But we did scout out some new water access for our next musky adventure. Seriously though shout out to Seth from Seth harman outdoors, go check out his YouTube channel for some more musky content AND for a video on how to tie the fly I was using in this video. He’s an awesome dude and deserves all of the support you guys can show. Thank you guys for watching another musky episode and I’ll catch you on the next video.
