Hi all,
Basically I consider myself a bass fisherman, but for the past 2 years or so I've occasionally played around with musky fishing at the prompting of my fishing buddies. With only 3 musky outings under my belt, I know enough to know that I know bupkis about it. So, for the past two outings we hired professional guides. The last time around we used a guide service I won't mention to fish the Fox Chain. I found the guides that time pretty worthless, and was really dissappointed. This is not just because we didn't get on any meaningful fish, but more because they seemed to be taking wild guesses, and not really teaching us anything. I asked lots of questions, and got lots of very unsatisfactory answers.
This time around we used "Johnny's Ultimate Musky Guide Service" (http://www.ultimatemuskyguide.com/index2.html) and fished Pewaukee Lake in Wisconsin. We found him at the Tinley Park show, and his picture book was very impressive. We hired him and hit up Pewaukee on the Tuesday after labor day. Weather conditions were far from optimal with a nasty cold front and rain coming in, but we made a go of it anyway. I must say, this was much more of what I expect from a guide. He had a plan, chose particular spots and explained why he chose them, chose particular baits and explained those too, and showed us a new trick or two (short-line trolling...very cool). He also managed to get me on my best musky of my short musky career...a 35 1/2" incher...I know this is no biggie in Musky circles, but I was pretty happy. The fish came on a bright orange bucktail with a single #8 gold blade. I don't recall the manufacturer.
We got some video after the catch, and I posted that here: http://63.115.252.20/Pewaukee/.
We had numerous follows from similar and bigger musky. We landed one other small one and a couple bass while short-line trolling, and surprisingly my brother landed a bunch of largemouth bass that seemed to love this huge perch-colored glider bait.
While I didn't land a 50+ incher, I must say I learned a great deal on the outing. I'd definitely use John again. We also had lots of laughs. It was a great time. I think we'll have to do that again.
Basically I consider myself a bass fisherman, but for the past 2 years or so I've occasionally played around with musky fishing at the prompting of my fishing buddies. With only 3 musky outings under my belt, I know enough to know that I know bupkis about it. So, for the past two outings we hired professional guides. The last time around we used a guide service I won't mention to fish the Fox Chain. I found the guides that time pretty worthless, and was really dissappointed. This is not just because we didn't get on any meaningful fish, but more because they seemed to be taking wild guesses, and not really teaching us anything. I asked lots of questions, and got lots of very unsatisfactory answers.
This time around we used "Johnny's Ultimate Musky Guide Service" (http://www.ultimatemuskyguide.com/index2.html) and fished Pewaukee Lake in Wisconsin. We found him at the Tinley Park show, and his picture book was very impressive. We hired him and hit up Pewaukee on the Tuesday after labor day. Weather conditions were far from optimal with a nasty cold front and rain coming in, but we made a go of it anyway. I must say, this was much more of what I expect from a guide. He had a plan, chose particular spots and explained why he chose them, chose particular baits and explained those too, and showed us a new trick or two (short-line trolling...very cool). He also managed to get me on my best musky of my short musky career...a 35 1/2" incher...I know this is no biggie in Musky circles, but I was pretty happy. The fish came on a bright orange bucktail with a single #8 gold blade. I don't recall the manufacturer.
We got some video after the catch, and I posted that here: http://63.115.252.20/Pewaukee/.
We had numerous follows from similar and bigger musky. We landed one other small one and a couple bass while short-line trolling, and surprisingly my brother landed a bunch of largemouth bass that seemed to love this huge perch-colored glider bait.
While I didn't land a 50+ incher, I must say I learned a great deal on the outing. I'd definitely use John again. We also had lots of laughs. It was a great time. I think we'll have to do that again.