My favorite fish is the northern pike, but this summer, I got to experience one of Michigan's hardest-fighting freshwater fish, the muskie! We went fishing for muskie on Lake St. Clair with Lakeside Charters out of St. Clair Shores. Lakeside offers many kinds of charters, but our choice was muskie. The day started off pretty fast. I was fishing with two friends from DeWitt, their dad and my dad, and one of my friends quickly caught a nice pike. We soon realized that pike would outnumber all our muskie catches for the day. Our charter was six hours long, mostly in Canadian waters. Let's face it, it just seems like bigger fish are in Canada! After my friend caught the pike, I was up, and I started to land a fish. It felt huge! I started to pull it in and it was pulling extremely hard. Then I heard a pop, and it was off, and left me with a shattered smile of despair. Over the next half hour, I was feeling a little jealous, as both of my friends had by now landed muskie over 40 inches. Finally, I landed a muskie, but he was on the small side.
After about an hour, I was able to hook into a big fish and land it. I was a nice muskie, about 40 inches. The fight lasted several minutes.
The charter captain said it is not unusual to catch a walleye while someone on the boat is catching a muskie, and sure enough, while my friend was catching a muskie, I landed a nice walleye, who measured out at around 27 inches. As you can see in the picture, clouds were moving in, and shortly after I caught the walleye, we headed for the shore.
Muskie fishing was very fun, yet very different from what I normally do. Trolling is a very different technique and I can now say I prefer to set the hook myself, rather than having the boat do it for me. I also like to study underwater geography so I can determine on my own the best places to fish, but the captain had us over fish in short order. It was cool, too, to catch fish this big literally within sight of downtown Detroit! I am looking forward to the next time I battle muskie!
