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Just thought I'd post a fun little report from last night. Had about 2 hours of daylight left to float a portion of the skuke by my house. I took two rods: one with a musky killer bucktail and then a bass rod with a handful of lures. The water was warm (83) and low but I knew there was some low pressure moving in and hoped it would bring out the elusive skuke musky. I threw the bucktail for an hour at every major piece of wood in this stretch and didn't see any 'skis but did get a couple follows from decent looking smallmouth.
I put down the musky rod and immediately saw a smallie break the surface. Made a cast with a jig n pig and boom first fish was a nice healthy 13 incher. From there it got crazy. For the next hour I threw a small rapala skitterpop and had soooo many fish bust on it. They were acrobatic and charged up and even though they were all small it was a lot of fun and a good sign for a river that has seen smallies, especially smaller ones, all but disappear in the last few years. I finished with 7 fish landed in that last hour- two @ 13", two @ 12", two at 10" and an 8" largemouth for good measure. Lost quite a few more to spit hooks including a decent largemouth. I was fishing 10 lb braid and 10 lb flouro and making very long casts parallel to a bank with a dropoff from 2-8 feet with large rocks and scattered wood nearby. At one point I had 3 fish in 4 casts. Absolutely unheard of (for me anyway) on the skuke.
At about 8:40 it got dark the mosquitos came out IN FORCE and were not at all dissuaded by OFF Deep Woods. I briefly trolled a black jitterbug on my way back to the launch and had 3 blowups in a very short time frame but couldn't hook any. The skeeters got so bad I couldn't take it and left the fish biting.
I put down the musky rod and immediately saw a smallie break the surface. Made a cast with a jig n pig and boom first fish was a nice healthy 13 incher. From there it got crazy. For the next hour I threw a small rapala skitterpop and had soooo many fish bust on it. They were acrobatic and charged up and even though they were all small it was a lot of fun and a good sign for a river that has seen smallies, especially smaller ones, all but disappear in the last few years. I finished with 7 fish landed in that last hour- two @ 13", two @ 12", two at 10" and an 8" largemouth for good measure. Lost quite a few more to spit hooks including a decent largemouth. I was fishing 10 lb braid and 10 lb flouro and making very long casts parallel to a bank with a dropoff from 2-8 feet with large rocks and scattered wood nearby. At one point I had 3 fish in 4 casts. Absolutely unheard of (for me anyway) on the skuke.
At about 8:40 it got dark the mosquitos came out IN FORCE and were not at all dissuaded by OFF Deep Woods. I briefly trolled a black jitterbug on my way back to the launch and had 3 blowups in a very short time frame but couldn't hook any. The skeeters got so bad I couldn't take it and left the fish biting.
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