Opening Week Musky Hunting

As most fishermen know, opening week of your favorite species is a very special one. As a Musky fisherman in southern Ontario, my wait begins as most people are starting their Christmas shopping. The six month wait from mid-November to the first Saturday in June seems to take forever. That’s why I book opening week off work, every year since 2004, coincidentally my first year as a boat owner. That way, after six long months of planning strategies, sharpening hooks & reading articles about Muskies, I can choose the perfect days to fish, & rest on the stormy days.

On the Thursday of opening week, my brother and I were fishing an area that consists of a giant weed flat, a couple of football fields in size. We’d caught & released three Muskies, Mike had two and I had just one dinker to show from six hours of casting big baits. My back was starting to ache, so I switched up to a small 1/2 oz spinner bait, one normally used to catch Bass. Under usual circumstances, this is a good idea, but at this time of year, Bass are in full-spawn mode and will attack anything that comes near their nest.

As we were drifting across the 5-foot deep flat, we came up on a hump that we could clearly see Bass spawning on, so I waited until I could see the weed edge and I tossed out the spinnerbait. I burned it across the weed-tops until it reached the edge, let it drop for a second and re-engaged the reel to bring it up the hump. Just as the blades stopped fluttering and it was almost out of the water, the Muskie came sauntering out of the weeds like it owned the place. I had enough time to realize what was happening and alert my brother with a quick “HEY!”.

The fish grabbed the spinnerbait and immediately started thrashing, basically setting the hook itself! The fight was a short one, as I was able to keep it from jumping by keeping my rod-tip low, and an excellent net-job by my brother.

The fish was a chunky one measuring in at a respectable 44″. Right after the release shot was taken, Mike switched the camera to video & filmed her swimming away strong, to fight another day.

- Musky Bill

Bill, thank you very much for you entry into our 2010 Contributor Contest and boy what a beautiful musky! You have taken THIRD PLACE in our contest and will receive 3 custom lures from Rockstar Lures (which I believe you’re already very familiar with) as well as a copy of Fins & Skins magazine!

Paul Williams

After years of fishing Lake Scugog, Paul has developed a pattern that puts big musky in his boat regularly!

View all 13 images of "Paul Williams"...

Musky Bill

Not many people can consistently put musky in the boat like Bill can, especially on Lake Scugog.

View all 13 images of "Musky Bill"...

We’ve Officially Finished Moving!

By now I hope everyone is seeing our website in it’s new home in downtown Toronto. So far the site has been super fast for me, after I fixed a few migration bugs of course, and I hope that nobody will experience the annoying page not found errors. I really hope that this has not hurt our page ranking with google, but we won’t know for a few weeks I’d guess.

In more exciting and fishing related news I went fishing at Lake Scugog with Ed on Sunday. This time we geared ourselves up for Bass hoping to land some big ones in the thick Scugog weeds. We were amazed that there was nobody on the lake considering it’s a holiday weekend, we had high hopes. Unfortunately the weather decided to throw all kinds of things at us, everything from wind to seriously heavy rain to brutal sun. Luckily not lightning though. It definitely wasn’t easy but we managed to catch a few decent fish, but most importantly of all have a good time.

Don’t forget to check out our cool and new project Legendary Fishermen a social network for fishermen.

Fishing Fury Renovations And Additions

That’s right, we’re moving again! I’m sure some of you have noticed the recent instability in the site, we’ve even been discussing it in the forums. We’ll we’ve got our new hosting setup and we’ve already moved our sponsors program and galleries.

The move will happen sunday night/monday morning and I hope that it’s quick and painless. While you’re waiting we invite you to our newest project, it’s still beta so be gentle!

Legendary Fishermen is a community site focused on bringing people that love fishing together. Our aim is to create a community where people can share their love of fishing, meet fellow anglers around the world, and display the infinite spectrum of wonder the fishing world has to offer.

The site is running WordPress MU and Buddy Press, We’ve never run a site like this before so we thought, why not get release early and let the needs of community dictate the direction and features of the site. Ultimately you will be able to connect with other anglers around the world, read their blogs, write your own too of course, and more! Right now the blog creation is turned off until I can figure out some of the settings and themes, but your blog url would be something like myblogname.legendaryfishermen.com, that and 500MB of space for your photos and videos all for the price of.. FREE!

Have fun and I hope to see some new members and groups when I get back from Lake Scugog tomorrow afternoon. I hope everyone is having a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend.

More From Lake Scugog!

Here are a few more solid fish caught by one of our biggest contributors, Paul Williams. He’s spent a lot of time on Lake Scugog and the Scugog River and his results prove it!

Hey guys,

Just wanted to send you a couple of new photos from September of 2008 from the Scugog river, and congratulate you guys on the great job you are doing on your website. I also won’t to thank you for highlighting me on the website, and the great comments. So thank you and congratulations. Here is a decent Scugog bucket and a 12lb musky my dad got into on the first week of September.

Thanks Paul, nice fish!