Mutant Smallies, Eyes and Musky.....

[DocSpotty]

I am warning any who are faint of heart or weak of stomach……DO NOT READ THIS REPORT….it is replete with picture after picture of morbidly obese smallmouth bass….it’ll make you sick. If someone knows where to locate the famous bass obesity specialist….Dr. M. Dolomieu (;-)…hehe) please attempt to contact him so he can rush to this area of the St. Lawrence River and help these smallies reduce their overindulgence in tasty treats like, gobies, gobies and more gobies. The aforementioned bronzebacks have absolutely no control…..none…zero….less than zero. Additionally, there could be further repugnance on your part when witnessing the obviously overweight musky at the end of the report…..she obviously has never found a perch, sauger, sucker or walleye that she could lay off of……it is SIC. But for those of you with strong constitutions….enjoy!

About a dozen years ago my wife was taking a business trip to Kingston, Ontario and being the dutiful husband and partner, I went with her. When discussing the particulars of the trip I, naturally, asked my wife what I should do while she was teaching????? Hmmmmm. Seems like the Ottawa River was right there by the airport we were flying in to and it contained muskies…..perhaps I could fish…..thought hadn’t occurred to me before that very moment. Anyway….I managed 2 small muskies and a very nice 47 inch fish which whetted my appetite for the low density devils. So every 2, 3 or 4 years I make a pilgrimage to Montreal, Quebec in search of the elusive 50 inch musky. The best Quebec guides are difficult to schedule and only do multi day trips. I met Marc Thorpe, one of the best, several years ago and he offered me four days earlier this year that fell on last week. On my last trip 2 years ago, when the weather was quite sucky, I also fished a few days with an excellent smallmouth bass guide, Mark Currie, who put me on some porky smallies for the first time in my life…what a hoot those neurotic little powerhouses are….like little water wolverines. So to make a long story longer, as I usually do….Mark booked with me for 3 days before the musky fishing. What a terrible fate…..7 straight days of fishing….oh the things we men do to provide sustenance for our families.

My experience began with a lovely flight from Anchorage, AK to Minneapolis….then on to Montreal. Although 12 hours in the making it was booked with air miles and had first class seating all the way....figured I deserved it after all that time in the piper cub a few weeks ago. Minneapolis/St. Paul was lovely…the rain was obviously a foreboding of things to come.



I arrived after 10 pm in Montreal, had to drag through customs, find my vehicle (signs are always tough as my French is nonexistent). Not sure who designed the roads in Montreal but I’m sure their original job was designing mouse mazes. Eventually made it to the hotel…..the rain was starting…..and into bed. At 0730 Mark (“no” not that Marc…the other one….the bass guy) picked me up and due to some heavy wind we were relegated to fishing the St. Lawrence River. The lake he wanted us to fish, St. Louis, was open and exposed and was throwing up 4 foot waves….I really wanted to keep breakfast down.

A 45 minute drive and we had the 20ft Ranger launched at the ramp:



Floating in the water, next to the boat was what the local guys called the Coney Island White Trout:



Don’t know what kind of parties they have here but we saw a dozen of these little babies floating in the river that first day. Guide said if I hooked one of those little critters up he wasn’t unhooking it. Since he hadn’t been here in a few weeks we had to search for the little, green basses. It took us an hour or so but we began to find some smallies:



The water was in the low sixties and the fish were a bit scattered. By mid morning I had shed my coat (and also my shoes and socks….Mark thought I was nuts) and was catching the beasties in shirt sleeves, this was one of the few not on a tube jig:



Most of our fish were on tube jigs with a ½ oz head in a deep green and dark purple color. These looked like the invasive goby fish (my research says originally from the Caspian Sea). Instead of bouncing the jigs they are worked very slowly along the rocks and the smallies just pick them up and sit there….it was very tough for me at first to realize what little ticks on the line were rocks and which were fish. We used 14 lbs Fireline. We tried casting crankbaits also but only managed a few fish on them. Mark dredged up a very nice bass halfway through the afternoon:



I did manage 2 perch and 1 small walleye on the cranker….not exactly what I was looking for. First day finished with my fish count at 30 smallmouth, 2 perch and 1 walleye….and a very windblown face. When we pulled the boat out I had an insane urge to climb these massive electrical towers they had (I wonder if walking around under those things causes brain cancer or something?):



Day 2 Mark picked me up and again we could only fish the St. Lawrence as the wind was blowing hard again…..so off we headed to the same area. Unfortunately this was Saturday morning, the opening day of duck and goose season. Needless to say it was quite the noisy day and more than once we had pellets hit the water within a few feet of the boat. One good thing….the number of Coney Island Whites was way down…hehe. Wasn’t long before we started bopping smallies again:



Mark found us some nice areas on the leeward side of some islands with good numbers of bass and we didn’t have to deal with the wind as much. This really nice fish in the 4 ½ lbs range came early:



A little later I caught a nice smallie with a lamprey attached to it. Not sure why but these things just absolutely disgust me and give me the willies to look at….they are absolutely revolting and you can see the damage to the fish:





We hit a great area through the middle of the day which not only produced many fish but also kept us, for the most part, out of duck hunter gun range and most of the wind. Managed to catch several bass on a crankbait this day. There were a few good sized fish:









Finally fish tally this second day was 45 bronzebacks and 1 nice walleye I kept for dinner. As we were pulling up to go in we watched a poor goose fly over a blind….it was dropped on the first shot but those yahoos kept shooting….ten times! Geez, that steel shot must taste good. Mark said they count success not by how many birds are taken but by how many shells you can unload into the air. You might have noticed all the buildings in some of the background shots:



Technically we were within the city limits of Montreal…..wondered if we might see Mike Iaconelli doing a City Limits episode…..nah….too easy.

Hit the sack early and was up ready to go again the 3rd day….but, alas, the rain was coming down and the wind was howling a steady 20-25 mph so we couldn’t fish anywhere but back to the same old place on the St. Lawrence. Whereas the wind the day before was blowing from the northwest….this day is was blowing exactly the opposite from the southeast….ahhhhhhh. To our great relief most of the duck hunters were too hungover to be out shooting again.

Even though the wind was the worst this day it was definitely the best day I had for catching big smallies. My first was in the 5 lbs class:



For some reason they were better at hitting a slowly worked crankbait in the current. Caught one that was marked prettier than all the others:



Followed only a few casts later by another fish near 5 lbs:



We found a temporary wind reprieve in the lee of a large island that produced a bunch of 2 to 3 lbs smallies:



After a few hours this batch of fish received a higher educational degree and quit biting for us. We moved around again finding a fish here and there. Mark decided to try a spot we hadn’t fished the previous 2 days. It required a lot of great steering on his part as it was a small rocky spot in about 7 ft of water surrounded by deeper water….and was completely exposed to the howling wind. The area wasn’t too large and if you didn’t find the rocks on a cast you got nothing. He worked hard at keeping me on, or near it for about an hour and a half. It only produced 4 fish but they were all pigs in the 4 ½ to nearly 6 lbs class:









By this time it was waning into the afternoon and we started to fish back towards the ramp. There was a small, deep hole that Mark had me throw a crankbait in and on the first cast a nice smallie hopped on….Mark said watch it carefully. As it came to the boat there were at least 5 other fish with it trying to grab that crankbait out of its mouth….rabid little weasels.



We took several more off a secluded island point then called it a day and a great 3 day smallmouth bass fishing extravaganza (a total of 37 smallies). Mark invited me to his house for a fabulous dinner and then I headed out to Terrebonne and Marc Thorpe’s house to begin the next leg of our trip…in search of the 50” musky.

Marc runs a very tidy operation where he puts you up in a separate apartment above his house with a stuffed refrigerator and barbecue to cook on. The days are generally long…as we would leave his place at 8 am and generally not be back until 8 or 9 pm at night. Wasn’t much time except for sleeping and fishin….just the way I like it.

Come the morning of day 4 (day 1 of musky fishing) Marc and I discussed where we would go hunting the she devils. Here again the weather pretty much was dictating what we could do. It was raining pretty good and due to extremely high rains up river, the rivers were rising fast and the water clarity was plummeting. Marc knew our best chance would be to head for a section of the St. Lawrence he knew would still have good water clarity. So off we went for a nice 90 minute drive….it got quite scenic as we approached our boat ramp:



We pulled over and threw all the gear (and there was a lot) from the back of the truck into the boat:



Not sure what was happening to my brain but I couldn’t seem to focus in properly on where we were, what we were supposed to do, etc……I kept reading all the available signs but it wasn’t helping:



Our cute little harbour (BTW that IS the correct way to spell harbor in Canada…so there) was full of small fishing boats. Turns out this was the Sauger Armada. This area has exceptional sauger and walleye fishing (turns out the musky fishing is on the low down so Marc told me to keep mum). So we launched the boat and got ready to head out:





As the sauger mafia filed to their boats we had a hard time explaining the rather….uh….humongous net in our boat….said we might do a little dredging for missing persons after our fishing….I think they bought it….oh yeah.

We headed out and, man, oh man, is that St. Lawrence a big, freakin river:



I’m not even sure there are sides on either side….know what I mean. There also was the occasional “small” boat traffic you had to watch out for:



Now the musky fishing started in earnest. We were going to be casting a mid river weedline for about a mile of its length…it started by…..uh…..I can’t say or Marc said I might become future musky poop. Weeds were in about 7 feet of water and we fished them from a trough dropping down to 12-14 feet. After only about half an hour after chucking my large bull dawg I had a follow to the boat…but no biting….dang fish. Then there was another four passes through the mile stretch, each time chucking a different monster lure, evidently in an attempt to dislodge what little intact cartilage remains in my twice surgerized right shoulder, with nothing but a sore shoulder and wrist to show for it…..welcome to musky fishing….it is truly a masochistic sport. This already put me into 3 hours of casting heavy gear and wondering where Bonds and Clemens got all their steroids and HGH….I needed to bulk up. Maybe an exceptional pain killer would help. To give me a break Marc set out rods for a few hours of trolling to see if that would spark some interest. Except for trimming the weeds patches it produced a lot of snacking for us but nothing from the fish.

Marc is honest….to a fault almost. He told me due to the changing weather patterns and the water not cooling fast enough for this time of the year, the fishing had been very tough for the last week…with muskies that can mean more than a few days without a fish. That is why we count “follows” in musky fishing…gives us something to do.

After the trolling we started drifting and casting our weedline again. Marc started me with a Thunderbeast (ya just gotta love the names musky companies give their lures…it could just have easily been called “The Large Hunk of Soft Plastic Inbedded With Multiple Hooks Which Constantly Impale Anyone Handling The Bait”…but maybe that’s too long)….and on our first drift through I managed to raise another fish but no biting of the lure…..what is wrong with these fish? Marc did a bit of casting with me using many of the weird baits musky guides keep and missed one at the boat with a large, ugly (aren’t all musky lures ugly?) jerk type bait. We made a few more fruitless passes down the weedline and it was getting on past 5 pm. Marc had me change back to the black bulldawg (which produced my first “follow”……that is 2 “follows” and one missed “take”…wow, we were screamin) and said we would work the weedline once or twice more and head in….at least the rain let up a little and the wind wasn’t so bad. Marc was doing something in the back of the boat (most of the time he was looking over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t screwing things up) when ALL HELL broke loose. My line came tight in the front of the boat but it wasn’t weeds this time. As I slammed the hook home as hard as my PowerPro would let me, my pole doubled over and a huge musky came flying out of the water in front of me. She went into a series of violent head shakes (I don’ think she was used to her food biting back…one of the issues with apex predators) and then a serious of short, hard runs. By this time Marc was in full guide mode getting out the giant net and telling me not to do something stupid. As I worked the fish, or she worked me I’m still not quite sure who had who, to the side of the boat, she took a little rest. Marc had the net down at the waters edge and I thought I could sneak her in quickly…..Marc looked at me and said, “she’s gonna dive under the boat!”…..but I couldn’t feel it on the line. I like to think I’m pretty good at most fishing but just about didn’t catch up getting the rod down in the water and under the boat when she went for the motor (hate it when Marc is absolutely right…..guides…ahhh). But after several seconds, and a good deal of pressure, she relented and was coming out to the side of the boat. To Marc Thorpe….bud….I’m so glad you are the consummate professional….as I brought the fish out and was just working her head up even with the bottom of the net, the hooks on the bulldawg pulled out of the fishes mouth. All I could do was whip the lure and rod out of the way so Marc could see she was off and I wouldn’t hook him. Big mama hesitated for maybe a second or two in the water. Marc swung with the net at the exact moment big mama decided to bolt.

For a moment I went from the thrill of having fought the largest musky I’d ever hooked to the trepidation of not knowing if Marc was able to get the net under the fish. I leaped from the bow where Marc looked up, meeting me with a giant sheeiteating grin, a 5 knuckle salute and my she devil in the net…..YEEHAAWW!!! Now my arms were shakin from the adrenaline rush.

Let me break here and say that Marc Thorpe is a rare guide who has the love of his fishery foremost in everything he does. Last year he presented a proposal to the Quebec government for a tagging study on these muskies and was approved. His guiding is kind of an oxymoron as Marc doesn’t like to clean or eat fish of any kind….go figure. But he is a very vocal activist in preserving local fisheries.

Anyway with our hen in the net (all these big muskies are female) he immediately pulled the tagging/DNA kit and began to work. Within 30 seconds, while still in the net and water he tagged the fish ….back of dorsal fin by the tail…#109:



And had meticulously cut a small piece of the dorsal fin and put it into a sterile vial he had given me….for DNA testing…very quick, very professional. From there he transferred the fish into a water cradle to measure it and take its weight. It was an even 51 inches…pinching the tail would have been a bit longer so I like to say 51+….yeah, baby my first real 50 inch ski. She was a porker and weighed out at 38 lbs….what a little piggy my girl was. Marc let me remove her for two quick pictures….my right wrist was killing me so I supported her with my forearm and then she was back in the cradle:





I gently placed her in the cradle and only needed to work her for about 15 seconds and she bolted out of there:





The whole experience was over in several minutes and my heart was a racing…this was what the trip was about….many manly sounds followed.

We finished that pass on the weedline and went in. Of course as we entered the back water to load the boat it was absolute glass:



With the rain coming down and the wind a blowing Day 2 of musky fishing was right back to the same area. After 3 hours of working our weedline we had only had one follow (on a lovely walleye colored Thunderbeast……dang…I just like saying “Thunderbeast”!!). We trolled a bit but decided to take a lunch break and do a bit of sauger/walleye jigging to give the old arms a break. For dinner the night before I had cooked my walleye from the smallmouth fishing days and made a delicious fillet of walleye sandwich for lunch….tomatoes, a little lettuce, swiss cheese a touch of mayo and it was yummyoso. We jigged in the main channel for a few hours….in 25 to 45 feet of water and each picked up about 5 or 6 fish….we kept 1 limit with 3 walleye and 3 sauger. Then it was back to the musky grind, hitting our all too familiar weedline. Sometime around 4 pm on a long cast with the black and green bulldawg I had a tremendous strike and in setting the hook found myself in an awkward position with the pole behind me. Just as I worked it around to the front the musky just unbuttoned like it had never been hooked. Never saw it so she was probably a new World Record….for sure. I took a verbal thrashing, appropriately so, from Marc for my rod positioning. After that is was a little quiet as we took several more passes down the weedline with no action. As we headed in the water again had quieted down:



When I got back into the apartment I took a pic of our little fishies…top three are sauger and the bottom three are walleye (same genus, different species):



Sauger are generally a little darker with some blotching but they are easily to tell by the dorsal fin which is spotted on the saugers:



Filleted the little beasts up and will take them home to show I AM the mighty provider my wife married……oh yeah.

Day 3 of musky mania begin with a trip upriver in an attempt to fish the Ottawa River. When we pulled up to the north shore the wind was a howling:

(click on the pic for the video)


Beautiful, old church house at the launch:



Marc called a local friend on the Ottawa who told him the water had risen 20 inches the last 2 days and was still on the way up…the color was less than clear so we took the ferry over to the south shore to size it up. There was a large back braid of the river where it was still pretty clear water so we launched and mixed trolling with casting for the day. The water had risen so much many docks had been damaged (it was closing in on an alltime high water level)…..we found this houseboat, with dock attached, had broken from its moorings and was floating free:



Right behind the boat was this little guy….escaped from some of our duck hunting buddies:



I raised one 35-40 inch musky in one bay and that was it for the day….nada. We did have trolling motor issues:



But Marc fixed the problem in short order and we were off catching nothing again…hehe. The trees were just starting to turn fall colors on the Ottawa:



We headed back to the ranch and I packed up as tomorrow was my last day. It poured rain that night and we woke up in a deluge and it just never let up. Due to nearly all the water looking like a frapachino latte, or whatever, we went back to the St. Lawrence where our weedline was now in 9 feet of water but still fairly clear water. We worked it for several passes and I hooked up on a nice low 40’s fish with…yes….I’m going to say it…..THE THUNDERBEAST. Unfortunately, as the fish came up to the boat the fricking hooks pulled on her. We trolled a bit more but the rain was so relentless we kept waiting to see Noah’s Ark float by:



I was studying the bulldawg I had lost the fish on during Day 2…..it had terrific gashes in it:





Marc looked at it an agreed the musky probably grabbed it by the head and never was hooked….made me feel a bit better. After soaking through our raingear I told Marc to take her into the shop it was time to go home. We trolled through a collection of hundreds of cormorants…didn’t know there was that many of the miserable things:



We got back to Marc’s house and I took a picture of the garage of a typical musky guide:



What you don’t see are the several large boxes of lures on the garage floor. On one side of the garage I saw a unique musky lure…it’s the one on the left in the back….a Wishmaster:



The guy making these died a few years ago (from a dental infection….so don’t put off seeing the dentist….BTW you can come see me) but these lures sold in the $200 a piece range. Marc said that one is probably worth $500 now….but he wouldn’t let me use it….spoil sport.

The rain continued through the day, into the night, into the day and I was out of there on my way home to Alaska….a nice 16 hour day with 2 plane changes. Got home to my lovely wife and having been writing this since.

Enjoy,

Brian

[Wingnut]

Doc, another outstanding fishing excursion and report.
Those Smallies are absolute Brutes!
Thanks again for bringing another smile to my face with your report.

[JESSEJAMES]

I live vicariously through you!

[simijab]

I second that jessejames. those are the chunkiest smallies I have ever seen and I have caught some monsters in Wisconsin. One again great report. Man you are living the dream

[HuskerRod]

What an awesome experience and report. That Musky is the fish of a lifetime along with the majority of those smallies. Your also one dedicated fisherman. Fantastic read, okay, awesome read. If I lived close to Alaska, oh, say within 1,000 miles you'd be my dentist. You could lull me to relazation mode with your fishing stories.....no need for laughing gas or novacaine

[Nessie Hunter]

Another Bucket List adventure..
Marking it on my List right now!!!!

Outstanding!!!! you do live the dream Doc!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Greg Madrigal]

Wow.....What can I say. You got a musky, and I did not. :( Oh well, we did see a crusier on the 50" range swim by the boat.

Nice smallies Doc-Pigs I tell u! Love your reads-They are funny and I get ur sense of humor, specially the part about musky lure names! How about a "Shallow Invader?"

Thanks for bringing us along on your adventure. I appreciate teh time you put inmto your reports. "You make me wanna be a better poster!" LOL!

GM<><

[Troutman65]

Wow is all I can say. What a great fishing trip . Thanks for sharing your fishing trips with us . I think I will go back and read one more time .

[bassjedi]

I've seen smallmouth that large before, and even caught a few in that size range, but I have never seen that many of that size in one trip. Unless you kept photographing the same 3 from different angles that is really impressive. Your excellent description of musky fishing reminds me why I retired after my first musky. Your 51" fish is a memory that will last forever I'm sure though. Nice job.

[exfactor]

Your livin the life Doc!!! Both of your adventures were very well written, and your camera skills are off the charts. I dream of the adventures your partaking in, and settle for what I can accomplish in Ca. Do you saltwater fish? I would love to spend a day with you on the water swapping lies, and enjoy comparing notes with you. Thanks again for sharing your adventure with us. Mikey