Larry A. Smail's Blog

      Fishing for muskies is rather new for me. My first venture with the muskie challenge occurred a couple of years ago when, my friend, Frank Maus invited me on his boat for a fishing excursion. Frankie is an expert on muskies. He would, probably, tell you otherwise, but to me he is very knowledgable about the specie.. 

    I met him early at his home where I saw a turkey walk into a field. As we began our trip to the Allegheny River the rain started. The moisture continued even for a time while we surfaced fish. It never rained hard enough to think about quitting.      

Citizen's Bridge at Kittanning

We casted surface plugs for two hours and I was fortunate to see a swirl one time. Additional casts produced nothing.

We began trolling around 11:00 and continued trolling until about 3:30. We were blessed with a beautiful day after the rain subsided. A front was coming through pushing out the heavy clouds into a clear sky loaded with fluffy cumulus clouds.  We commented more than once as to how great the day turned out.                                                                                  

A diver from the bridge.

We reminisced about the old days at work and some of the incidents we had witnessed. We laughed a lot at many of these incidents and those involved.

     The afternoon finally produced a strike and Frank landed a muskie. The fish was somewhere around 30-32 inches. Frank plays the fish fast and tries to remove the hook and release the fish as quickly as possible. This helps insure a better survival rate to such a spectacular fish.

Cormorant

  Other wildlife we saw was a deer along the shores; lots of geese; some mallards; a kingfisher; some herons; gulls and an immature cormorant.

Thanks Frank for an enjoyable day on the waters!