The
Evolution of a Muskie Fisherm
By: Steven James Rusteberg
Published : (Outdoor Notebook September 1999 vol.19
no.9 p.43)
The Early Years…
I remember a day in my childhood
when the legend of the muskie was a thing of the “Northwood’s
Lore”. Large mounted fish were on display in places
such as supermarkets, bait shops, and restaurants. I
remember studying them for hours imagining how and where
a fish of that size could be hiding. At fourteen years
of age I was daydreaming in class of D-Bar-D Muskie
Redoes (a small tournament on the Flambeau Chain), Villas
County Muskie Marathons, and the 10,000 lakes I had
hoped to discover. I remember when a small thirty-inch
muskie in the cooler at Grizzly Bill’s Bait and
Tackle looked like a monster catch.
I recall how this obsession got started. It is probably
not unlike your experience as a muskie angler. It was
the summer of 1984, and I had the “muskie bug”
bad. I had never even seen a live fish, let alone caught
one. I had heard the stories of the elusive fish that
always follows a lure right to the boat. Some people
referred to the muskie as a “Water Wolf”.
The fish is a creature that would attack when you least
expect it. And if you were forchantent enough for it
to attacked your lure, you would certainly loose it
in battle.
That fall, I met a gentleman by the name of Bud Hulet
who introduced me to an organization called Muskies
Inc. At the time Bud was on a campaign to get me hooked
on fishing and out of the typical trouble a fourteen-year-old
kid normally gets into. He wanted me to become a bum,
not a street bum but a “Fishing Bum”. He
was one of those elite few with red, white, and blue
patches all over his brown stylish looking club jacket.
Each patch represented one muskie release 30”
or better. The jacket told of his success. To him, I
owe this disease.
Influencing People…
My great aunt owned a cabin on Fence Lake in Villas
County Wisconsin. This is where some of the greatest
memories of my life stem from. It was also where we
stayed when we visited the Northwoods. I would, from
that year forward, never go to Northern Wisconsin without
throwing a muskie lure. I recall the D-Bar-D Resort
on Crawling Stone Lake when a family named “The
Kaminski’s” owned it. Dick was the owner
but his son was the local muskie hero. In the spring
of 1978 Rick Kaminski successfully landed a 44 lb. 7oz.
Muskellunge on 17 lb. test line. That line class record
still stands twenty-two years later. I looked up to
Rick as if he were a God. The mount of the fish, until
recently, hung in the bait store. It was the first thing
you saw when you entered the small, moldy smelling bait
shop called “The Fishing Bum”. I worshipped
that mount paying homage to it every time I bought bait.
I wanted to know exactly what I needed to do in order
to hook up with one of these giant beasts. So one day
I bought some large, expensive lures…
A Summer to remember…
In the summer of 1986 (August 20 at exactly 2:17 p.m.)
my life hit a crossroad. On a yellow and black (jailbird)
Swim Whiz a 41” hybrid muskie met it’s match.
With my mother and father in the boat, in the poring
rain (anchored none the less), I successfully boated
that fish. It was the first of over 400 muskie in my
life, but still the one I most remember. The muskie
was taken to D-Bar-D Resort for a weight. It was an
extremely well marked tiger muskie, with dark brown
lines on a light background. The fins were bright orange,
and there was not a flaw on the fish.
I was not very well educated on catch and release dos
and don’ts, and had the fish out of the water
for over ten minutes. I attempted to release the 16-lb.
8-oz fish, but it did not make it. I mounted the fish
and it still hangs on my wall today as a reminder of
the times.
What was the first thing I did after I caught that fish?
I bought more lures and entered the D-Bar-D Resort Muskie
Rodeo, of course. I was a pro now! My dad and I filled
out the entry form together, and I began saving money
for the entry fee from an allowance. The colorful fall
leaves of October crept up on the school year. I was
looking forward to the tournament not the school year.
There is one thing you can count on in Villas County
during October, and that simple thing is snow…
and lots of it. That tournament was a miserable “white
out”. Dad is a good father, but like most, doesn’t
know how to dress for the weather. He wore his penny
loafers, a sweatshirt, and baseball cap. Needless to
say froze his feet, caught a cold, and that was the
last time he fished with me. The good news of the entire
experience was that I landed the second muskie of my
lifetime (a 41 ¾” 21 lb.) and ended up
taking third in the rodeo. Jim Saric and a gentleman
named Al Scarr were the real winners. Jim, another one
of my childhood idles, caught a thirty-four pounder.
An Organization, a Book, and
the Heroes…
Over the next few years I attended every Muskies Inc.
chapter meeting I could. I compiled data from the release
reports that used to be published at the end of every
fishing season by the organization. I read Larry Ramsell’s
book “A Compendium of Muskie Angling History”.
My heroes now became guys like Art Lawton, Len Hartman
and Percy Haver not Walter Payton, Michael Jordan, or
Ryan Sandburg. These muskie guys were the real hero’s
and “fishing legend makers”. Unfortunately
all have fallen as liars (no animosity there). They
all falsified a fish in order to capture a world record
muskellunge, but we would not find this out until later
years.
At the time Len Hartman was a living legend. Len had
a certain glow about him. It wasn’t a halo, but
a deeper brightness… a sort of “muskie glow”.
I remember him talking about a cast that he aimless
threw over his shoulder while eating a sandwich and
managed to hook into a 30 lber. He was my hero.
I remember the early years of Jim Saric’s fishing
career. Jim is not much older than I am, and his parents
own a cabin on the Flambeau Chain too. I saw the evolution
of his fame before my eyes. He now owns a very successful
magazine called “Muskie Hunter”. It is a
great reference for beginner and advanced muskie fisherman.
I didn’t miss a talk, an article, or video that
he made public. He represented a place where I wanted
to be someday. Jim followed in the footsteps of another
great muskie fisherman, Joe Bucher. I wanted to follow
in Jim’s.
Figuring Out the Northwoods…
In 1989 I met a guy named Goc. Jerry Goc was a member
of the Fox River Valley Chapter of Muskies Inc., and
had the same passion for the “Northwoods”
I did. We hooked up as fishing partners and would become
very good friends in years to come. Jerry and I would
drive up to Villas County every Friday for a weekend
full of muskie fishing. In order to learn the area in
the limited amount of time we had, Jerry and I would
select six lakes to fish for the day. Of the six lakes
we selected, we would chose three of the top muskie
spots on that particular body of water. These would
be the only spots that we fished. We did this in order
to learn as many lakes as possible in one weekend. To
date we have fished over 140 lakes in the Villas County
area. This allowed us to examine what lakes are good
under certain weather conditions, water conditions,
and moon phases. We did not catch a lot of fish that
year but spent invaluable time studying the fishes habitat
and behavior.
After that summer of experimenting in different lakes
it was time to enter the tournament circuit. Every year
there are at least eight big money tournaments in Villas
County. Jerry and I entered every one of them. Not a
weekend went by in 1990 we weren’t in Northern
Wisconsin for a different tournament. There was the
Spring Classic on the Eagle River Chain, the Great Escape
on North and South Twin, and the D-Bar-D Rodeo on the
Flambeau Chain, along with several others. These were
the dead ringers! We had spent countless hours on these
waters the year before preparing strategies, tuning
baits, and eliminating “dead water”. We
inthusiastic entered eight tournaments that year, but
only won two. I quickly learned that tournament fishing
was not a “high percentage” way to learn
about catching muskies. First of all, with all that
competition around you the likelihood that you will
catch a fish is exactly the size of the field you are
fishing against. Secondly, everyone in the tournament
that is having success is keeping quiet about how, when,
where, and on what. Without becoming an undercover detective
it is very hard to learn about the lake or the fishing
patterns. In years to come Jerry and I did enter competitive
fishing tournaments, but only the ones in which we felt
the odds were with us.
Dispelling the Northwoods Image…
In 1993 I spent most of my time fishing local lakes
in Illinois. At the time I was averaging about thirty
muskie a year, but still had a lot of learning to do.
There are several good things about muskie fishing.
One is … no matter how hard you study the fish,
no matter how many lakes you fish, no matter how many
fish you catch; you always are learning something new.
The smart muskie fisherman is the person who knows how
to put all the odds in his favor.
In 1993 I had put all the odds in my favor. Illinois
muskie fishing was coming into it's own. With higher
size limits, and an aggressive stocking program, Illinois
became the place to be to catch large numbers of average
size fish. I could spend more time on the water because
of the simple fact I did not have to drive seven hours
to reach the good fishing. I soon learned that I could
catch twice as many fish in Illinois in one weekend
than I could catch in a whole week in Northern Wisconsin.
The beauty of the Northwoods was absent, but after all
what was my priority… to catch muskie or to look
at the scenery.
Wisconsin sill had a special place in my heart, but
muskie politics soon took some of the love away. The
state of Wisconsin refused to raise minimum size limits
above 30” in length, because they feared loosing
tourism business at the many resorts that relied on
it. To me this was bunk. Little did they know (they
never asked) that Illinois would be very receptive to
higher size limits on their own home lakes. Indian spearing,
low size limits, and the lean on natural reproduction
to support fisheries is why I believe it was so hard
to do well in the Northwoods. The trolling issue also
got blown out of proportion when a couple of big fish
fell victim to this technique. People panicked when
these fish were killed. It was as if the death of two
big fish were going to effect Wisconsin’s entire
ecosystem. For me, this made my choice an easy one.
Making Illinois Better, A Personal
Campaign…
It did not take long for me to understand why I was
doing so well on Illinois waters. Stocking programs
were in full swing. Large numbers of 12” muskies
were being stocked in 25 lakes in the state. The large
numbers of fish being stocked made me think. I was learning
in biology and ecology classes that the top of the food
chain should not come anywhere close to outnumbering
the bottom of the food chain. If it is so much easier
to catch fish in Illinois (even with more pressure on
the lakes) is it possible we are over stocking. I trusted
our Department of Natural Resources to know the answer
to these questions. I made phone call after phone call
to get population estimates on some of our more popular
waterways. All calls came up empty. I even went as far
to call Springfield to obtain more information on how
are lakes were being managed. I became very disappointed
with the results. It seemed the DNR did not know much
more about it than I did about population estimates,
survival rates, or primary spawning habitat. From what
I was learning in some of my advanced ecology classes,
we were on a crash cores with disaster. The health of
the fisheries in Illinois became my primary interest.
If nothing else, this information could help me become
more successful at understanding habits and behavior
of the fish. In-turn, this would make me more successful
on every fishing trip.
A Thirty-pounder, the Canadian
Experience…
Until 1995 I had a bad attitude about Canadian fishing.
I had been fishing Lake of the Woods for several years
with minimal success and like everyone else spending
major cash to do so. To me catching a big muskellunge
in Canada didn’t mean a whole lot. Every year
you would hear about the jolly fellow who made the first
cast of his life (while sipping a beer) for a muskie
and managed to boat a thirty-pounder. Every year this
Yahoo would hang a bucktail (usually blue with purple
stripes, rusty hooks, and no leader) over the side of
the boat, and catch the fish of the year. I developed
a jelosey toward these anglers. After all, I paid my
dues. I had been fishing for over ten years and never
landed such an awesome fish. To me Canada’s muskie
fishing had to be a matter of luck not skill.
To a certain extent I still believe this, but muskies
are just as hard to catch in Canada as they are at home.
I learned the key to success in Canada is fishing lakes
that others have never heard of. There are hundreds
of lakes in Canada and only a few are well publicized.
If you find the lakes that don’t get the attention,
and you find easy muskie fishing. Some of the advantages
to these waters are no fishing pressure, fewer conditioned
fish, and plenty of thirty-ponders that have never seen
a bucktail. If you only take one thing away from this
story, remember that it pays to do your “muskie
homework” when it comes to fishing in Canada.
Be the frontiersman not a followee… and come back
from the “Great White North” a hero.
In 1995 I caught my first indisputable thirty-pound
fish, and yes, I was sipping a beer and eating a sandwich.
The 54” fish hit a trolled 10” Believer
over fifteen feet of water. The fish fought hard and
actually jumped repeatedly out of the water. I now have
fourteen fish over thirty pounds (including two at 40lbs.)
to my credit, but I will never forget how the first
one was hooked. The “Muskie God” was with
me that day. I released the fish, unharmed to grow to
larger lengths. That summer I also hooked into a 48
½” fish with a 22” girth… and
I hooked that one the right way…casting…
no sandwich or beer.
Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond…
Today I spend a lot of my time trying to educate others
on the importance of research, genetics, and stocking
practices. I believe that as time goes on we will look
back at what we are currently doing, and find a better
way. To stock fish into lakes is not the answer. To
preserve spawning the habitat and selecting proper genetics
is the key to the longevity of the species. Stocking
fish creates a fishery, but it is only as good as the
stocking success and in the long run is not cost effective.
This creates “put and take” fisheries. Preserving
and restoring spawning grounds ensures the continuation
of the species. This is a subject I feel very passionately
about. I will not let ignorance destroy what we have
worked so hard to create. It is a subject that I have
done many public talks about. I “take it on the
chin”, but fell just as strongly about the subject
as when I first learned about angling itself.
Fishing is my life, Illinois is my home, and muskies
are my obsession. Thanks, Bud Hulet, Muskies Inc., and
Outdoor Notebook. When one thinks he has become an expert
on the muskellunge, the fish itself will throw in an
unexpected curve. The key to the evolution of a muskie
fisherman is expecting that “curve”, and
“casting” an adaptation to it. Such is life…
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