Blind Fishing Boat

In early November conditions were favourable enough to warrant a day on the water, and with fall being an ideal time to boat monster Musky, it didn’t take much convincing for Alain to join me for a day of Musky fishing.  We arrived at the boat launch on the Ottawa River at around 9: a.m., not long after sun up, and discovered that ice on the Blind Fishing Power Cat’s hatch covers would mean that seat cushions were not on the day’s agenda.  Thankfully, I always keep the Salus life preservers in the house so we were still able to set forth. 

After several hours of unproductive trolling we elected to stop and do some casting.  Two things happened at this point that turned what could have been a slow morning into a memorable one. 

First off, I’m pleased to report that it is possible for someone without sight to successfully cast with a baitcaster.  Up until this moment, my experience with casting baitcasters had been limited to hours of practice casting in my back yard pool, and even though I was fairly confident that I had mastered the process, I had still to test my new skill under real-life conditions. 

The second thing that happened that morning involved an actual Musky.  Alain and I were just in the middle of discussing whether performing figure eights at the end of each retrieve next to the boat was necessary, when the peace and quiet of the morning was shattered by the sound of a huge Musky launching itself out of the water not more than a foot from the side of the boat as Alain lifted his spinnerbait from the water.  Alain claims to have looked directly into the eyes of the fish, but unfortunately for us that was about as close as we were to get to that beast. 

Some time later that afternoon shortly after passing over a submerged island we began marking all manner of bait balls and huge hooks on the Garmin chart plotter.  Everything seemed to be taking place at a depth of about 30 feet, in water that was showing to be over 130 feet deep.  We quickly stopped trolling and changed over our casting rods from spinnerbaits to jigs.  We weren’t sure if the big hooks on the sounder were large Walleye or Musky, but Alain seemed pretty confident that some of the largest marks had to be Musky. 

Ten minutes passed and then there was nothing.  The Garmin’s “fisherman’s” view on the chart plotter allowed us to retrace our position exactly but we weren’t able to pick up anything.  Nothing, which is pretty much how the rest of our day went. 

No doubt, Musky are a fish of 10,000 casts.  However, I’m blessed to be in the middle of what could arguably be called the world’s best Musky fishery, so in no way am I going to give up.  Besides, casting with a baitcaster is a lot of fun.  It also opens up an entirely new world of fishing for me given that all the heavier rods on the market today capable of handling anything larger than 3/4 oz baits are baitcasters, and even with quality spincast reels like the Zebco Omega strapped on these rods, it still isn’t possible to do what a good baitcaster can do in terms of muscling in the bigger fish under challenging conditions.  Stay tuned…