Low, cool July river

[Further North]

Had a heck of a day on a local-ish river yesterday. 

 

Saw 11 muskies (the most ever in one day for me) had 7 follows, two eats...lost 'em both.

Got started late - 12:30 - because of septic problems at home, but managed to squeeze a full day on the water anyway.

 

Beautiful weather - actually a bit chilly at times, which is nice in July.  Water temps were surprisingly low at 68°, unheard of in July.

 

The river is as low as I've floated it - around 500 CFS, and very clear, so we focused on mid-sized flies cast as far from the boat as we could get them.

 

The pink and Brown Mega Murdich was the fly of the day, accounting for almost all the follows and both eats.  The bottom fly in this picture.

 

 

The second lost fish was a heart breaker - it would have been my fishing partner's first over 40".  She was a beast of a fish, and we both got to see the eat about 15 feet off the starboard side of the boat.

 

No fish in the net, so only scenery photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[bloom]

great day on the water, congrats!

[gim]

13 hours ago, Further North said:

Beautiful weather - actually a bit chilly at times, which is nice in July.  Water temps were surprisingly low at 68°, unheard of in July.

 

The river is as low as I've floated it - around 500 CFS

Its been lovely here the past few days too.  Highs in the 70's and lows in the 50's at night - extremely rare for mid July.  Looks like the heat pump is on next week though.  I am seeing multiple days above 90 degrees.

 

I can't even fish the river I normally go to in July/August this season because of low levels again and drought.  I could wade small portions of it, but I prefer to float it like you do and cover more water.  Aint gonna happen this season unless we get a monsoon of rain.  These annual summer droughts are getting so old.  It didn't used to be like this and now its the third straight summer in a row.

 

Bummer on the two lost fish.  Losing muskies are the worst because you rarely get another chance.

[Further North]

59 minutes ago, gimruis said:

I can't even fish the river I normally go to in July/August this season because of low levels again and drought.  I could wade small portions of it, but I prefer to float it like you do and cover more water.  Aint gonna happen this season unless we get a monsoon of rain.  These annual summer droughts are getting so old.  It didn't used to be like this and now its the third straight summer in a row.

You have an open invitation over here.  We have at least one floatable river.

 

 

1 hour ago, gimruis said:

Bummer on the two lost fish.  Losing muskies are the worst because you rarely get another chance.

They're muskies, it happens.  The one I lost was standard musky tricks: Grab fly, spit fly back out in half a second.  I wonder how often this happens and we don't even know about it...

The one my fishing partner lost was more of a bummer, he had it on for at least three minutes, but she a head shake at just the right angle...and slack line.

 

[Further North]

Floated the same River again yesterday.

13 musky contacts, 10 follows, 4 eats...we were little ??? at the end of the day...

Water temp never exceeded 73°.

[gim]

Did you get some rain over there?  I got over 2 inches last night.

[Susky River Rat]

Sounds like some awesome trips.  I wish the musky fishing was still like that around here.

[Further North]

3 hours ago, gimruis said:

Did you get some rain over there?  I got over 2 inches last night.

0.43" overnight. 

 

2.27" so far for July. 

36 minutes ago, Darnold335 said:

Sounds like some awesome trips.  I wish the musky fishing was still like that around here.

Like anything else, it's all about habitat. 

 

 

[Susky River Rat]

@Further North the problem here is live scope and pressure. I used to get 10 follows a day and hook up at least once. I’d say that was about 70% of the time. I boated 7 in a weekend. I used to keep all kinds of numbers and info on it. After covid it got worse and worse. I don’t have unlimited musky bodies of water here. People don’t travel to musky fish this areas they leave here. I do however have one of the best small mouth fisheries in the states 40 minutes from me. That’s why I made the switch. 

[Further North]

I've seen a lot of arguments about muskies and Livescope, and I'm not sure that I buy that it makes that much difference.  Seeing fish on the 'scope isn't going to make them bite.

Our trips the last two weeks seem to confirm that, to me - we saw 24 fish, far better than any of the live view scanning options out there will ever show them, and only a handful ate.

I do think that concentrated pressure has a negative impact.  It's part of why I fish rivers so often - they don't see 5% of the pressure the lakes do.

[gim]

5 minutes ago, Further North said:

I do think that concentrated pressure has a negative impact.  It's part of why I fish rivers so often - they don't see 5% of the pressure the lakes do.

That's a big part of the solution to your success.  Far less pressure in a river where big boats with advanced electronics can't access could play a role.  Being that we're in a drought, that only makes it harder for those watercraft too.

 

I've tried to focus my muskie efforts on smaller lakes with less pressure the past few seasons, in combination to downsizing my presentation to target more fish.  I believe both have contributed to my increased success in recent seasons.

 

As far as the FFS thing with muskies, they tend to stand out like trucks on the screen in some waters.  Simply finding them is a big hurdle to over come.  True, you do have to make them bite, but once you find one you could just pester it nonstop with lure after lure until you run out of time or they get angry enough where they do strike.  That's not really appealing to me as a recreational angler, but I'm sure a tournament angler would find that very advantageous, which may have played a role as to why they banned it on the PMTT.

[Further North]

1 hour ago, gimruis said:

I've tried to focus my muskie efforts on smaller lakes with less pressure the past few seasons, in combination to downsizing my presentation to target more fish.  I believe both have contributed to my increased success in recent seasons.

I believe - strongly - that downsizing makes a difference.  I've caught far more muskies (and pike), some of considerable size - on flies and lures of what I'd describe as "normal" size than on big stuff.

 

 

1 hour ago, gimruis said:

As far as the FFS thing with muskies, they tend to stand out like trucks on the screen in some waters.  Simply finding them is a big hurdle to over come.  True, you do have to make them bite, but once you find one you could just pester it nonstop with lure after lure until you run out of time or they get angry enough where they do strike.  That's not really appealing to me as a recreational angler, but I'm sure a tournament angler would find that very advantageous, which may have played a role as to why they banned it on the PMTT.

I understand that direction of thought, but I'm not sure I buy into it enough to turn Anti-Live-Imaging. I can tell you, on several local lakes and rivers as far away as two hours, where the muskies are likely to be at any given time, and have about a 75% chance of being right. 

The most successful local musky angler I know has boated 200 in one season without any electronics at all because he knows where to fish.

I've watched Joe Flater fish a section of river near me, and he just goes from spot to spot...

Most often they're gonna be where they've always been, and they'll continue to be there until something changes, like a high water event changing a river.

[Susky River Rat]

This lakes here are small. 1200 acres and less. Mainly 500 down to 50 acre  With little to no structure and they kill weeds. You’ll have 10-15 guys any giving time musky fishing plus another 20 fishing other species. I have literally watch a few dudes with live scope completely make a joke of musky fishing around here.  
 

Most people are 100% putting live scope on their river boats here too. These aren’t $1200 Jon boats. They are 40-80k jet boats. 
 

it wasn’t uncommon to boat 3 lose 1 as a boat in a weekend on some of those bodies of water. Have a dozen follows. Obviously we knew what was going on where they were. Pressure and the addition to live scope ruined it here. My catch rate outside of PA in lakes I do not know is much better.