Trophy Fishing TN Forum - Caney Fork Trout Fly Fishing - Caney Fork Trout Guide
Warm Water Fishing Reports => The TN Muskie Addiction => Topic started by: MikeA on November 11, 2006, 04:59:49 PM
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Well that’s what they say, and that’s with gear!!! With a fly it’s supposed to be like a million casts or something like that. Grumpy decided that was just too much work and decided to catch one with 50 or 60 casts. Way to go Grumpy. You’ve joined the ranks of the very few who have landed a Musky on the fly. Congratulations!
(http://www.trophyfishingtn.com/coppermine/albums/userpics/PB100003.JPG)
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doh, a little more hood there & i'd look like the Darth Fisherman :o
Thanks for letting me tag along, i'd be willing to go again, next time hopefully one of us can catch a big un.
We ran into a guy that was using conventional gear, he had some lures that looked blame near as big as that fish, i was almost skeert when i saw those.
Grumpy
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Grumpy I had a great time and thanks for breakfast and lunch! I could tell you were in pretty bad shape with your back pain. I've been there and know how the pain can take your breath away. I was getting pretty damned cold and I just don't like fishing in falling temps. I think calling it a day early was the right thing. We need to do this again, soon.
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Creek minnows?
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Naw Bill they always sling off on the back cast. ;D
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Way to go Grumpster! thats pretty cool. But what is that in the water that you can see just below your left hand????
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I saw that too, Leo. At first I thought it was a log. Upon futher inspection, I'm thinking Anaconda. ;D
Way to go guys.
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;D ;D :D
Yes, this place is infested with GIANT Anacondas Crocagators, and Coperheaded Rattlemouths. I would not go there if I were you! Hell just look at the teeth on the fish in this place. NASTY!
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That was his mama, that's why i look worried & not happy :o
Grumpy
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heck...for a minute I thought that velocoraptor or that flat billed low flyin eagle had followed you guys over there and was waiting for you to fall out of the boat again!!
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Remember this from 2006??? Who says we follow trends here at TFTN??? We're trend setters! ;D ;D
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Remember this from 2006??? Who says we follow trends here at TFTN??? We're trend setters! ;D ;D
:-)
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I remember not catching muskie back in 2006. I think I'm a lot better at not catching them now.
bd
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Some kind of "Musky World Championship" coming to the Collins/Caney in March?
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WOW, 6 years & i haven't been invited to do it again :'(
Grumpy
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you should go with me, I had Yoda in a nice fish on the 15th cast :o
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Nice, Grump!
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Some kind of "Musky World Championship" coming to the Collins/Caney in March?
The First Annual Musky Fly Fishing World Championships will take place Saturday, March 24th 2012.
http://www.toweeboats.com/blog/6-news/42-musky-fly-fishing-world-championship-to-be-held-march-24th-in-mcminnville-tennessee.html
Guess the masses have or will come now...
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you should go with me, I had Yoda in a nice fish on the 15th cast :o
Yea,,, in my fishing hole! :D
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True. :D
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Where's all the "Youre just promoting a fishery for money and attention" talk now?
I don't think anybody said where it was caught, right?
bd
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It didn't come from here Corey.
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The tourney Bd....
Well then let me be the first to say the tourney is pretty cheesy. The second, actually - I think Travis criticized calling "the masses" to those rivers in his original post.
I like that this is the "World Championship" tournament. But it's not a fish-off, or an invitational, or a tournament open to people who have ever won a tournament before.
So everybody with a hundred bucks can plop down a fee and get in the action. I can't even catch these effing fish, but by god, if I have a hundred bucks and I luck up and hit a good one that day, I can be the WORLD CHAMPION muskie fly fisherman, and all those famous guys like Brad Bohen can suck it!!! :)
bd
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Well, the trout water is all blown to hell right now. Let's go! Just say when and I'm there.
I was just laughing at it being the "World Champion" tournament. It's like if I decided to open a municipal soccer league in Macon County and called our first match the World Cup.
bd
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I was just laughing at it being the "World Champion" tournament. It's like if I decided to open a municipal soccer league in Macon County and called our first match the World Cup.
bd
Same here bd, I know where there is a nice Koi pond at an apartment complex. We can have The Exotic Fly Fishing World Championships. It will be equally as tough with all the routine patrols, tight casting as security cameras.
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If Heavy promotion of a good fishery accomplished the attraction of courteous, ecologically aware anglers who respect the fishery and promote it's growth--I would be all for it.
Instead, you get all kinds of folks on your water. Many of which are the last one's you want to encounter.
I've seen it in my 20+ years of growing up on the SOHO.
There's nothing more disappointing than getting that rare chance to sneak away (which gets less and less as your life takes on more obligations), returning to that stretch of water that's fished great years past, and finding a bunch of tourists and guides tramping through runs and edging in uncomfortably close to the water your trying to fish.
Or showing up at the ramp, and seeing a pile of trucks and empty trailers of people claiming that run you're trying to reach.
When videos like this appear on YOUTUBE, others will follow suit, and before you know it...everyone and their brother will be guthooking your trophy fish and extending them by their lower jaw with their new BOGA grip to get their prize photo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYaVbauTC0
The Collins is NOT a huge fishery, and not many areas for anglers to disperse. Great Falls is larger, but your not gonna get as much attention to the lake, where anglers have to actually put in a lot of time.
My main point is this: All those places where you PM me and write: "SSSSsshhhh! Don't breathe a word of that spot to anyone". Eventually you will not be the only one fishing it, and those 49" fish that you work so hard for will be going to the taxidermist or floating belly up from being mishandled.
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uh-ooooo somebody has upset the WORLD CARP CHAMPION :) JK BD
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No worries Corey, I know that you only want what's best for your fishery(I never doubt the accuracy of the trophy sized fish you land). And no discredit to Dwayne, he's a great angler, and he does promote the fishery with respect. The guys in this video were trying to pay respect to the guide, and share the thrill of the experience. But I've learned that it was just this type of weekend angler who has filleted 8 and boasted about keeping 8 muskies out of my favorite musky hole on the Nolichucky this summer. Now no one sees or catches fish here until the next stock grows, and every time I pass, there's a boat working that stretch since the word got out.
It's easy for out of towners to exploit a waterway, without much guilt. If you draw the wrong anglers in, they can do some real damage quickly on smaller waters.
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I wish I knew more about these fish here in TN or in general but its too dang far for me to drive in order to have a chance at seeing one much less hooking it. Barren River or Green River in KY would be easier to get to for me it seems but that would involve another license.
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It's clear there are many fans of these fish here and it seems clear the main goal of everyone who has posted is preserving these fish. Where I think the two camps separate is how to go about preserving it. One camp, and you can include me in this one, wants to preserve the fish AND the quality of the fishing experience. For example, the hot hole is full of trophy sized fish. You'll most likely never see me fishing there because it lacks the most important ingredient for me to enjoy myself, solitude. I don't get off fishing in crowds and would rather not fish at all.
Then there is the other camp that believes the only way to save the fishery is to advertise so that it draws enough attention to make TWRA get more involved.
10 years ago the Caney Fork under generation was pretty much a ghost river. You hardly ever saw people fishing it. Word started spreading and I'll be the first to admit I helped spread the word. Now the river gets pounded daily all year. That pounding brought new money into the region. Someone saw that money and decided to take another angle on the river, canoe hatcheries were born. Now you have to take a number to launch a boat there. Once you launch you have to wait in line to fish the good spots. The fishermen and all the attention got some great regs passed but IMO the experience as a whole has been seriously degraded. For that reason I'm looking at other species and places to fish and take my clients. So, if the hothole and the Caney are the examples of how publicity helps a fishery then I'd have to say no thanks, I'll take my chances on the fishery sustaining itself. But that's just me.
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One distinction, I think, is that muskie fishing is probably never going to draw the same crowds that trout fishing does, because the fish are too damn hard to fish for.
It's one thing to drive two hours to a river when there's the possibility of a "good day" being scores of fish and steady catching through the day, with maybe a trophy thrown in. It's quite another when a "good day" might mean a fish follows your lure back to the boat.
There are a lot of people who just aren't going to do that very often. Muskie fishing could get more crowded than it is right now, but it's never going to be in the same league as the Caney.
That said, regardless of the fishing, the only thing saving some of the popular muskie rivers from a commercial canoe operation is limited access. You don't need trout for a river to get swamped with recreational paddlers - look at the Harpeth. Maybe I'll buy a postage stamp of land 8 miles or so upriver from the VFW Ramp access at you-know-where and establish my own Hidden Treasure Canoe Extravaganza and advertise it as a weekend getaway for the college kids at MTSU and Tennessee Tech. That will teach those effing muskies to mess with me. :)
bd
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I have a theory that the only reason the river fisheries get the attention they do is because they are "easy" muskie fishing. I've heard guys from up north gush about our river muskie because they saw a couple fish in a day rather than in a month.
The lake fisheries are just hard for the average angler. Dale Hollow has gotten stocked for decades, but it's a select few who fish it. Melton Hill gets more attention but it is "easy" too because of the hot hole.
I suspect that if TWRA shifted all their resources away from the rivers and to lakes instead, they would create a few very good, but grossly underutilized fisheries. In turn, that wouldn't draw the money needed to sustain the desired stocking levels over the long term.
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Bd....you've seen my pics. The river fish are almost never even close to the girth of the great falls ish specifically. I regularly fish with a guy from Nashville who used to guide Minnetonka and got a good share of 50s and when he saw our lake fish he went Whoa. I tell you....you want a promotional body of water? The river ain't it. Good numbers but alot of your serious die hards coming down for t he's winter are going to want to bring their rangers which cant touch Collins. They also want big fat slob musky with a legitimate shot at a 50 or two over a weeks fishing. Center hill can AMD will produce. 50 lb Plus fish...a giant anywhere. Our lakes have produced fish already that rival fish caught anywhere. Why aren't the waters with the best trophy potential being considered more? I speak blatantly of Center Hill...
....God I hate typing on an android....
Because we all know them mean ole Muskies eat all the Bass. How are the tourney guys supposed to pull a female Bass bloated with eggs, off her bed and haul her around the lake doing 70mph in a congested 10 gallon holding tank with 5 other females full of eggs. Then hold her up for the photo shoot just before weighing her, then dumping her down a plastic slide back into the lake 10 miles from where she was trying to reproduce, if the musky eat her first.
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Good numbers but alot of your serious die hards coming down for t he's winter are going to want to bring their rangers which cant touch Collins. They also want big fat slob musky with a legitimate shot at a 50 or two over a weeks fishing.
Yeah but you're talking about "serious die hards." Thats an elite select subset of the anglers out there - maybe 15 percent and I'm being generous. I don't know that they are enough to drive the fishery by themselves.
bd
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Is there a resource to where the fish are found in TN?
You can PM me the info if you wish.
We went down to the VA and tried upstream once but its a long haul for me. We actually almost lost the guy I was with's truck and boat due to the ramp being muddy from high water. Not really the smartest move trying to unload there at that time.
I have only ever seen one on Tim's Ford. That was the year I bought my big boat back around 1996.
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Go to google and type in "Where are muskie located in Tennessee".
Then do a google map search cross referenced with information posted on muskie fishing articles and on line muskie sites.
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Go to google and type in "Where are muskie located in Tennessee".
Then do a google map search cross referenced with information posted on muskie fishing articles and on line muskie sites.
You make it sound so easy! ;) ;D ;) ;D
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Go to google and type in "Where are muskie located in Tennessee".
Then do a google map search cross referenced with information posted on muskie fishing articles and on line muskie sites.
Thanks dbradyh
I was able to find what I was looking for. They are or at least were in a lot more places than I thought. Musky are an interesting fish but I have no real desire to chase them at this point. Too many bass, trout to chase and still have to catch some striped fishes which are all closer.
Musky guys.... The info I found was pretty detailed as to where they were or should be but I seen regarding Tims or Elk? I am positive that was what we seen. We were fishing in a back pocket and it's tail flipped out of the water with a reddish tent, greenish body with a splotchy pattern. They only way we associated it with a musky was one mounted on the wall in the marina looked similiar.
Were we crazy or seeing things?
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How large? If small could it be a spotted gar?
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How large? If small could it be a spotted gar?
What I remember was the tail would have been 8" tip to tip roughly. But more so, I remember the reddish tint to a greenish body. The tail wasn't rounded like a gar more forked.
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Woods got a few fingerlings as recently as 1988 and 1991 (see stocking history on the TWRA Region 4 website). I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying for the <0.5% of the fish that are probably left, unless you're there anyway.
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Woods got a few fingerlings as recently as 1988 and 1991 (see stocking history on the TWRA Region 4 website). I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying for the <0.5% of the fish that are probably left, unless you're there anyway.
I was just trying to figure out if that was the fish we seen back in the early to mid-90's. There is no desire for me to chase those fish. Not only the expense of equipment upgrades, distance between me and them as well as just not knowing anything about muskie.
I am quite content catching bass, trout and maybe striper or carp this year.
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I agree, there is something about them that kind of gets in your blood. I really like the challenge, and it is a great reward for sure !
JW
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I agree, there is something about them that kind of gets in your blood. I really like the challenge, and it is a great reward for sure !
JW
I don't doubt that one bit. I have seen Water Wolf (for Pike) and it is blood pumping for sure. Feel like it may be similar to fly fishing....once you pick it up it kinda consumes you.
It's just not on my radar yet fly fishing. I have bass fished for years both rec and tournament so I can't wait for late Feb/March to start looking for them on a fly. There are some pockets that house big girls and a meat whistle or slumpbuster bounced by will get crushed. That is one big thing I am wanting this year along with trout and a real run at carp.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgR8DnjwjVI[/youtube]
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I never doubt the excitement of anything outdoor related. I have done a lot of things involving fishing, hunting or just shooting in general that were an absolute blast and caught my attention right then but just chose other avenues for excitement. It's all fun for sure.
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In the trolling category, I used to spend some time trolling skipjack under planer boards for stripers. I haven't done it as much as Mike has, but I've done it some.
That's the most exciting trolling I've done. You've got to really pay attention to place your planers really close to where the fish hold, without getting so close that the skipjack swims in and snags a tree. And when a big fish gets close and the skipjack starts jumping around and trying to escape, it's very suspenseful.
Having said that, trolling is fun, but I'd rather be casting on any given day. When the fish are "on" trolling can be a blast, but on a slow day it's a long, uneventful boat ride.
bd
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I've caught them behind planers, on surface plugs, using downlines with live shad. The most fun I ever had was catching a 15 pound Cumberland River 2 generator Striper in a surface blitzs on a tiny torpedo using a med spinning rod with 6 pound line. It was the only rod I had at the time. You can't see it but I'm smiling big just typing about that one.
Now I get my kicks catching them on the fly and I'm convinced that fly fishing has taught me alot more about these fish then any other method. But there are times when I miss watching that predator prey relationship unfold in front of me knowing that the prey had my hook in it. Hearing that loud POP of a Stripers jaws snapping shut while partially out of the water is a sound that makes any anglers heart skip a beat every time you hear it...
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The most fun I ever had striper fishing was watching them crash redfins on top. I had one night bank fishing where I had a 37 and a 25 hit topwater on the last 7 or 8 feet of the retrieve - close enough to throw water on me. I won't ever forget that. I imagine a muskie taking a lure off the rod tip on a figure 8 must be almost just like that. If muskie would just bite occasionally I would hate them so, sooo much less.
The main thing I have learned from fly fishing for stripers is that a 6-inch striper fly is the hardest damned thing to cast in the world.
bd