Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Spring River Muskies

No giants but 2 healthy creek fish. Water was starting to look great, then it blew out again, and now they are busy doing the dirty....

Ky221,

Nice to see you posting your fishing success pictures again. Have always enjoyed them and keep them coming.

Our Musky are presently spawning as well in the upper Potomac River, unfortunately, the river is high and muddy from 3 inches of rain 5 days ago.

Doc

Good stuff Gary!

Thanks doc.....I wasn’t aware the Potomac was known for muskies or that they even had a population....


Thanks Tom.

Nice. Some day I want to tackle a few of those with my fly rods.

Tom,

As the story goes... a well known bass fisherman who is now deceased stocked the upper Potomac River (Washington County or Hagerstown area) with Musky Fry is the late 80's. My biggest so far 43 inches and as you know Musky are the fish of 1,000 casts. I prefer the Walleye and Smallie fishing, just chase the big "Toothy" fish in early spring and late fall.

I got you. We chase them year round here in Ky. Fish the streams mostly. Native population and supplemental stocking. I’m not far from cave run either. Fish it mostly in the fall. I’m stuck on 46 being my biggest. Have hit that twice.

Beautiful fish...

I always enjoy your Muskie photos.

Looks like some good fun !

Keep after them....

Looks like a great time. I sure wish we had a river or two with muskies in them.

I also enjoy the pictures. We are, at least, a month out from being able to fish the rivers.

I have to ask, what is the concern with spawning muskie? We have caught some of our biggest during the spawn. Probably due to the fact that we have no idea what we are doing.

Thanks for the kind words guys...

JDK. I’ll try to answer that best I can......for me, and my group that I keep in touch with, there isn’t a concern so much as it is just wasting your time. Muskies being the fish they are, they are already hard enough to coax a strike out of, add the spawn factor in when all that seems to be on their mind is Love, it then becomes even more difficult to get a strike out of one. And at least around here if you are catching them during spawn it’s usually the small males. Even when you can see the big females it’s impossible it seems to catch one. So when they spawn we usually take a week or 3 and let them get finished and rested up before we go and cast for them all day.

It looks to me like handling those fish in small water like that would have to be hard. Up here I fish the St Croix and there's enough water that's fast enough anything over ten pounds can be a chase it down and keep up as best you can if you want to land them. Up to now I have tried to avoid the muskies and most of the other big fish.because I mostly fish alone. Those muskies in particular tend to lie in the quietest water they can get and especially the upper St Croix has pretty small pieces of quiet water. That means that when they leave that little piece we are out in some pretty good current trying to handle them. It's a pretty good size river even up there and it's all rocks, and it's mostly shallow.

I'll see if I can get you a picture of a four footer, I know where a few live.

Maybe a silly question, but are muskies any good to eat? I caught a pretty big pike once that was very good, don’t know how similar the two are.

I am sure they'd eat about the same as northerns. They can and do interbreed. A person wouldn't want to eat either anymore though, those big predators tend to bio-accumulate a lot of toxins like mercury and dioxin. A single fish no matter the size probably wouldn't do much harm. Less than 3-4 lbs and there's not enough meat around the bones. Any more than 4-5 and the test results I have seen show they can have a lot of mercury. I think here the minimum size limit to keep one is 54 inches now which is a pretty big, pretty old fish. Personally, I never have even considered killing one, northerns just don't eat all that good compared to lots and lots of other fish and less so when they get past 10 lbs.

We have no size or bag limit here as they are an invasive and I kill 2 to 4 a year. Typically I like the 30-36 inch fish and like them fresh. They are a welcome change from trout and salmon.

Some nice fish there Gary !

I’ve never ate one. So I can’t comment. We turn all of ours back. Must Muskie guys are catch and release. For this fish it only make sense. In Kentucky stream fish have to be 30” minimum to keep and 36” minimum in the lakes. I’d like to see that raise

Maine’s Inland Fisheries and Wildlife would like every one that is caught to be killed. Ours originally came from Quebec and don’t belong here. That said, that ship has sailed. They are good eating and I’ll continue to kill 2 to 4 smaller ones a year to eat