Low Expectations

Maintaining overly high expectations is a surefire path to disappointment. Even if you’re successful, you might not be as successful as you’d allowed yourself to imagine.   Conversely, entering a project with low expectations of success might lead to a pleasant surprise.

*****

I was feeling pretty good about my recent muskellunge exploits, having encountered three fish in the last trip, as I prepared to return to C Lake.  But I was going fishing out of convenience, and I knew lunar and weather conditions were probably against me.  It was simply too nice; brisk, calm and bright; with no major lunar events in my window of availability, for me to expect much in the way of actually catching a muskie on this particular day.

So I kept my anticipation in check, and simply enjoyed the process.  It was a beautiful day and not too crowded.  My electronics kept me positioned over green weeds and I had a smorgasbord of choices to offer the fish.  I was simply enjoying The Grind; the relentless, meticulous covering of water with long casts, employing varying lures and cadences, totally in tune with the feel of the lure and always watching for a shadow, flash, bulge or boil from a fish.

She materialized behind and under my bucktail about 30 feet away from the boat and she tracked it under my feet to Numenon’s port side.  She entered the first wide turn of my Figure 8, and then, as quickly as she appeared, she dissolved.  I continued my Figure 8 for several laps, hoping she’d return.  She didn’t, but the day had now exceeded my expectations.  I’d been close to real success again, and this fish was a tank!  She never appeared to be really fired up; I could accept that she was simply a looker and not an eater.  I hadn’t caught her, but she had revealed herself.  I added another waypoint to the GPS and burned her location into my memory; I was making progress.

Perhaps an hour later I detected a slight hesitation in the flutter of my bucktail’s blade.  Hook-sets are free, so I was swung hard, and was super-pleasantly surprised to have the rod buckle.  When I felt the first head shakes, I knew she was an Esox; and when she raced past the boat I could finally say (again) that I was hooked up to a muskie!

She wasn’t that big, and the fight, although violent, was brief.  When she was clearly subdued, it became very important to me to get her safely secured in the net and get a picture of her.  That would end my Mighty Slumpellunge!  It wasn’t easy or pretty, but the pieces all came together, and after an easy hook extraction and a very brief photo session, she vigorously swam away.

Finally, another muskie in the net.  A mini-muskie at 32 inches, but still a muskie!

She's still looking at the black Harasser.

One angry freshwater fish.

For perhaps the first time in this game, I had more than the beginnings of an effective pattern.  My black Harasser was raising fish, and these fish were on the inside weed edge in a specific corner of the lake.  The sun was going down fast, but I still had some day-light left.  And while I didn’t hook up again, I did have two more follows.  Each was a very respectable fish that I will be pleased to encounter again.

I was off the water before full sunset, so I might have missed another feeding window.  But I was pretty pleased to return home. I hadn’t expected much from this trip; but I’d gotten a lot from it.  Rarely has a “small” fish been so fulfilling.  Still, it’s not the actual fight and capture of this particular fish that will keep me going.  Instead, it’s the images of the Ghosts of Muskies Past (with their undocumented and so therefore virtually unlimited size) that will keep luring me out there.

Ebony and Ivory; a black Harasser and a white BPS double-bladed spinnerbait raised 7 fish in two days.  The Diawa Lexa 300 high-speed reel was an important part of this equation.