The fantastic musky fishing on Rock Island has been seeing its ups and downs, but the highs are DEFINITELY worth the lag times. Both myself and guide Dwayne Hickey have been putting clients on fish in the mid 40″ range rather consistently. Dwayne landed a beautiful 44″ musky last week, along with a few others, for some clients out of Nashville, and the pic will be available soon.
Myself? I took Doug Paige of Bass Pro Shops Management and his friend Lee out on a couple trips in the past month. On our first outing, we got 4 muskies inside of 3 hours, 2 40″, a 45″ and a whopping first musky for Lee, measuring 49″ and weighing over 38 lbs. We’re waiting on the digital from a kind boat in the vicinty, but there is a picutre of me holding Lee’s fish from a camera phone. You can tell from that pic that his fish is a true giant, and all too close to the state record.
Just this last Saturday I took Doug and Lee again out for a “caney slam” trip, a half day on the upper Caney after muskies and a half day on the lower pursuing trout. Doug managed to hook and land a 46″ musky built like a Green Bay linebacker, his first musky as well [what's with these guys?...] and a few other follows. Around mid day we took a quick lunch break and headed to the lower Caney after browns. Following hearing nothing but gloom and doom from the guys wading and tossing flies, we took to the water anyway. Action was slow but the ones we got were nice, a few 15″ dink browns, and a nice 20″ and 22.5″ for Lee, his first real german brown trout. I planted hooks in a brown trout that fought like a 20 pound rockfish, and was almost that in dimensions. We all got a good look at the fish as it rolled, before jetting off into a nearby logjam from whence it came, singing my drag the whole time. The fish at best guess was in the low 30″ range, and probably near 15-18 lbs, a true Caney giant and the kind of fish we live to pursue here at Stone’s Throw. Hopefully next time we’ll have a picture of him in our hands, and a video of him swimming off into the wild blue. Until next time, tight lines, and remember, the heart of adventure, is always just a stone’s throw away…
-Cory Allen
