by Roger Sabota - Northwoods Notebook

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The Headwaters Chapter of Muskies Inc. is headquartered in Eagle River and is constantly raising funds for the purpose of introducing youngsters to the sport of fishing and improving musky fishing in Northern Wisconsin. Another function of Muskies Inc. is to help musky anglers get to know each other and provide a vehicle for the sharing of fishing information.

Each month during the open water fishing season the Headwaters Chapter sponsors an outing. Most months the outing culminates with a burger or pizza at a local restaurant and the chance to share information.

Annually the outing for the month of September is held at Buena Vista Resort in Ontario, Canada. Buena Vista Resort is a comfortable fishing camp located on the shore of Lake of the Woods. An attraction, which each year pulls anglers back to this resort, is an excellent restaurant on the resort property. This resort has been owned and operated by the Gate family for 33 years.

I have heard about the Lake of the Woods for many years and have wanted to fish it but never had the time to try the big lake. Last week that changed when my frequent fishing and hunting partner, "The Osseo Jinx," Tom Twesme, my good friend, Dr. Larry Mozan, who lives in Southern California and loves to fish for muskies, and I drove to Buena Vista Resort. We arrived on Tuesday evening and began talking with other members of Muskies Inc. In all there were 16 of us from the club at the resort and everyone was anxious to begin fishing for muskies.

Lake of the Woods is a huge body of water with thousands of islands and channels between the islands. I must admit that I am not blessed with a good or even an adequate sense of direction and felt that we were lost most of the time. Most of the boats in our group had a G.P.S. unit on board, which provided a tremendous navigation aid. We did not have a G.P.S. unit on our boat but we have said for years that Tom has a G.P.S between his ears. He has the ability to constantly know where he is whether we are hunting whitetails in northern Wisconsin, hunting elk in Colorado or fishing muskies on Lake of the Woods. Dr. Larry has fished on the ocean most of his adult life and is experienced at reading lake maps or charts.

Wednesday morning Dr. Larry was constantly studying the charts as were trying to get comfortable with the huge lake. He was troubled since we were not able to locate the hazard buoys that were shown on the map.

When we returned to the resort he immediately went to the office to discuss the confusion with the charts. He returned to our cabin with a grin on his face. As he was reviewing the lake map that we brought with us he found that our map was out of date. He brought a new map back to the cabin and for the rest of the trip we followed the map. We had been told that the most productive musky lure was a bucktail-type lure, with two huge Colorado blades, called a double cowgirl.

Immediately after seeing the lure Dr. Larry renamed it a "Dale Evans bait." That first day we saw four muskies that followed our lures to the boat but none hit our offerings. Several muskies were caught by members of our group, including a 46-inch trophy caught and released by "Coach" Kip Cramer.

Thursday morning was a bit cooler and by noon we had caught and released three muskies and a few northerns. We were feeling pretty good about our success and decided that we should try to do a shore lunch.

A shore lunch means walleyes so out came the walleye rods and we changed our method of fishing. After an hour and a half we had six small walleyes in the live well and pulled our boat up on shore and treated Dr. Larry to his first Northwoods shore lunch. He loves walleyes and declared that walleyes that had never been frozen, were cooked over an open fire and eaten on the shore are the best he had ever had.

On Friday we caught another musky and Dr. Larry caught a very heavy 41-inch northern, a real trophy. The club gathered Friday evening for a discussion of fishing results. The 16 of had caught 17 muskies.

Saturday morning was quite cold and we found fishing to very difficult. About mid-afternoon I snagged my lure on a rock while fishing a rock hump in the wind. We were drifting toward the snagged lure when Tom said, "Get the net." Larry retrieved his lure and grabbed my snagged rod. I netted a heavy, 43-incher for Tom. He put the electric motor on high and headed us away from the rocks as my lure popped free.

We had a good laugh at ourselves and enjoyed musky action for the next half hour. As we quit fishing all three of us knew that we had found the musky lake that we have been looking for.

Tail Feathers

My favorite time of the year has arrived. Twenty-four hours in a day for the next 70 days will not be enough!

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karol baugh wrote on Sep 21, 2007 9:40 AM: " Great article Roger! Sounds like a great trip and thanks for the tip on the "Dale Evans Lure"! " The comments above are from readers. In no way do they represent the views of the Rhinelander Daily News.

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