Ice gone yet?

[M.T. Bucket]

Hey guys,

Is the ice gone yet? Why doesn't IL have an open water forum? Maybe this forum should just be the IL fishing forum. It would get more traffic I thinks.

[Captain Ken]

The ice, in my opinion, is not safe, but not gone yet.

OUr goal is to have this be a good source of information year round, but no one seems to do much posting. Rick, the owner of FM, says there is traffic but not much posting.

I'd love to see this become an info source all summer and winter.

I will post salmon reports here during the summer and whatever muskie info I have from IL.

I also post on Minnesota under Lake Vermilion.

Check out the Muskie School link below!

Ken

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Captain Ken Kessler
www.captainken.com
www.muskieschool.com
Guiding in Illinois and North East Minnesota
847-970-9108 Illinois
218-742-4680 Minnesota

[M.T. Bucket]

Nice fish Captain!!

I'd really like to make some time to angle for Muskies in the near future. My dad made me some big jerkbaits and crankbaits that haven't seen a lot of water yet.

I guess I'll tell you about the only musky I ever caught.

I was fishing catfish and smallies on the Fox near the mouth of the Somonauk Creek. I had a rod out with a huge chunk of cutbait. Something grabbed it and headed for deep water and straightened out my 2/0 hook.

A little later in the same spot I began casting a little Black Fury for smallies and I saw something terrorizing minnows in the riffles. I casted in that direction, and in a split second I knew it wasn't a bass. Took forever to land it on the light spinning rod I was using.

Got him in the boat, he was only probably 8 or 9 lbs, but man was it still cool. My first musky. I'm convinced it was the same fish that grabbed my cutbait, but maybe it was a big flathead.

Since then, I've fished specifically for muskies a few times, but the closest I've come was when one stripped a cigar walleye off the end of my line in the Blandin Reservoir in Grand Rapids.

Of course my wife caught a little musky in the St. Louis River on a Beetle Spin.

Later.

[Captain Ken]

MT

THANKS!

The joke on the Chain of Lake is how do you catch muckies? Go bass fisning! Those guys catch alot and curse everyone.

I caught a nice smallie on vermilion once muskie fishing. Set the hook so hard I almost jerked him out of the water! He's still swimmin I guess.

See ya.

Ken

[Captain Ken]

Bye Bye ice...see you next year.
Capt Ken