I'm addicted, he's lucky

[Steve Foss]

This is what I get for pounding the water on Vermilion for the last month. Five trips, a dozen follows, one 32-incher in waters loaded with muskies.

Then a guy comes to Shagawa Lake over here at Ely, fishes for big pike over the weekend and lands a 48-inch 'ski that weighed 34.75 on a certified scale, caught from a lake that isn't even supposed to hold muskies.

(I'd posted a pic of the fish, but had forgotten the "no dead fish pics rule" on FM, so I deleted the pic.)

DNR said it, and the few others they've heard of coming off Shag from time to time, likely came as escapes from their Wolf Lake musky rearing ponds, which are along the Burntside River that flows into Shag. They use the rearing ponds to grow fish to stock in Vermilion and other lakes, and once in awhile one of those young fish flops out of the nets when they're harvesting them and hits the river. Not far downstream, Shagawa awaits.

I can see Shag from my house. Guess I could slide down to the lake on my butt and fish muskies there, since he caught it in the bay below my house.

P.S. -- Spent Sunday afternoon on V. No follows, no blowups, no nothing. Algae bloom was gone from the East Bay, though. There'll be a next time. Uh, can you say next weekend?