unexpectedly long and amazing day

[fishcast]

This was the deal. 3 friends of mine and I are all new to an area and we want to catch some smallies. We want to float a River but haven't ever done it there and have no clue where to put in and take out, and were in the middle of no where sort of. So we shuttled canoes and picked a potential pull out spot and started out.

The day started like this with the fattest 17" fish I have ever caught on my first cast twitching a floating rapala on the surface. By the way water temps were 62 degrees

While floating the guy I was with a me picked up another a few others including a 17.5" and then we got a call on our cell phone (which has really spotty service to say the least) from the guys in the canoe which was probably a long ways ahead of us since we got out to wade and they just floated and I heard something about are take out spot being to hard to get up and them catching big smallies later finding out they were these monsters

an almosttttt 21" huge smallie (and yeah it was layed flat mouth closed for the measurement) ever seen a lump behind a smallies head like that? it hit a floating rap, and he said that when the rap landed on the water there was a huge boil but then nothing...he gave it a twitch but it never floated back up and he set the hook!

and an almostttt 20" on an x-rap

then we passed what what supposed to be our take out spot which was too hard to paddle up so we were going to go to the next tributary which seemed like it was taking far to long and on the way caught a pretty little muskie and saw an eagle

Then to make a very long story short, about 3 hours after we were supposed to be out of there and no sign of the other canoe and no answer on the cell phone, and walking random streams and through the woods we pulled my canoe out at a real random spot and went back and then drove around to look for them. Then after it had been 6 hours since we were supposed to be back we called a search team out cause it was almost dark with no sign of them. It turns out they paddled about like 10-12 miles further then planned (we were only going to float about 2 miles of river) they pulled out at the first sign of life...a bar off the river. But with no way of contacting us immidaetely they waited for us thinking we would have floated that far eventually. Then they saw a bunch of rescue boats and police officers at the launch there, and asked them if they happened to be looking for a couple college kids. And thats how it ended at 10:30 at night (and we were supposed to be back for supper)

[riverrat56]

Sounds like quite the adventure...

[goblueM]

wow pig smallies... sounds like a fun day, with a little added in excitement

[poncho]

Nice fish, those are dandies!

[poncho]

Nice fish, those are dandies!

[poncho]

WTG! Nice fish!

[huntingislife]

Those are some nice fish. Are you Dan's son? He told me the story yesterday.

[JimBuck]

Those smallies look great!

[Nick Kuhn]

Wisconsin River I take it? For future reference that's a tiger muskie, not a pure strain (that plus your location plus the PBR sign leads me to believe that). Nice dark smallies too.

[fishcast]

Those are some nice fish. Are you Dan's son? He told me the story yesterday.

yes, I assume you work with him.

VT: correct, and thanks for letting me know about the tiger, I wasn't sure, the tail did look kind of rounded for a pure skie but thought maybe because it was young it was hard to tell.

[Nick Kuhn]

Rounded and spotted tail is the give away, always suspect it's a tiger if it has markings that prominent. The upper Wisconsin river (and surrounding lakes) is one of the few places where tigers occur naturally with any kind of frequency. Almost all the rest are fluke spawns or bred for stocking.