Early at Pineview!

Moon Phase:

Fishing Time: 4:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Weather: sunny, clear, 100's

I got a phone call on Saturday night from Barclay Emery saying "We're going to Pineview tomorrow so we will meet you at the freeway at 3:00 a.m. and don't be late!" I thought about it for a few seconds and said, "I,m in! see you tomorrow." So at 2:45 a.m. the alarm sounded and I was off. I think this is the earliest I have ever gone fishing before and Cari let me know that I had crossed the boundary line of being normal. I just smiled loving every minute of it! We got to the lake in the dark and launched and rigged our poles at the same time. We drove through the dark over to Cemetery Point and started casting. I was throwing a big White Bucktail Spinner and had no luck for the first two hours. Rick Everson started throwing a topwater Buzzbait and after awhile he finally got hammered by something big and for a second we thought we were going to land the first Musky of the day, but the Musky had other ideas. He bit right threw Ricks braided fireline. This scared me cause I only had 8 lb test, but I had a 20 lb steel leader on the end so I felt I could handle a fairly large fish. I threw on a big perch pattern topwater popper and on my first cast I landed a Smallmouth Bass. Soon after Barclay landed this nice 2.5 pound Smallie on a Jointed Rapala in Perch pattern. Then on the next cast Barclay managed to get snagged and break his pole trying to get it free. It must have been a nice pole that breaks before his line does. This picture tells the story. After landing a couple more Smallmouth we moved over near Anderson Cove and I started throwing a big chartreuse spinnerbait. I threw it right into some willows sticking out of the water and something smacked it. It fought like a freight train and now I was sure we were going to land our first Musky of the day, but instead I landed this 4 pound Largemouth! After the excitement of catching this pig was over we decided to focus on some bass since the Musky were not hitting. We caught a few more Smallmouth but no more lunkers. We soon wanted to get back to the Musky fishing so we thought we would try a different tactic. We trolled up and down the shorelines with no more excitement than the occassional snag. Just before we reached the point of trolling exhaustion I had another snag. My drag started zingin line off but only this time it was different. My pole started bouncing and I soon realized I had a fish on! I started reeling it in when the fish broke water. It was a confirmed Musky sighting and my heart started racing. I got it right to the boat and it leaped about three feet in the air and tried to spit my big perch pattern Jointed Rapala. I thought he was going to be successful but Rick did a good job of landing him and getting him in the boat. I was pumped with landing this 30 inch Tiger Musky so I had Barclay snap some photos and this was the best he could come up with. I've seen some bad photos in my day but this was at the top of the list! I gave him hell for the rest of the trip. We continued to troll for an hour or so with no more hits and the temperature had reached a 100 degrees so we took off. I was a happy successful fisherman with my Musky and lunker bass in the record books and I think Pineview might be on the list for some more action in the future!