Musky addicts unite

SPOONER — When longtime Spooner Muskie Club members Larry Damman and Joe Weiss were asked how many casts they’ve made in their lives for the legendary Fish Of 10,000 Casts, there was a moment of silence. Then Damman quietly said, “I don’t think that number’s been discovered yet.”

The message was clear. Both the musky addicts have spent a lot of time on the water, some might say too much when you see how the results from the Spooner Muskie Club’s monthly fishing trips have fallen over the last few years. The club’s origins began in the 1970s more as a social club than a competitive one.

“There was even a waiting list to join a few decades ago, but our membership has decreased lately,” said Weiss. “From 2016 to now, we’ve only had 10 to 12 guys fishing on our outings. We hit a different lake once a month from June to October and include a mid-day shore lunch a member sponsors.”

Both Weiss and Damman are becoming disillusioned with the current state of musky fishing in Wisconsin.

“I’ve been keeping a close track of the club’s success since 2016 and have done the math. On average, club members have been fishing 60 to 66 hours a day per trip. We might not always catch a musky, but we always saw fish (following our baits at boat side) in the earlier years. That’s not happening anymore,” said Weiss.

Even though club members always release muskies of any size they catch, in the club’s friendly rules, any muskie over 30 inches is counted as a legal catch, even if it doesn’t reflect current size limits.

Weiss dug into the record book to demonstrate the decline in the fishing results.

“In 2016, we caught six muskies over 30 inches; in 2017, 2018 and 2019, there were five. Then in 2020, only one was caught. In the next three years combined, 2021 through 2023, there were only seven landed. This year, we haven’t caught any yet,” said Weiss. “We’re just not seeing them anymore.”

Echoing Weiss’ comment, Damman, a retired fisheries biologist, said they used to say you had to see six muskies before you’d catch one, “but if they’re still there, we’re not seeing them anymore. Even in the big musky fishing tournaments where the best musky fishermen are fishing, they’re putting in a lot of hours per fish. In the 1980s, creel surveys on Big McKenzie showed one musky per 10 hours fished if the angler stated they were exclusively fishing muskies,” Damman said. “In 2022, I fished the Chippewa Flowage Muskie Hunt tournament. There were 200 experienced anglers who fished for 30 hours and caught a total of 44 fish over 34 inches. That was about twice as good as recent years, but 137 hours per fish doesn’t excite me. The conditions were good for musky fishing, too, cloudy and rainy for two of the three days, but we only saw two fish and one was under the 34-inch limit.”

“Big Sissibagama used to always be good musky fishing,” Weiss added. “We haven’t seen one there in the last three years. The Happy Hooker Bait Shop near Lost Land Lake and the Reel Livin’ Resort have always had a musky board where successful fishermen recorded their fish; now there’s only a few listed. This is only an anecdotal observation, but there seems to be a trend and it’s not a good one,” Weiss said. “I’ve got a cabin on Teal Lake that always used to be good, but I didn’t even see a fish on it last year, much less catch one.”

When asked their thoughts on why the success rate is dwindling, both Weiss and Damman were in agreement.

“All these lakes we’ve been fishing have a lot of northern pike now; bass, too. That may be part of the problem,” Weiss said. “There aren’t as many muskies being stocked anymore either,” said Damman. “The catch-and-release mentality is a good one, since the muskies that are caught have likely been caught before. I finally saw one last week following my lure and I could see the hook scar on it, so knew it had been caught earlier. Maybe that’s why it didn’t hit. I seldom hear of anyone keeping a legal musky anymore, but if the fish isn’t properly (caught), it’s not unusual to have hooking mortality even if they’re released. It seems some anglers need to post proof to show what they caught on social media.”

Weiss added fishing and boating pressure seems to have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.

“That and the new technology like forward facing sonar making it easier to find a fish may be a factor in all this, too,” he said.

What’s clear is in the over-50 years of the Spooner Muskie Club’s existence, the catch rate of those dedicated muskie fishermen has been dropping. That might help explain why Weiss and Damman were leaving for a week-long musky fishing trip to Canada the next morning. When asked why, the answer was short and clear.

“There’s better fishing up there; it doesn’t take so long to see a musky.”