Why I Fish

Being from the Northwoods of Wisconsin, fishing is something I grew up doing and something I still love. I like the natural beauty of a lake in the early morning hours, the orange glow of the rising sun, and the flat calm water. I also like feeling the fish bite, and the battle that follows. Feeling a walleye pick up a jig, setting the hook and feeling your rod bend as your line starts peeling off the spool is one of the best feelings there is. Seeing a forty-five-inch musky shake its head back and forth at the side of the boat as you hang on for dear life is one of the most exciting things you will ever experience in fishing. I love all that stuff and would be lying if I said that those aspects weren’t part of the reason I go fishing but they’re only part of it.

My real obsession with fishing began in my late teens when I started to see fishing as a much more complex sport. I realized that the most successful fishermen were very detail oriented and took things very seriously. I also came to the conclusion that they were very creative thinkers and often employed quite unorthodox tactics to catch fish.

At around the same time I got really into musky fishing. The musky has a sort of mythical air about it, especially in Wisconsin and rightly so as they get big and are hard to catch. I caught a few small muskies growing up, but it wasn’t until I was older that I realized how hard they were to catch, and how badly I wanted to catch a big one. I was looking for a challenge and I certainly found it in musky fishing.

It’s not uncommon to fish for hours or even days without confirmation that muskies even exist where you’re fishing. When you do see one, many times they won’t bite as the musky has a propensity to “follow” your lure right to the boat only to swim off at leaving your offering unscathed. Seeing a large fish come up right to the boat so boldly can and will haunt you for days and it only took a few of those types of encounters to hook me. I applied some intelligent effort, (I read and watched everything I could about musky fishing) found a couple good lakes and became modestly successful at it which was an incredibly powerful feeling.

Being considered relatively good at catching the most elusive fish in freshwater is quite an ego stroke where I’m from and it felt good. The personal accomplishment factor was huge too. I had struggled early on, but I stuck with it, focused on the details and it slowly but surely led to pretty consistent catch rates as far as musky fishing is concerned. To put it simply, I became obsessed and it led to success.

Fishing is a bit of a science experiment and that’s why I love it. There are tons of variables that must be taken into account. The time of year, the weather, the wind direction, the time of day, the structure of a lake, the forage base of the lake, the water clarity, your lure choice, the diameter of your line, your rod, your reel, and many other things all play a factor into finding fish, and catching fish. Fish move around much more than you think and they hide in places you would never guess, they aren’t in the same place all the time, and each day is different. When you figure it all out and set the hook on a bunch of walleyes or catch a gargantuan musky it feels great. It’s the searching and finding that does it for me, that’s why I fish.