zach

this saturday is my birthday and i have full intentions to put in 24 hours at waneta. i want to start at midnight friday and fish until midnight saturday night. sounds cool and it will be a week after my last time out so i shouldn't be all sore like i am after this weekend. my ole man should be my musky partner for the first time since he moved away to the city 7 years ago. i can't wait, i don't even know if he remembers how to use a baitcaster. i am so excited to share the boat w/ him and i really hope i can get him on a fish. for him it doesn't need to be big, i just want to get the old man back into the game and have something tugging on his line. we had some great trips to canada when i was a kid chasing muskies and i miss fishing w/ him. he is only gonna be out for the morning. anyone else down saturday?

did extremely well on the musky rockets during the tourney first time pulling them, plan on selling most of my trolling lures to stock up on these and that says alot. the only lure in the past 15 years that i have bought that i have been 100% happy with and performed as good as expected! deadly wobble and unbelieveable paint jobs, best hooks ever on a stock plug, strong screw eyes, triple split rings, thick clear coat and i could just go on about them. imo i have wasted alot of $ on cheaply made plugs. had them over 6 mph and held great. highly recommend to anyone who wants to catch fish. even selling some of my wileys to get more! i am a muskyrocket fan. our wiley's got hit 1x and the rockets 4x- no comparision with almost equal running time.

SLIMY try musky fishing if you feel you have conquered all other fish there boy- thats what i did when i wanted to make it tougher and now i find it so challenging and also rewarding i never b*tch other than when solgrande comes in and smacks a 45" right in front of you making you turn green w/ jealousy .

bob- i will sell you the 6 i have if you want- i am only running wileys and musky rockets for the immediate future. let me know, i have some decent colors. lex's fish hit a 5" wiley deep diver that has caught 7 for us in one year. its the short fatboy and for $100 i wouldn't sell it. bob- check out those musky rockets, i couldn't be happier w/ a lure and if your a pain in the a$$ like i am he will even do a special color for you, it just takes alittle longer, best baits going right now, i plan on selling alot of lures to stock up on the musky rockets. bty i was so jealous of your big one one saturday it wasn't even funny! nice catch again, that musky in your pics is as pretty as they get!

oh yeah i forgot- it was from lamoka and i used a borrowed measuring tape from #d c^&%g. fish told me that all her buddies have moved to the south lake also. its gonna be a tough year at waneta w/ no skies left in there. thanks bob. i was thrilled, i heard the fish before it hit. like woosh, woosh and then the line got very tight and i yanked up bill dance style on her a$$. swam away good and its gonna take me a week to make up for all my lost sleep. typing this now i am beat down tired, hands hurt, shoulders, nose and forehead are sunburned to a nice crispy leathery surface. shoulders are sore, foot hurts from stepping on a 3/0 treble barefoot that almost went into the barb. it was a full weekend.

yeah i got that same feeling ray as i was reading his post. i like walleye and when i fish them i dont expect long fights and huge runs but i always seem to enjoy it for what it is. a good time! slimy time to pick a new hobby and past time if this ain't fun!

i wasn't sure how i was gonna add it but i made like 5 edits to that long post. 48.5 at waneta is a big deal to me also. i have got mostly fish around 32-33" w/ my second largest being a 44" last july. fish had some scars on it and was fat for the season but all the fish this weekend were thicker than most openers i believe.

this guy i know got this small one last night on topwater. sorry its so small you can barely see it p.s. i am done swimming in waneta after seeing this one. 48.5" i had to photoshop the background so u cant see where i got it. just kidding. i hate when people do that!

u both should have been @ chautaqua supporting the musky fishery and raising much needed $ for the musky stocking, making sure we have future musky fishing like all of us were. you guys could have helped all of us out seeing u chase them like we do. anyways................................

thanks ole man, it was almost 20 hours straight musky fishing, where where u? still would love to meet you. weeds were part of the game plan and i know that u can throw that rabbid spinnerbait as good as anyone in the weeds. chad- i believe you know kevin from greece, he said growing up you had some beautiful trout mounts at your house.

sounds like u had a great time!

great time had by us, thanks larry for getting it going. lex got her biggest so far after being stuck @ 33" for some time! here is her 38" once again, great job babe you earned this one. look at my hair in this pic, the fish soaked me thrashing at the boat. my buddy kevin got this on his FIRST cast ever for muskies 39.5" six casts later he got another one, we have video but i was swearing the whole time so i cant post it. i was calling him lucky but w/ many swear words mixed in. 41" . once again, awesome job kevin on your first 2 muskies! we did 3 in one 20 yard stretch through out the day. crazy. heres me, no need to mention that mine is the smallest of all of them 36"- no monsters but i never get any big ones so i'm not dissapointed. lost one more decent one and that was our day! the one we lost was on a bite off on 100lb flouro (first time for me and i was changing out leaders almost every fish so it wasn't old or cut or anything, just left w/ about 18" of leader after my swivel). chaut has been kind to us for #'s but not for slobs. largest for us was 42". thats along way from the 52.5" that we needed but thats fine w/ me b/c thats whats going make me sign up for octobers tourney! fun, fun, fun and some sunburn! but at least we all got slimed! lex got her biggest, kevin his first 2 and me talking smack the whole time. it was a long day and i cleared enough weeds off my line that we could have fed the world salad for a year. it has been a long wait and i am glad summer is finally here. next weekend is my birthday and i will be waneta looking for some action. once again thanks larry and i wish we did these tournies every month, maybe then i would actually have a chance! p.s. stopped by the hunting camp in bath, left lex to sleep and kevin and i went out to my girlfriend waneta's house and got this small one on topwater after losing 2 at chautaqua on top. finally got the hooks to stick on my topwater, was a good day but very long- 48.5" and thats no "king of waneta" measurement. i wanted to stretch it to 49" but she just couldn't make it. 2 lakes, one day- 43 hours awake- one hour sleep- like 2 packs of smokes later- still smiling- and my largest from waneta! its gonna be a good year for the buffalo bills!!!

recieved my lures and i dont think i will ever buy another wiley after seeing how much better these are built. 10x better paint job and an actual protective finish on these unlike wiley's clear laquer non-existant finish. built like tanks. best built lures i own.

i carry superglue on the boat for that reason. something i have recently learned for emergancy stitches.

then i hope my burger is so dry and burnt that i can't eat it! getting pretty excited here guys! its musky eve, eve.

didn't it seem that way nitro. i took off oct and nov to bowhunt but the last 2x there last fall i struggled. i seem to do best before mid- july.

i am happy w/ my action optics. like the copper lens over the other colors.

i have some diawa's line counters and okuma line counters, like the diawas better. metal vs compostite reel frame.

i took it down to the creek and after one minor adjustment on the front screw eye it came in slow w/ the tail breaking the surface making and bubble, bubble sound. cool if you want to reel slow like coming back to a fish that followed and when i cranked it as fast as humanly possible it held dead n#tts on line! i am guessing i had it up around 4-5mph and the tail goes crazy at that speed. i could see the tail in dirty water 10 feet away when i made it run shallow by keeping the rod tip up. i am gonna run this plug and i think it has everything needed to put fish in my boat. i dont think it would be a trade off at all to take of a wiley or whatever and put this baby on instead. now i guess i have to name it, any ideas? i already have a plug i called "the colton crusher" named after my little guy and it is a tuff shad twistertail combo that i haven't posted as its my project design. shhhhh on that one. name it guys! p.s. my father is moving back to retire in hemlock, so soon i will have my musky fishing partner back after 8 years of living in NYC. my ole man is as good of wood worker/carver as there is. i asked him if he would be interested in doing bodies for me and then i would finish them. he agreed and said this winter he would have no problem kicking out 50 or so... gets me thinking about trying to get something going.

sometimes use line counters, sometimes count level wind passes. figure out how much line it takes for the level wind to go back and forth and use that as a guide.

would you be interested in one if i made more? not sure how much wood working i am gonna do this summer. maybe come winter time?

there aren't any muskies in waneta, i heard they all moved to lamoka.

all put together and ready to go to black creek on the way to work to be tuned. there is a big screw lock that keeps the grub on so i can make on the water replacements w/ out superglue. i am happy i got this done for this weekend and imagine if i do get a fish on this or any other i have made, i will be a happy camper! just one, thats all i need. no time for any others its off to other things. click on the pics to get a better image. take care and you will see me trolling all around you on saturday so say hello! good luck guys and let all your fish be 39.999999 inches! oh by the way heres the screw lock i put in the rear end... it should hold up since its made of thick stainless .060 wire that was a pain in the @ss to bend in that shape and epoxied deep into the bait. heavy duty for sure! just an idea but i think it will hold up nicely. if my phantom tails hold up okay w/ just superglue and a metal pin, these will do alot better. gotta be 10x better than just gluing it to the body like a stalker or squirrley burt.

you should go to chaut and meet all of us!

i could tie up a bucktail if you want? tell me what color and i will do my best. trying to hold onto my baits for right now.