Idaho is my adopted home. After 21 years in the Gem State, I feel blessed to live among so many cool people—and places to fish! But we never forget our formative years, and mine took place in Michigan.
I don’t make it back to The Mitten often, but every time I do, it feels like I never left. It’s funny how little things conjure a sense of belonging. Familiar street names. The giant tire off Interstate 94. Even the Big Boy restaurant mascot that terrified me as a child. From the moment I stepped off the plane and breathed the Great Lakes air, it felt like home.
Most of our Michigan trip was filled with the familiar. We watched the Red Wings win and the Lions lose. We visited with aunts, uncles and grandparents. But I dedicated Black Friday morning to something new—fishing for trophy muskie on legendary Lake St. Clair.
Lake St. Clair is a Mecca for muskie anglers. Covering 430 square miles, it is home to multiple species of muskie, all of which have naturally sustaining populations. If you want to catch a 50-incher, there might not be a better destination on Earth.
Despite its notoriety, I had never been to Lake St. Clair. Growing up, we had neither a boat nor the gear to tangle with these razor-toothed giants. The muskie gear I have now doesn’t fit in a carry-on, so I linked up with lifelong muskie hunter Alec Pascua for my maiden St. Clair voyage.
It was 27 degrees with a mighty Great Lakes wind gusting when I met Alec at the dock. As we loaded up, he said the nasty weather meant bites might be few and far between—but that this was the best time of year to catch a trophy.
We had scarcely left the pier when huge clouds of baitfish appeared on the fish finder.
“Gizzard shad,” Alec nodded as a seagull flew overhead with one in its mouth. “That’s a good sign.”
We fished with giant crankbaits, using planer boards connected to a nifty, clothesline-type device that kept the lines separate. If a fish struck, the line would come unclipped and avoid the rest of the spread.
We began our troll 50 yards from shore—necessary to avoid the whitecaps, or as Alec’s partner Greg called them, “the sheep farm.” The water was only 10 feet deep, but we marked plenty of bait and several muskies on the electronics. Hopefully, one of them would make a run at our lures.
Alec and I warmed our hands near a heater while swapping stories—his childhood as the son of a muskie guide and my limited experience hunting elusive tiger muskies in the Idaho mountains. The topic had shifted to St. Clair’s giant smallmouth bass when…
“Buzzzzzzzzzzzzz!”
We both heard the bite before we saw it, and sprang into action. When I grabbed the rod, line was peeling off the reel with force I’ve only seen from sturgeon and saltwater gamefish. This was the fish we came for!
After taking 75 yards of line, the fish surfaced. I noticed two things immediately—its red-orange fins were really far apart, and our 13-inch lure was sticking straight up in the air. Alec noticed, too.
“It’s a big fish!” Alec shouted. “And I don’t think it’s hooked very well.”
The pressure was on. I had to gain more than 100 yards of line without giving the muskie an inch of slack. I danced the St. Clair Shuffle—slowly walking backwards to pull the muskie toward the boat and then reeling while walking toward the fish to eliminate slack. My forearm burned as I battled the giant for more than 10 minutes, holding my breath each time it surface-thrashed with the lure pointed precariously skyward. But the hooks held, and when Greg scooped the muskie in an oversized net, victory cries echoed across St. Clair.
After letting the fish recover in a specially-designed livewell, it was time to handle my first Great Lakes spotted muskie. The tape read 48 inches, and after a long growing season, it weighed 30 pounds. What a monster!
I returned the muskie to the frigid water and watched her swim off with a sweep of her massive red tail. As I stood on the boat deck, hands frozen and wind threatening to remove my Detroit ballcap, one thought pushed its way to the front of my mind:
It felt good to be home. Tight lines!