Golden Fur, Feathers, and the Musky Mile

“It’s one of those moments where all of a sudden, reality in the entire boat shifts.” — HWO Guide, Gavin Griffin

Hours into the float already, we had chucked green and yellow, chartreuse and pink, black and purple––some with big reflective eyes and others with barred feathers that hypnotizingly slip and slide behind the body of the fly––but nothing was working. We weren’t moving fish like I thought we would have, considering the cold mornings we were getting with fall on the horizon.

Brett, my musky co-pilot on the stretch and I were going through my flies while we anchored the inflatable raft among the toothy, log-infested section we’d both come to love and hate over the last year. A few nights before, I’d spent evening hours in my living room preparing a new bucket of musky flies on the vice and was eager to give each one of them their honored swim test.

With the fresh bucket of flies between my legs, started running the often comically simple process of choosing a fly based on three parameters: Does it look good in the water, is the hook sharp, and is it big enough?

“This looks juicy, dude,” I’d shrug to Brett, continually spinning it around in my fingers, stroking it into that perfect fish profile, and testing the sharpness of the hook by sliding the pin-like point into the upper layers of my thumb’s skin.

For every confident statement I’d ever made about my fly while it’s in the jaws of my vice, I’d quickly double-cross on the water when every single doubt starts reeling in my head about the features of the fly.

“I don’t know, this one looks like shit when I look at it,” I’d admit aloud to myself when just hours before, I was showcasing them at the boat launch as if they came from golden fur and feathers. “I don’t think this one will sink… the color scheme is off… this just doesn’t look like the one we want.”

I had finally said to Brett, “If there’s one thing I know about these musky, my little natural fly has moved my last four fish in these sections.”

Those fish were in March. It was late September; more than five months had passed since anyone in our group had last thrown at these fish. In most cases, there’s a change in fly selection seasonally, but in this case, I just though this spring-tied fly would do the work.

I confidently grabbed a smaller 8-inch tan fly reproduced from an earlier successful pattern, eventually stolen by my brother––he claims no such thing––while fishing northern musky in Pennsylvania together.

The fly I’d chosen is considered small in musky fly tying circles and maybe even poorly tied since it had no bulkhead, an essential feature in most patterns, which help displace water in front of the fly’s head. Displacement is what a musky can feel on their centerline, the sensory system going from head to tail, that fish use to sense when prey is close enough for them to pursue. It’s the exact process used by great whites and many other aquatic predators.

The fly had natural tan bucktail hair sweetened by yellow, orange, and crystal magnum flash that would pulsate as the fly would stroke forward, adding some attention-seeking qualities to the pattern. The whispy feathers that helped create the tail were ripped off and reused from a trout streamer I had lost touch with among the unorganized chaos of my workbench. It was everything I remembered the old fly being, but inherently less attractive in retrospect to the massive 14-inch flies used by other anglers.

The average musky fly can entertain upwards of 12 inches, getting as long as 18 inches in length. The general rule of thumb is to build bulk without adding weight. The single hooks used in flies are large, allowing your thumb to slide into the hook gap without nicking your skin on the barb.

Within my year of experience, I’d been continually playing the probability game. I knew where they lived and what they’d eat, so I’d have to run into a fish willing to commit eventually.

Up to this point, I’d crossed three separate state lines fishing well-known musky water. I’d been on the boat with guys who knew those waters and had dozens of musky in their nets. They’d take me to their secret spots, the same places that gave them the opportunities to religiously understand musky habits as sharply as any good bird dog knowing where a freshly shot dove landed in a cornfield.

I’d spent thousands of dollars on sizeable fishing gear, bucktails, hooks, giant nets I can’t use for anything other than musky they’re so big; the license, gas, beer, food, snacks, and lodging added more. I had fish on my hook for split seconds. They’ve followed my flies for 30 feet. I even managed to go tight on one, fight the beast to the boat, only to have it swim right through the bottom of my net like his teeth were a hot knife in butter.

After ten months, I was so close but so far away.

The musky is incredibly elusive but periodically social with a well-thrown, well-stripped fly. Musky bring the duck-shaped bill of a nose right to the backside of a fly, stalking close enough to jolt their tail forward one time and make the kill. They can ambush from the depths, shooting flies into the air like a great white ripping through the surface for a seal. I’ve seen musky explosions three feet from the side of the raft — their unhinged aggression obviously fearless of our presence.

The fish is dangerously predatory but sensitive and picky. They’re a freshwater fish that’s known to be brutally powerful, yet shockingly lazy. They’ll suspend themselves all day against the banks, or in the backs of eddies and inside the tangle of log jams looking for redhorse suckers, bass, trout, and occasionally unthinkables, like baby ducks and surfaced frogs to eat.

Musky are even known to commit cannibalism on juveniles. Albeit for as ruthless as they are, there have been times I’ve seen them gently breach the surface like a tarpon gulping for air, the crest of their mossy green and pale yellow backs glistening in the sun.

I’d locked into musky being predictable 1% of the time, 100% of the time.

BREVARD, N.C., Sept 22, 2020 — Pictured is a musky in the net of angler and WNC guide, Gavin Griffin.

Brett took to the front of the boat with the new natural fly clipped onto our 80-pound fluoro leader until he wore what feel little feeble, weak, stick-like arms out on casting. It’s plenty easy to get gassed by the end of the day.

“Gavin, you’re up,” he murmured, dropping the rod in the well of the boat, now visibly depleted.

I went out there on that day for a reason. The weather allowed me to see my breath; water temperatures were cooling, meaning happy fish ready to turn on the feed bag. I’m not saying I saw into my future that day, but I launched from that ramp feeling and proclaiming that session was going to produce. I’d even gone as far as to give a big speech in the shuttle ride over about how serious we would take this season, not letting any opportunities go to waste.

It was dial-in on these fish or have died trying.

By this point, we’d been on the water six hours with expectations of seeing and moving a fish on track with very low. Fatigue was setting in for us both since we were getting back into musky shape from taking the summer off, allowing the fish to survive summer stresses beyond angling. It doesn’t matter how motivated you are; sometimes, you just hit the wall.

There’s never really a break on the drift boat with two anglers fishing musky. Someone is always rowing and the other chucks line, so fatigue can occur across both, especially when there aren’t snacks in the boat.

For the record, on my boat, snacks, and beers fuel a musky angler. At times, they’ll invigorate even the lousiest of slumps, in any angler.

Wherever anything lacks in a day fishing musky, camaraderie with the fellow fisherman compensates. There’s a lot of it, too: from deep conversations happening about the fish, shuffled into smack-talking, fun-poking, and plenty of one-liners about someone’s lack of ability to make a good cast against the bank. Favorably, the sport’s real struggle is left-for-dead in lieu of the deeper relationships built on the water.

That’s the thing about camaraderie: it finds its way in any boat. Denial after denial over trip after trip with nothing but a glimpse from these fish will wear and tear on any angler’s psyche. It takes good boat mates to make it through a day, and sometimes that likened bond created through the love of fishing requires nothing more than showing up at the put-in each morning.

At the day’s end, our musky mentor, Alan, always said, “Musky fishing ain’t for pussies.” I took that to heart.

Halfway into my bow time, we’d approached a section where coincidentally, our mentor solo landed a fish of a lifetime drifting the river with his drug chain anchor years ago. If the record is right, that was the first day Brett ever met Alan. He had walked down the banks to find Alan holding a 50-inch giant female, what most consider a game-ending catch.

It’s an easily identifiable stretch for me because it’s one of the few double-dog legs on the river. A boat bounces from the right bank to the left bank and back to the right bank as the system spits out the boat behind the log jam. You can fish almost the entire section from top to bottom; it’s so deep on the bends. It’s fishy there, very fishy.

Casting at the bank and stripping in my fly, I saw a musky coming in trailing just inches behind it.

“She’s here, she’s here, Brett!” He later told me I repeated that line again and again, louder as she got closer. I feel as though I blackout in those moments from the adrenaline rush.

Again, but louder, “SHE’S HERE, BRETT! SHE’S HERE!”

It’s one of those moments where all of a sudden, reality in the entire boat shifts. If you’re drunk, now you’re sober. If you were eating a snack, it’s likely now on the floor of the boat. Everyone is up, alert, and watching the fish behind the fly.

Every great angler eventually graduates from being a responsive angler, merely responding, usually improperly, to the chaos unfolding in front of them. Anglers evolve into a predictive angler shaped by experiences and time on the water, able to read the scene, prepared to make the next move before it happens.

I’m still a responder with musky because I have time on the water but not time with musky on my line. That’s why anglers lose fish: they’re hesitant with the fish because it’s the one few to make it on the line. They’ll take their time, treat the fish like it’s a precious metal, decreasing the likelihood of landing the fish at that moment. The longer the fish is on the line, the less chance you have because sometimes, if you treat a fish like gold, you’ll get robbed.

The fish is nearing the boat as I kept my strip cadence in rhythm, preventing the fish from dropping off the fly and me left feeling like a total loser idiot that can’t catch a musky that’s right in front of me. I approached the audible click of my fly line connection caused by it sliding through my rod’s first eyelet. It’s the sound all musky on the fly anglers listen for since it’s the sign the retrieval is at the leader, which is enough line in to begin the second phase of the show.

This fish is sliding into the infamous figure-8, requiring me to transition the fish from swimming gracefully behind my fly and entering into basically, how I see it, a death race between my fly and the musky’s teeth. Around and around the fly goes until the musky bites down or fades back into the depth.

They’ll stay in a figure-8 pattern for seconds to from what I’ve heard, up to 10 minutes. It’s the sport’s iconic move and hailed as the top predatory trigger for musky. When done wrong, the gig is up right there and then, put it on the board as a lost opportunity.

I’d screwed this scenario up in the past, missing fish, but I’d visualized its success thousands of times more. I spend many of my days coming up with scenes that could play out for either myself or a client. It’s no different when I’m musky fishing; the start of every cast couples with my imagination the moment the fly enters the water.

“She’s in the figure-8, Brett, she’s in the figure-8!” I ran my rod below me with sweeping turns, making sure I’d be giving the fish plenty of room to turn around on the sides.

For once, I was doing everything right. The fish is staying with the fly. If someone had taken a picture of my face at that moment, I assume I looked like a crazed, maddened hunchback stirring a giant cauldron.

She’s already tried to strike the fly three times. At one point, disappearing on the side of the boat for a few seconds while my fly rod frantically swirled to keep her engaged.

She came back into the figure-8 with murder in her eyes, and with one more turn of my rod, she opened her mouth and struck the fly. My rod ripped across the water as I strip-set like an 18-wheeler going full bore down I-80, and the line went heavy.

She was the first musky I had put into the net in the year I had started my hunt. For what it’s now worth, I know what happened that day was a mix between preparation, pursuit, and pure dumb luck. Even still, it sure felt good to make sure that all that work was not for nothing on the famous “Musky Mile.”