A Day to Remember

By Erik Osberg

October 10th is now a day to remember for me and mine. I didn’t realize this was going to be a special date, but moving forward, I’m going to do everything I can to be on the water on that date. Five years ago, my then 6 year old son made a “fish list”. It was a list of ten species of fish he wanted to catch in 2015. By fall, we had crossed every fish off the list except muskie.

I can still remember the moment, it was a gorgeous fall evening on West Battle Lake. The sun was just hitting the trees and I was starting to worry about what we were gonna do if we didn’t catch a muskie before the ice came. Should we go somewhere else? Should I hire a muskie guide to complete the list? And then it happened. I was casting a Double Cowgirl bucktail and all of a sudden there was something very heavy on the end of the line. I gave my son the rod and he started reeling it in. He needed a little help, but did most of the work himself. Somehow we got the brute into the net and into the boat. We hooped & hollered, high fived and admired this awesome creature. Our mission was complete.

Fast forward to last weekend. My son, now 11 years old, and myself were on a different lake in Otter Tail County with Randin Olson of Lock Jaw Guide Service. Willie and I had caught a few muskies over the years since that first encounter, but we had lots of trips where we didn’t catch or see any muskellunge. It was another gorgeous fall day. The kind where the winds were low and the sun was warm. A t-shirt kinda day. We were running suckers under bobbers and magic happened again.

Within a couple of hours, we landed a very nice 43 inch muskie. My son was able to do everything himself. He set the hook, reeled in the beast and even hoisted it out of the net. A couple hours later, he hooked into an even bigger fish. This one put up quite a fight, and I was pretty sure it was going to get off. Fortunately, Willie had gotten a good enough hookset that we were able to land this muskie as well. It was a girthy 47 1/4 inch fish, a new personal best.

Muskie fishing isn’t for everyone. It requires a lot of effort and there are lots of fish-less trips. But sometimes the stars and moon align and a lifetime of memories are created in just a few hours.