ON THE ST. LOUIS RIVER - We have been trolling just 15 minutes when something very angry tries to rip one of Bob Busche's rods off the boat.
The rod, nearly pool-cue thick, bends like a reed in the wind. Just 20 feet behind the boat, a 42-inch muskie is thrashing as if it had a huge spinnerbait impaled in its bony jaw. Which it does.
Busche, 57, doesn't touch the rod. Not yet. First, we clear the other two lines we're trolling on this June afternoon. Then Busche wrestles the manic rod free of its rod holder and gets down to business.
The man knows what he's doing. He's been muskie fishing for 20 years, though he says he began to catch them on the St. Louis River about five or six years ago.
Today, we're in the Spirit Lake bulge on the river, but Busche has fished all up and down the river. He has 500 muskie-fishing waypoints punched into his GPS, 95 percent of them on the St. Louis River.
Busche, who lives in Rice Lake Township, has caught plenty of 40-inch or larger fish on the river and one over 50 inches -- a 51-incher just last year. Last year, he won the Lake Superior chapter of Muskies Inc. title for most muskies. I ask him how many he caught last summer.
"Quite a few," he says. "Let's just say it's over 50."
He has had a 14-muskie day on the river, and a 15-muskie day on Amnicon Lake in Douglas County.
"But those are exceptional days," he says.
Busche puts in his time to find his muskies. He keeps detailed fishing records in his muskie journal, a spiral-bound notebook that travels in a zip-top plastic bag on every outing.
Last summer, Busche logged more than 400 hours fishing muskies, about average, he says. He put 1,400 miles on his boat last summer. He fishes two to three times a week and takes a week of vacation in August, September and October just to fish.
His wife, Ann, understands his addiction, he says.
"She has horses," Busche says.
The muskie at the end of Busche's 80-pound-test line is screaming for cover now, but she won't find it. Busche turns the big fish and manages to crank it nearer the boat. But he knows it isn't ready for the net.
"If you bring 'em in green, they really go ballistic on you," he says.
Instead, he pulls the log of a fish alongside the boat, then proceeds to walk all the way around the boat towing the fish like a man walking a reluctant dog. The second time around, Busche has his ample net waiting for the muskie, who swims right into it.
Breathing rapidly, Busche asks for his leather gloves, removes the Rad Dog spinner from the muskie's lip and hefts the big mama for a quick photo.
Any muskie over 40 inches is something to behold. This one is no different. Its dark green back appears to be scarred and scratched in several places. Everything about the fish -- its jaws, its tail, its elongated body -- seems disproportionately large.
He measures it at exactly 42 inches and quickly slips it back into the water. Its dark, menacing form vanishes into the stained current.
Busche used to troll Lake Superior for trout and salmon. He's caught plenty of other fish. But he was looking for something more.
"After you catch a lot of fish, you need more stimulation," he says.
And muskies deliver.
He trolls for them about 90 percent of the time, often fishing alone. On the river, he can run two rods, and with another angler along, he'll run three. This time of year, he fishes spinners only 20 feet behind the boat, often in shallow water. He runs the lures at 2 to 6 miles per hour, the lure action dictating the trolling speed.
We were trolling in just 2 feet of water when the 42-incher hit. The spinners often snag weeds, and Busche is constantly pulling one in, stripping weeds and tossing it back out.
Though Busche has become successful at fishing muskies on the river, that wasn't always so.
"We only caught three muskies the first three years we fished down here," he says. "We didn't know what we were doing."
He has caught muskies up to 49 and 49 inches in the past few years, but 50s seem to be rare on the river, he says.
"It takes a good number of years to get there, and there's attrition," says Dennis Pratt, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources fish manager in Superior.
Busche thinks he knows where the big ones are.
"I think those big fish are going out to Lake Superior," he says. "They come in to feed in the river. That's my goal -- to get one out of Lake Superior."
We pick up several northern pike during the course of the afternoon. Nothing over about 5 pounds. Busche often catches pike while muskie trolling. He also has caught walleyes up to 28 inches, smallmouth bass up to 23 inches and largemouth up to 18 inches while trolling muskie baits.
As the sun drops toward the horizon, Busche moves into a quiet bay and we begin casting banana-size lures that gurgle and belch and bubble as we retrieve them.
"This river, the best time is that last hour," Busche says.
Busche is throwing an MS Slammer, a jointed topwater plug that looks like a cross between a Rapala and a rolling pin. Suddenly, the water erupts around the Slammer, and Busche leans back on the rod.
The muskie is on top, coiling and thrashing and shaking. It is almost frightening, the power in that animal. It seems more crocodile than fish, yanking the tip of Busche's rod underwater more than once.
Immediately, we can see it is more fish than the 42-incher Busche released earlier. It is not just long. It's as thick as a man's thigh.
"Big fish," Busche hisses, breathing hard now.
When the fish is ready, Busche walks the muskie around the boat once, swimming him directly into the maw of the net.
"It's ours!" he yells. "Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful."
It is his largest of the summer. He leaves the fish suspended in the water within the net as he works the Slammer free. Then the fish goes on the measuring stick -- exactly 46 inches. A quick lift for the camera -- whoa, what a gorgeous critter -- and it's swimming again.
Busche sits at the stern of his Lund, letting the adrenaline drain away, limp after his intense interaction with the muskie.
Then he pulls out his journal and jots a quick entry. The light is low and coppery. The bay is calm. Busche is a happy man.
"The muskie gods were good to us today," he says.
To read the article, please click <HERE>
Now that's a great article about a class act on and off the water, Bob Busche of Duluth.
Very good fishing.