Moby Musky Dick

so, its been a while since i went kayaking. the last time i went was monday morning. it was the day after the 4th of july. the lake was very busy. mostly with fishing boats. but, other than all the extra traffic it was a very uneventful trip. today on the other hand was full of fun.

we haven't had a lot of rain lately, and you can definitely tell by all the algae and crud growing in the corners of the lake. with no new water coming in to the lake all of the still areas are really beginning to stagnate. all the little nooks and crannies that i slipped into a few weeks ago are so grown over and nasty looking that i have begun to keep my distance. it just looks icky (yes, i'm a grown man and i said "icky"). hopefully we can get enough rain to get the water in the lake moving a little and get some of this algae out of there.

over night we were scheduled to get some rain. that's great because we need the it, but it was also bad because this was the first morning that i had a chance to go kayaking and i really didn't want to go in the rain. so, when i got up this morning to a dry ground with stormy skies i was pleasantly surprised. i quickly loaded up and headed for the lake to try and beat the rain. it sprinkled a little while i was out on the lake and then stopped and didn't start again until i made it back to the boat launch. that's when it really started to come down. i stayed dry out on the lake, but got soaked loading the kayak. figures...

but by far, the best part of today's trip was that i saw a fish. normally this isn't a big deal. i see fish all the time. it's actually pretty neat to sneak up on a school of fish that is near the top of the water and watch the splashes as the scatter. but this was different. i was about 100 yards from shore and saw a big splash. bigger than i usually see. so that was cool. i paddle a few more minutes and saw it again a little further away. this time it splashed along on the top of the water for about 30 seconds and about 10-12 feet. so i paddle over to see if i could get a closer look. over the next 10 minutes i followed this thing around as it popped up to the surface and splashed around. the closest i was able to get was about 2 feet away. it was big. a lot bigger than i thought when i first saw it. my best guess at the size was that it was a couple of feet long and the body was about as wide as my thigh. after about 10 minutes i stopped seeing it and decided i had better get going anyway. when i got to work i looked up the species of fish that live in edinboro lake and decided that what i had seen must have been a muskellunge (or musky). apparently they can grow to be over 4 feet long. a 20-35 pound musky is not unusual, and the PA state record holding musky was 54 lb. 3 oz. that's a lot of fish.

what a great day to kayak.