Turtle Flambeau Flowage Mercer Wisconsin musky walleye fishing with Jerry 'Jerkbait' Hatigan guide service Iron and Vilas County Wisconsin in Flambeau Flowage Sports

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MERCER GUIDE NEEDS RECIPE FOR TURTLE SOUP!
by Jerry (Jerkbait) Hartigan
   The other day, by some strange mix up, I had a few hours off. What does a fishing guide do on his time off, he goes fishing. On this particular day my brother Kevin said he would be my guide and we would go musky fishing. It is a rare day when I get to sit in the front of the boat and be guided by someone else.
   Well I immediately took full advantage of the situation by telling my older brother, who pretty much taught me how to fish, everything he was doing wrong and how we should set up for our first drift. Luckily he didn't pay any attention to me and within the first 10 minutes we had a 35 inch musky in the boat. With catching a fish so quick we both were cranked up thinking that maybe today was going to be one of those great days when everything goes right. We continued on down the shoreline with Kevin casting a Mudpuppy while I was casting a Eddie bait. As we often do, we had a decent sized sucker trailing behind the boat with my brother in charge of that pole.
We hadn't gone more than 30 yards when the sucker pole had some action and a few feet of line peeled out. When we checked the sucker nothing was on, but the quick strike musky bobber had popped off the line on the hit. My brother reeled in the sucker to check it and then set it back in the water off the back of the boat with about three feet of line out and the line release on. As we were regrouping I happened to look past the back of the boat and saw a huge swirl near the sucker. I yelled to Kevin to grab the pole because a musky had just grabbed the sucker. With the line already going out he turned to see a huge shadow descending into the dark water.
   Now my brother has musky fished all his life and has a couple of fish over 50 inches under his belt already. He also has a tendency to get a tad overly excited when a big fish hits. When he saw the width of the shadow taking the sucker down he immediately yelled its over 50 lbs and fell apart. He began a series of contortions in the back of the boat with a number of small pauses between them. At one point he stopped while facing the front of the boat with the pole over his shoulder and the line going out the back of the boat. He looked for a second he was going to try to set the hook by trying to push his arms forward with the line going out backwards over his head. I was being as helpful as I could by yelling random inaudible instructions as fast as I could.
   After a furious 10 seconds of action he finally was able to get a feeble hook set and the battle was on. The line began to move through the water in a slow powerful walk. It was heading toward deeper water but at a very slow pace. We began to get the feeling that this was not a normal fish. As we stared into the water we saw a line of large bubbles coming up from the direction of our 50 lb fish. We began to think something was up. As he started to gain line we got a glimpse of the sucker coming in with a huge shadow behind it.
   As it broke the surface of the water a head the size of a football emerged and began hissing and making all kinds of strange noises. Our fifty lb musky had turned out to be one of the largest snapping turtles I have ever seen. Initially we were both disappointed that our huge fish had turned into a dumb turtle, but we quickly began laughing and snapping pictures of the beast. It had the big sucker halfway down its throat, tail first and luckily was not hooked. I was able to gently unhook the quick strike rig from the sucker without losing any body parts to the turtle and we watched it swim away with our sucker still in its mouth. I guess the moral of the story is that when you’re musky fishing, you just never know what’s going to happen next.