Fun day on Silver! I hit this lake three times in early spring - the first two when there was still ice on the water - with absolutely no luck at all. The warm weather has definitely made things more interesting. Sunny day, 58 degrees when we got on the water at 6AM, warming up into the high 60's when we left at about 11:45. Started off with no wind at all but it picked up a little bit as the morning wore on. Didn't get water temp.

Truth be told, we started out strictly trying for the muskies - right along the east shore and then south toward Ruby's. As we made our way west along the south shore (straight across from the boat launch, we started seeing lots of small fish following our lures. I switched rods and went with a small, brown rubber jig and immediately started getting bites. Withing a few casts, I landed our first fish - a little bite-sized perch (see 1st pic). Along that shoreline, just before you get to the first rocky point, we got into a mess of crappie. A few really nice ones - 9-10 inches but most were more like 7-8 inches (see 2nd pic). All of these crappie were caught in water that was between 5-15 ft.

Despite getting more than 20 fish in the boat, the highlight of the day came as we sat just of that rocky point, casting toward the shoreline. My brother got another one on and as he reeled it in, realized it was pulling on his line a lot harder than a crappie or perch, I looked down in the water and saw my first muskie. It seemed completely impossible that he could have such a big fish (easy 3-footer) on the little jigs we were using. He had it right near the boat and as I got our net, the fish went under the boat. Just as it started out from under the boat, it spit the hook - or so we thought. As he reeled the line in, we discovered that he had actually hooked a small, 6-inch perch, which the muskie obviously took for himself. We were so close to netting that thing but man, that was an awesome site!

Around 10, we moved west down to the first little island (it's not really an island - more like a little penninsula) on the south shore. We fished the outside shore and got one pretty nice perch on the jig and I actually caught a little pumpkinseed on a crawdad fatrap (i was hoping to get into some bass here). We moved into the inside of the little cove there and saw a bunch more perch, who were very non-committal - nibbling the heck out of our jigs but we only landed a couple. Saw our second muskie here, a smaller one that followed my jig up close to the boat before turning away.

Left this spot at 11:30 and headed back for the launch. All-in-all, it was a fun day. We didn't get a muskie and still have no sign of any bass, but the crappie were fun to catch. I could take or leave the perch.

All fish were released to be caught another day.

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