I have just returned home from a deployment to the Middle East and couldn’t be more elated to be back doing what I love most, chasing muskies around my home waters of Minnesota. With that said I’ve come home to some crazy high water temperatures and had to stay off the water for the safety of the muskies that I love so much. So I thought I would use some of this down time to share a few simple additions I’ve made to my boat to make the ever so elusive musky a little easier to pattern.
It is surly no secret that this time of year timing is everything when it comes to putting a fresh water monster in the net. I am personally a huge believer in small feeding windows this time of year breeding huge success on the water. I love using all the great resources out on the web to narrow down what I think will be peek feeding windows prior to going fishing. Then with that information in hand hitting the water with a run and gun approach to locate fish and then returning to them with a much slower and meticulous approach at what I have decided to be the peak times of that particular day to get them in the net. Actually narrowing down those feeding windows is a whole different topic with many variables involved and there are people that much more versed than I on that topic, so I don’t want to beat that drum, but once you have your windows here are a few tricks I use to apply that knowledge on the water efficiently.
The first thing that I have done is make a “feeding window” placard for my boat. This is simply no more than a laminated print out of what I feel is important information that should be readably available. I laminated it so that I can use a grease pencil to write in and change daily my “feeding windows.” The grease pencil makes it easy to change this information daily. I mounted it in the boat using Velcro strips so that I can easily remove it and bring it back to the house with me to update it every day. I just believe that this is a much more effective way to display and use the data and research that we work so hard to obtain.
The second thing that I did is mount a small alarm clock in the boat in the same fashioning using Velcro. This serves a few purposes for me. The first is just the convenience of knowing the current time and air temperature for latter recording the information in my daily log. On a side note before I get hammered by the smart phone guys, I would much rather have this small cheap clock get wet and knocked around then my $500 smart phone. Then next thing I use it for is the alarm. I set the alarm to go off 15 to 20 minutes before my peak feeding windows. It sounds simply and kind of silly but as musky fisherman we tend to get pretty intense on the lake and many times this alarm has been a great reminder that if I am not where I have seen fish that day that I need to get there quick.
In my mind being a great fisherman/women is all about being as efficient and effective on the water as possible. In my experience these few little additions to the boat have paid big dividends at the end of the day. Hope someone may have found this information useful and thank you to all the IDO members that helped keep me sane overseas by always making me feel like I was still in touch with what I love the most.
