About time

First off I am not a die hard muskie guy[yet].
In the mid 90’s I hooked a couple mid 30″ muskies while fishing for walleyes,so I got a bigger stick and a couple of lures and added another fish to my multispecies list to try and find time to pursue.In 1999 I had a 30″ hit boatside thats been my only muskie while fishing for them,yes I had a couple more accidental ones the last one in 2005 while fishing bass[a 27″ fish{the first muskie ever in Redlab’s boat}].Since then 2 muskie’s were put in my boat,a 42″by my daughter and a 45″ by a co-worker[his first time out ever an hour into fishing{he is hooked bad}].
Finally Saturday morning I had a fish hit about 25′ from the boat and just swim right to the boat,when it turned the hook just fell from it[don’t know for sure what happened,probally didn’t drive the hook in her hard enough]. Came back through that spot 20 minutes later and had an identical fish[43″-44″] follow and eat on the turn of the eight,while digging for the camera to take an in the water photo[I, of course was alone,] the fish came unbottuned.I am not too unhappy about that, as I usally try to release most of my fish without them ever leaving the water.

That was a 37″ fish not 27″

You should get yourself a big Beckman Net

No need to even pull them in the boat

You got the fish to the boat; that’s good enough. Congrat’s on the catch. I’ve also recently been targeting Muskies with almost no previous experience. I tried on Saturday too. I decided to spend half the time trolling, and half casting. I put a 10 inch jointed believer on a planer board on the port side, an 9 inch Jake on the starboard planer, and a 10 inch Jake in the prop wash. As I was trolling a steep drop (from 30 feet to about 3 ft), I noticed a huge arc 16 feet down over 29 fow. I thought that might be a ski, so I turned to look at the boards and a fish blew up on that 10 inch jointed believer that was running just sub-surface behind the board. Somehow though, it missed the hooks as the rod never moved. THAT WAS STILL AWESOME!!!! The rest of the night was very quiet, but it got the blood pumping enough to keep at it. My time will come eventually. The tricky part is not having a clue how or where to fish due to no experience. It’s one thing to have some trial and error time to figure out walleye’s, bass, etc. But when you have a fish that is so darn elusive, you could be doing the right thing for quite some time, not get a hit, and give up on the technique.

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It’s one thing to have some trial and error time to figure out walleye’s, bass, etc. But when you have a fish that is so darn elusive, you could be doing the right thing for quite some time, not get a hit, and give up on the technique.

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So true

I will say one of the reasons that muskies are so fun, yet so tough to catch is the population density With bass, their might be 20 fish per acher, but in that same lake their might only be 2 fish( muskies) per acher in a typical muskie lake

If they were as densly populated as bass, then everybody would be fishing for them

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their might only be 2 fish( muskies) per acher in a typical muskie lake

If they were as densly populated as bass, then everybody would be fishing for them

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on the other hand, whey you’re the biggest, baddest dude in that particular ‘acre’ you get to set up on the best spot…which should provide some small measure of predictability…assuming it’s legal to use ‘predictable’ and ‘muskie’ in the same sentence

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their might only be 2 fish( muskies) per acher in a typical muskie lake

If they were as densly populated as bass, then everybody would be fishing for them

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on the other hand, whey you’re the biggest, baddest dude in that particular ‘acre’ you get to set up on the best spot…which should provide some small measure of predictability…assuming it’s legal to use ‘predictable’ and ‘muskie’ in the same sentence

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My time will come eventually. The tricky part is not having a clue how or where to fish due to no experience. It’s one thing to have some trial and error time to figure out walleye’s, bass, etc. But when you have a fish that is so darn elusive, you could be doing the right thing for quite some time, not get a hit, and give up on the technique.

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From a trolling perspective, I think you did pretty good job of covering the water column and to lend a small bit of advice start out fishing for “edge” related fish. Once you have covered these spots, you will gain a bit of confidence as to where you are seeing arches and stay with them.

If you decide you want to fish the suspended fish, its very similar, but now you are setting up off structure or going from one to another.

Once you have trolled the edge enough, you will find places that might make better candidates for casting, put the trolling motor down and start beatin’ those areas to death!!!

In the final analysis, if you feel comfortable fishing for ‘eyes, then just apply the edge theory with the right baits and you will get ’em!!! Good luck!!!

Mark

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You should get yourself a big Beckman Net

No need to even pull them in the boat

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With a 14′ boat a Beckman Muskie Net in the boat it would mean I would always have to fish alone.