Spring Muskies?

So i have been fishing for muskies for a couple years now and yet to catch any. I am really looking forward to June opener and would love any and all tips for successful muskies hunts early in the season.

I like to fish small baits in the spring, like Musky Candy, or small single Mepps. Another bait that can be really hot is Rattle Traps. One last bait I will throw out here is tubes.

Keep in mind the fish are post spawn and are quite negative until water temps approach the upper 60’s and low 70’s. Often in the spring we see more fish sunning themselves in the shallows than acutally chasing baits. I don’t know where you live but here in the cities and smaller lakes up north we find a lot of fish keying on schools of crappies that have left the shallows to the weed flats and edges.

Gliders too, will put fish in the boat. I love the 6″ Phantoms for that time of the year. Nice methodical swims back and forth and a few twitches here and there to change it up.

Like Dan said, you want things kinda slow……..Not the time of year to be burning bucktails.

Another option not to forget is twitching big cranks. 8″ shallow cranks twitched and pulled can also put fish in the boat……especially as a throw-back lure if you have a fish that is a follower….

One other thing that I spend a LOT of time doing in the spring is just standing on the deck of the boat and running the trolling motor slow just looking for fish in the shallows. As Dan mentioned, the fish are going to be up shallow, sometimes as shallow as 2 feet of water just warming themselves up, when you come across a fish mark it on your GPS or make a mental note as to where the fish was,using shoreline structure to mark it, often times when you find a fish, you will find more, they seem to bunch up at this time. Chances of catching these fish that I am talking about are slim to none, but you can come back and hit these spots when the water warms up and the fish will be more active. You will need a good pair of sun glasses and try to make as little movement as possible so you don’t spook the fish. This has put a good number of fish in the boat for us over the last few year, with a couple of very nice ones too. It is kicks to see fish in the high 40″s sitting in 2 feet of water. I have found that these fish don’t seem to go very far from where you find them early in the spring, go back and work them and I am sure you will put a few in the boat. Good luck, and happy hunting.

If you see some goof ball standing in the front of a red Ranger 619 not fishing, just going down the shoreline early in the year….That’s me

Here is a nice 43″ that we saw a number of times early in the spring in 2-3 feet of water, we came back and worked that fish when the water tepms were up in the low 60″s and we got her to go. It is awesome knowing that this fish was there and we had seen here on a munber of trips out and we finally locked up with her. Hunt them down and come back when they are ready to go, makes all the trips out looking well worth the effort.

I like flats on the North side of the lake that are developng weed beds. I like 5 or 6 feet of water with a couple opf feet of weeds coming up. Then fish a glider or a stick bait slowly over the top. If the fish are a little more active bass sized spinnerbaits can work well too. One key here is to make sure you bang into a weed once in a while. If the baits are free swimming and never touch anything it isn’t as good.

Rootski

Also focus your attention on west facing, sandy bays.

These are the bays/water that warms up the fastest and will also have the earliest crop of weeds.

….WEST is BEST !!!

JUST TO ADD A QUESTION, DOES ANYONE ON THIS SITE FLY FISH FOR MUSKIES, MY FATHER MADE ME A 9 WT. A COUPLE OF YRS AGO AND I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO COME UP WITH SOME MUSKIE/PIKE FLY PATTERNS BUT HAVEN’T HAD ANY LUCK ON THEM YET, JUST A COUPLE OF FOLLOWS. ANY SUGGESTIONS ON SOME COLORS OR ACTIONS ?

thanks for all the reply’s

Hey Garvi;

Never fly-fished for pike, but I do hear it can be fun. I would stick with standard colors of white/red and yellow……