Lake of the Woods – Muskie

I’m working on planning a fishing trip to the Lake of the Woods / Sioux Narrows area for my father-in-law for his 80th birthday and I’m trying to figure out when the best time would be to fish for Muskie. From what I can tell from reading what’s on-line it looks like the Muskie season starts in the middle of May. I was wondering if that sounds about right to you and how long the season runs (early August?) and within that timeframe when, usually, you see some of the best Muskie fishing?

As soon as they are on structure and chasing bucktails is when it gets really good. That being said it can be good anytime of the year if you know what you’re doing. I am not very familiar with lake of the woods for muskies just yet but i do know a lot of guys throw smaller lures than we do around here. The big double tens will always work though. Just realize they are the fish of 10,000 casts for a reason so there is a lot of casting/trolling that needs to be done for a fish. Except those crazy days where they are everywhere I hope you get some great information about the lake and land tons of huge skis.

We have stayed at Totem Resort in Sioux Narrows twice. WE only fished Walleyes and Northerns in Mid June, I know they were catching then then with other guides, Our guide always told us about the fall bite in September.

The season actually starts near mid-June. I go up to Northwest Angle every spring…… 1 week before muskie opens up. I still catch some smaller ones on walleye rigs or trolling cranks for walleyes/pike but they’re always active during that trip so I’m going to assume that they’re active by season opener and what you really should do is hire a guide. It’ll increase your odds of getting on them and save you a lot of guesswork/lost time.

Muskie season opens the first Saturday in June and closes Nov 31.

Fishing Lake of the Woods for muskies in late Oct or Nov would be awesome. The muskies will have their feed bag on this time of year. It might not be the best time to take you 80 year old dad though. We fished it the week after Labor Day about 10 years ago and the lake was either turning over or there was an algae bloom. It was tough finding any water that wasn’t pea soup color. The water was so green you couldn’t see much more than a foot or 2 in the water. We fished most of the week in the Sabaskong Bay area.

Late October-early November seems to be good. Check out https://www.facebook.com/myliesplace/ Justin is doing well right now. We go there in the summer catch a lot of nice walleyes.