LOTW Muskies

I just got back from Lake of the Woods on a short trip. We stayed on Whitefish bay at Crawfords Camp and fished it for a full day. We also fished Sabaskong for just a few hours before we left on Sunday.

Overall we had okay action on Saturday, saw around 15-20 fish caught one and lost one. I haven’t seen much for reports on the muskies on Lake of the Woods so I figured I would start a thread.

Both bites came on JR Cowgirls and most fish that we saw were on Bucktails with the exception of a few topwater prop bait follows and a crankbait follow. One thing I found interesting is that half of the fish we saw came from the weeds and the other half on reefs. The fish on reefs seemed a lot more aggressive and active than the weed fish. Not sure why but that was definitely the case. Maybe the fish on the rocks were just getting there and hungry?

Anyone else made a trip up yet? It’s always interesting to see how others did and what kind of program they were on. I will probably be up again at the end of the month. Hoping more and more fish start showing up on the rocks. I don’t mind fishing weeds but I seem to run out of good weed spots by noon. Every trip I find a few more though!

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Beautiful fish!

Pat, what color JR Cowgirls and what color Bucktails were you using? Nice fish!

Yellow and gold was a hot color as well as black and nickel

Awesome, and easy colors to come by for the most part. Nice photo!

A buddy and I went up to the other end of the lake for the weekend. We got up there Friday night, fished a full day Saturday through a couple rain showers, and got stormed off after only a couple hours of fishing Sunday morning.

Went 2 for 4 on Saturday and raised 25 others. Only saw a few big fish with most in that 38-42 inch range. The odd thing was we had essentially zero action on bucktails and it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. One of us had a bucktail in the water basically all day, but 3 out of 4 bites and all but 3 follows came on Topwater or twitch baits. That is a first for me during summer peak on LOTW.

Sunday we fished 3 spots and raised 3 fish before getting chased off by rain, lightning, and 30+ mph wind gusts. Needless to say it was an interesting boat ride in with my new (to me) little sub 17′ low profile tiller boat.

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Nice fish, guys. Great work on the photos too.

-J.

Nice fish! I think i’m headed back up the last weekend in July. What part of the lake did you guys fish? Were most of the fish on the rocks now?

Well done on all of the above !!!

It’s a lot of work fishing for muskies…

I have a lot of respect for guys that can cast the heavy gear !!

Thanks Dave,

I will say having good quality gear goes a long ways when casting big heavy baits. Big cranking handles on your reels and heavy action rods definitely take some of the fatigue out of it. Not saying it isn’t a lot of work even if you are outfitted right, but it sure helps.

Pat McSharry wrote:

Nice fish! I think i’m headed back up the last weekend in July. What part of the lake did you guys fish? Were most of the fish on the rocks now?

We stayed in the Angle and covered a lot of water fishing from the Windigos up through to Big Narrows Resort. Definitely not the most efficient way to fish but it was my first time with my own boat on LOTW so I was eager to bounce around and check out a bunch of new areas.

Fish seemed to be in transition and our best spots were the most complex ones with everything in close proximity. After day 1 the only structure we could rule out was isolated weedy bays and rock reefs not connected to a bigger island.

Were you guys fishing WFB or did you had NW to get into a little darker water?

Good info. We fished WFB, hard to bounce around too much when you only have 1 day to fish so we decided to stick it out in the clear water. Plus I like the trophy potential!

Heading to Whitefish Bay Sept. 17 – 24th for the first time. I’ll watch this thread with interest.

Dutchboy wrote:

Heading to Whitefish Bay Sept. 17 – 24th for the first time. I’ll watch this thread with interest.

I’ll watch this thread. Sorry, getting a little wacky with these 5 grandsons buzzing around.

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My buddy Ryan and I went up again this weekend for another short trip. Since we didn’t have a lot of time we just stayed down on Sabaskong and fished from there to Little Traverse. Another okay trip, nothing too crazy. The fish were definitely on the off shore reefs and islands. We caught 5 in 2 days, 4 bucktail fish and 1 topwater fish. Mornings were definitely the best. We would see fish on almost every spot we stopped at until around 10AM then it would get really slow until right before dark.

Black and Silver Bucktails with number 9 colorado blades were the ticket for the most part, but the biggest fish came on a weagle.

Anyone else been up that way chucking baits?

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another photo

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Went back up to LOTW this weekend and we fished Saturday and Sunday. We got chased off the lake from noon til five on Saturday due to storms and fished Sunday morning until early afternoon.

The fish were cooperating but we failed to hold up our end of the bargain. Ended up with 5 in the boat and should have had 6 more. Saw a bunch of fish but only 3 that were 45+. Bucktails and loud prop baits fished over complex rock spots is what worked for us. Water was 69.5 near the Windigos and up to 72 the further north we went.

Highlight of the trip was my buddy Sam catching a muskie on his very first cast ever on lake of the woods… Good way to start the trip!

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I know I have come back this this post at least 3 times a week… I was up the LOTW this year and actually fished for muskies and caught one… I have caught them by accident on walleye gear before but i consider that not counting…

I am pretty green when it comes to this species but I think I would like to learn more !!!

Great job to all the above for their great catches !!

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Nice fish Tyler! I’m getting the itch to get back up there soon. The fall is my favorite time for muskies on LOTW by far. Anyone have a fall trip planned??

Leave on the 17th for a week on Whitefish Bay.

Pat McSharry wrote:

The fall is my favorite time for muskies on LOTW by far. Anyone have a fall trip planned??

we’ll be up from Oct 21st – 30th for our annual trolling trip. can’t wait! we’re hosting an author from an outdoors magazine in the boat with us this year too, so that will up the pressure to perform!

my chief concern at this point is that things are pretty warm right now and that the water cools down enough by then. we’re really looking for it to be just below 50-degrees at the start of the week and dropping steadily, usually 1 degree per day. a trip that starts at 48 and ends at 40-42 is ideal.

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That’s kind of what we ran into last year when we were up trolling. It was just too nice! Granted we still caught some nice fish. It sure seems like the nastier the better for the fall trolling program. low 40s does seem to be a good number.

Good Luck!

Water temps on LotW are currently ~63, down a full 2 degrees since Sunday.
It’s got 30 days to drop another 15 degrees. C’mon cold weather!

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48…..is that your majic temp?

hawkeye….eyes wrote:

48…..is that your majic temp?

a perfect water temp situation for us would be ~48 degrees when we arrive and 40-42 degrees when we leave. colder is better than warmer, but steadily dropping temps are the biggest thing we like to see.

between the changes in photoperiod and water temp, we’re really hoping to find the ciscoes and whitefish staging off their spawning areas and the muskies on the move along structure to intercept them.

just got my newest toy in the mail, can’t wait to shred this Mattlock’s lip on some shield rock…22 days to go!

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Nice Mattlock. Cool color. That should produce.

awesome lure top go to in the fall.

Anyone been up recently? I was up there the weekend of the 8th. It was a really slow trip. We never caught one. Lost one fish jigging a bondy bait and saw a handful of others. The water was still relatively warm. 56-58 degrees. The trolling bite wasn’t going yet. No rips, and I feel like we gave it a fair enough try trolling from spot to spot. It was a pretty nasty cold front, but it’s fall right? Cold weather should have them chowing!

The irony of it all was I drove back Sunday night and pulled the boat into work so I could hit Tonka after. Nick and I went out around 5:30 and I caught one on about my 10th cast.

So I drive 6.5 hours to Kenora to fish for two days – blank – dump the boat into tonka and catch one right away

That’s tough sledding. Doug Johnson calls those mid-50s water temps the “dead zone.” Kind of like the October lull for deer hunting, just under the water. We’ve had our best results when it’s 50-and-under and dropping. Congrats on the ‘Tonka fish at least.

Water temps were 52-53 yesterday before they pulled the buoy. With the cold days and nights the rest of this week, I’m betting we’ll see ~48 when we hit the water Saturday morning, and it should drop steadily all week.

3 days and a long drive…wish us luck!