LOTW Muskies

Good Luck Michael! Let us know how you do!

just got back, fished Oct 22nd – 29th in/around the Morson area our of Mylie’s Place Resort (ie., west and north of Sabaskong Bay).

we had a great trip, with 20 fish in our boat, including a 49″ and 17 in our cabin-mates boat up to 46″.

water temps were dropping fast when we arrived and the first few days were gangbusters; it slowed down some as the temps stabilized around 46 mid-week. i’m glad we were there last week with the warm spell hitting this week.

i’ll add some more details on patterns and pictures when i get a chance!

Awesome! Looking forward to getting up there soon myself. Trying to figure out if we should go this weekend, next weekend, or both

Were the fish up really shallow? Any baits that were exceptionally good? Did you guys strictly troll or did you do some casting as well?

Can’t wait to see some pictures!

The fish were relatively shallow, though this depends on your point of reference on “shallow.” We were trolling only, though the other boat with us got 2 jigging and tried casting Jakes for a couple hours.

I try to keep the boat in about 9′ of water, running an inside lure about 6′ down and an outside lure about 10′ down. This is pretty close to shore, so the depth is varying from 20′ to 2′ at any given time – I just want to be covering that main breakline. We want our lures bouncing into the high spots very consistently without getting hung up every 30 seconds.

And yes, that does mean smacking the boat into rocks at times. I’ve got a lot of them marked on the GPS on our usual runs from previous years, so mostly avoid them now, but it still happens. One of the guys in camp lost focus a few moments and drove his Lund into shore – it’s leaking now. I got my Skeeter high-centered on an unmarked reef which lead to a few minutes of worry about a cold swim and night on an island before we somehow got it off – and it’s headed in for some gelcoat repair this week. Cost of doing business!

The last week of October we’re typically seeing water temps in the 40s – last week was 48-49 on arrival and 45-46 when we left with one area hitting 44. At those “warmer” temps we have found 3.5-4.0mph to be best and it seems the smaller or more subtle baits outperform the giant wild ones. 10″ and 14″ Jakes, 9″ and 13″ Grandmas, a, with and Kraves are our staples, with some Headlock or Mattlock fish in the mix. I know as the water gets colder and fish really bunch up, the big erratic baits like Headlocks/Mattlocks, Wick Onez, and Blue Water Baits really come on along with a slightly slower boat speed.

It sounds obvious, but it’s really true: if you’re seeing baitfish on the sonar or other signs that they’re in the area – such as native netting – fish the heck out of it. I know I could do better about making even more passes. We had two instances this trip that brought home that point on spots showing bait concentrations: back-and-forth passes with 45″ and 46″ fish off the same spot one time, and 3 fish in a row off a different spot on subsequent passes.

Pics:
– Girthy!
– My buddy Saint’s 47″ (10″ Jake)
– My 49″ (10″ Jake)

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More pics:

– small fish doing okay with no gill cover
– a thick mid-40s for Ray
– nicely marked 46″ for Dean

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More pics:

– there were well over 200 eagles on one island…same area as all our big fish
– beautiful lake
– netting site shows you what they’re eating
– great trolling boat!

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a couple screen shots:

– golden shiner school (we caught a muskie right as i was saving this image!)
– cisco pod with a predator fish below
– large predator fish (we were drifting, thus the repeated mark)

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Awesome report and pictures Michael. Last year with the really warm fall, I found that faster speeds tend to work better as well. Looking at heading up there this weekend. Hopefully the warm weather isn’t going to kill the bite!

Went up for the weekend. Pretty tough conditions but we went 4 for 5. Not horrible. I got lucky and caught a jumbo which made the trip! Trolled the whole time minus a few hours one evening. I’m Loving the new boat motor combination for trolling. The 150SHO is really good on gas.

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suuueyyyy! that’s a hog!
what’d it eat? what part of the lake were you fishing?

you’re running the 150SHO on the big Warrior tiller?

It ate a 14″ white lightning Jake on Whitefish Bay.

Yup i’ve been really happy with the 150SHO on the V2090. Honestly I think the only reason I would go bigger on the motor is if I fished a lot more tournaments and needed the speed on big water. It goes plenty fast for me while it still has a great holeshot and mid-range.

I finally had time to pull together some of the video from our fall trip to go with the pics I shared above…

Great video

Hey all,

Just found this thread. I am heading up in two weeks. I fished WF Bay for the first time last July. Looking forward to this trip and dialing in some of the stuff I’ve learned about that area of LOTW. I will report back when I return!

-Pat

i was just up for a week casting in the Morson area, July 28 – Aug 4. temps were 71-74 and water was the clearest i’ve seen since at least 2012.

the first night when we arrived the fish were chasing bucktails so we were excited about the prospects. then it got a bit too warm/calm imho and the action was really slow for two days with just one fish in the boat. by Tuesday we’d switched to crankbaits on the rocks and a cold front follwed by steady breezes woke them up for us with good action the rest of the week including a 48″ and two 46″s. one odd bit is we lost way more fish than usual as it seemed we were getting a lot of short strikes.

i brought my 15-year-old nephew up on his first-ever trip to Canada. he’d only caught one muskie previously, so set and re-set his personal best 3 times on the trip. we even took time out for a fish fry one night.

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Congrats on some beautiful LOTW muskies!

Last weekend we headed up and fished for 3 days. We had a weather warm up the very first day. I wanted to cast rubber baits and let them run deep on a lot of our favorite trolling runs and try to catch these fish casting instead of trolling.

Boy did we have our tails tucked between our legs when we left. I think I get myself jacked up and have really high expectations, but we only caught two fish in 3 days, all of which came trolling.

We did catch one jumbo that’s worth sharing though. It was 49″ with a monster girth (I didn’t take the time to girth it and I wish I did) I would estimate 26ish.

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Here’s a few other photos where the fish is up against my body. Goes to show that when fish are big, they look big no matter how you hold them!

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My goodness that is a FAT fish – nice work. Must have been fun to land it.

That’s a stud, Pat. Congrats!

We’re heading up to Morson tomorrow morning to soak some plugs for muskies and some frozen minnows for white tips. Maybe some jumbo paper mouths, too. Dying to get out of here!

gotta love those big fall muskies!

we fished out of Morson last week, had a great time. after last year’s boat-meet-rock snafu, it was good to have a problem-free week in the Skeeter! we fish the same time each year, last week of October, and arrived this year to our coldest water temps ever at 38-41* depending on the part of the lake where we went. the temps had dropped at least part of a degree every day from Sept 19 – Oct 19 and then of course didn’t budge for the whole week we were there. i get excited about steadily dropping temps through the 50s, but stuck at sub-40 had me a bit worried and not confident in my usual approach.

the trip started out slow, with a couple below-freezing nights and windy days where we could only pick off one small fish per day. then the weather went calm with cloudy days in the low 40s and a light SE wind of only 5mph for the rest of the week – this stable weather seemed to help the bite as we had a few multiple fish days, found some baitfish concentrations, and got into bigger fish.

our trolling efforts produced 14 muskies in my boat including a 45.5″, 47″, 48.5″ and my buddy’s first-ever 50″. The most productive bait was a 10″ Kirby with 5 muskies, the biggest two fish came on Headlocks. Most of the fish were in 9-12′ on the rocks, with a couple fish suspended off the breaks instead.

our cabin-mate’s boat really took it to the fish, as they found a small neck-down spot to cast bulldawgs that just kept on giving them up. they ended the week with 29 fish (16 casting, 13 trolling) including a couple 45″s, couple 46″s, and a 47″ and a nice bonus of a 44″ pike.

already scheduling my vacation days for next year!

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the scenery’s okay too!

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Nice work guys!