Tonka Muskies

My Dad and I are heading out to Lake Minnetonka tonight to do some musky fishing. He’s put in some long days without catching one and i’d really like to see him connect on his first fish tonight.

Anyone have any pointers for us on lures, presentation, or where fish are relating to this time of year?

Thanks!

I personally haven’t been out on Tonka this season but what I’ve been hearing and based off of past years, open water and deep weed edges. Now that the zeebs are cleaning up the lake big time I’m seeing weeds out to depths as deep as 25 FOW. More and more the last couple years there is a great open water bite the whole summer.

Here’s an article I put together about open water fishing with the input from a few very knowledgable open water ski fisherman.

http://www.in-depthoutdoors.com/magazine/think-summer/open-water-muskies/

Positioning the boat in about 20 fow and casting up to the weedlines is a classic approach. Mid lake humps and reefs, and just hitting the key pieces of structure. Points, inside turns and saddles are money. I’ve found, pretty much anywhere there is a hazard buoy on Tonka there are muskies.

For casting, you can’t go wrong with Double Cowgirls, Super Models, Medussas and Bulldawgs. Mag Dawgs at the smallest, with the good early summer, the water temps call for larger baits already.

If you hit this pattern hard enough, you’ll catch fish. You’ll get follows, and be able to see them with the clear water. Start looking at what kind of structure you’re seeing fish on, and then try to duplicate them on different pieces of structure. If you move fish come back to them on majors and minors. Like I said, log the hours and you’ll get them.

Also, fishing low light periods from about 7pm until 11pm and in the morning about 430a to 9 will be your best bet. Moonrise Moonset – be out fishing!

Ben Brettingen wrote:

Now that the zeebs are cleaning up the lake big time I’m seeing weeds out to depths as deep as 25 FOW.

This is no joke, I was on a company cruise yesterday and could not believe the water clarity! I was on the same cruise about 10 years earlier and water clarity was only a few feet, now I’d say it’s an easy 12-15 feet….in late June! Those little bastages can really do a job on cleaning the water up!

JoeMX1825 wrote:

This is no joke, I was on a company cruise yesterday and could not believe the water clarity! I was on the same cruise about 10 years earlier and water clarity was only a few feet, now I’d say it’s an easy 12-15 feet….in late June! Those little bastages can really do a job on cleaning the water up!

You are right about that. When I was out last weekend it was so clear it was deceiving a little bit. Lots of times I felt like I was in about 2′ just from looking at that water, but my sonar would often say 6-8′. It is so clear it just made it look like I was in hardly any water at all.

Have seen quite a few on the inside weedlines the past couple of weeks…Like stated above they do forsure hang out over open water.When I used to fish them out there I’d put the boat on a steep drop/deep weedline so one of us could throw shallow and the other one deep.90% of the time I’d fish the deep side of the boat and had more follows and caught more fish than shallow and I was allways throwing topwater baits.

I caught my first 30lb+ musky in Minnetonka back in 97. Learn areas during the day and come back at night after all the boat traffic has settled down. Main lake points and reefs produced for me back then. Trolling the open water with deep diving crank baits to find the schools of bait will help also. I have also caught fish trolling through the channels with the bait right behind or to the side of the boat, less than 10 feet of line out.

“Have seen quite a few on the inside weedlines the past couple of weeks”

This is true and a relatively recent phenomenon since the water clarity has changed when the zeebs showed up. Years ago I don’t think the muskies were ever that shallow in late June. I’ve been out bass fishing a few times this year and have seen some smaller muskies on the inside… not sure about the bigguns though..

The ones I have seen have all been nice fat healthy fish easily low to mid 40″fish.Had one the other day follow my #11floating rap in the propwash as I was reeling in.