I had the chance to get out with my dad(who’s recently caught the muskie bug) and my brother for a few hours Sunday morning. With nice overcast skies and a random rain shower here and there it was looking like a fine morning to be on the water, unfortunately for me it would be a short morning due to chores at home. We hit the lake about 7:00 AM and within 5 minutes my pops had his first follow of the day( mid 40’s fish) on an SS Shad. Within the first hour or so we ended up with a few other lazy follows by smaller fish on Phantoms and slow rolled spinnerbaits.
Seeing that the fish weren’t being all that cooperative or very aggresive at all we decided to switch tactics and started burning medium sized bucktails and chatterbaits over weed tops. This proved to be the ticket as we ended up with two hookups lost boatside, four more follows, and one fish in the boat( a chunky 44); all on the chatterbaits ripped FAST. Unfortunately dad still has yet to get one in the boat, although this was only his third time out. Personally, I can’t wait till he does just to see the smile on his face and the tremble in the knee that accompanies a first catch!
A friend and I decided to give it a try last night for a while after work on a differrent lake using the same techniques from the Sunday before. End results: four follows, one fish missed boatside, and one 38 in the boat..This time all on small bucktails ripped about as fast as possible. All in all it was a great night to be out on the lake and in the last few weeks the fish must have really started to put the feedbag on….Even these short fish are starting to get little beer bellies!
