Twin Cities Musky Report

Musky season is upon us now in both Minnesota and the entire state of Wisconsin now. It was a long wait and I was definitely ready for it to be over. It has been an interesting spring, early ice out didn’t advance the seasonal progression of the lakes as much as I expected it to. This is largely due to the cold April we had. Weed growth and water temps however, are about where they should be for this time of year which is a much welcomed change from last spring.

In anticipation of large crowds on the Minnesota lakes we opted to head across the border into Wisconsin on Saturday morning. We hit a small lake with rich weed growth, primarily cabbage and curly leaf pondweed but basically void of any structure. The water temps had dipped down a bit from the cold front that came through after memorial day. The water warmed to about 68 degrees by mid morning when we left. We only contacted one fish on the trip which turned out to be a 30″ scrapper that inhaled a small bucktail on our first pass through the “honey hole”. The rest of the trip was lack-luster, as we didn’t see another fish. That’s the way it can be on these small lakes, they are either turned on or off. It was still fun to get away and be the only musky boat out there on a Saturday in June!

This morning (Sunday of opening weekend), I hit a north east metro lake for a couple hours to scout a bit for some upcoming guide trips this week. It turned out that the fish were moving. I saw fish that ranged in size from low 30 inchers to mid 40 inchers on every spot I went to. It was calm and sunny so I fished slow and took my time making sure to check weeds and even got side tracked a time or two chasing bait fish out into open water. I really only fished 3 different spots but they all were very “fishy”. I stayed out in 10′ – 15′ of water and casted to weed edges. Pretty much text book fishing. I ended up finally connecting with a 3 footer at about 8:30 am. It went around the figure 8 well over a dozen times before I was finally able to trick it into eating my dreamcatcher bucktail. Very cool stuff!

Looking forward to this week, I have a couple guide trips on the calendar but plan to fish a lot myself as well. I believe it’s going to heat up a bit before it slows down. As long as the weather is stable we should have some active fish. I am excited to fish throughout the day and into the evenings this week as well. With stable weather patterns, I believe that finding out when muskies are feeding is a big key to success. Hopefully I have that part nailed down a bit more in my next report. I was only able to sample the morning bite this weekend and found out that the smaller fish weren’t opposed to eating a bucktail for breakfast.

I’ll try to keep the musky reports coming…