Musky fishing continues to be consistently inconsistent. I know that people must be getting sick of hearing me say that because I am quite sick of saying it myself. The bite has been this way for so long now that it’s what I come to expect when I hit the water and I’ve actually changed my game plan up a bit when I hit the water.
September is a month where my boat catches a lot of fish in shallow water. Usually fish come from spots with sand, gravel, and rocks. This September our fish were coming from thick clumpy weeds near or around these usual hard-bottom shallow spots. The fish were rarely holding directly on the “spot”. This forced me to fish large stretches of shallow weeds that I would usually skip over. Often times it is the almost un-fishable “jungle” of weeds that seperates two gravel stretches. Just like any year though, I am almost always fishing the windblown side of the lake when fishing shallow.
The bite hasn’t exclusively been a shallow thing. We have been catching a fair amount of fish on the weedlines. I am looking for bright green weeds that may have been a little late to develope with the cool start to the year. Fish are starting to set up in very specific spots on the weedlines. This is something that we’ll see more of as we get later into the season. Most fish on weedlines are coming on blades as well and a lot of them are hitting boatside in the figure 8.
Timing has been all over the place. Lately I’ve been having more luck in the afternoon and evening though. This pattern will usually strengthen as we get later into the year too. We are also getting fish to bite in the first hour or 2 of darkness. This seems to be when we are finding fish on rock piles and sand. However, this hasn’t been a real steady pattern for my boat. Things have been a little frustrating because we just aren’t seeing or moving that many fish. We are catching 1-3 a day but sometimes the fish we catch are the only fish we are seeing… I can’t complain too much but sometimes I have people in the boat that lose interest after not seeing a fish for 5 hours.
If anyone is interested in booking a fall trip, I have some days open and I expect fishing to get really good the remainder of the season. Get a hold of me 651-206-8767
Great pictures and info in your latest report Ryan! The metro is a truly overlooked fishery and I really believe this area of mn produces some of the better musky fishing nation wide. Your reports make me curious if my old WBL haunts are producing… give you a call next time I know i’m in the area.