Proven Tactics To Help You Catch More Muskies
Here are ten musky fishing tips to get you catching muskies and having more fun while you’re fishing. The musky fishing tips come from anglers from Boulder Junction, Wisconsin, a community surrounded by more Class A Musky waters than any other place on earth. The veteran musky anglers and professional fishing guides who fish the 194 lakes of the Musky Capitol of the World® know what they’re talking about.
Musky Tip 1: Know Your Water – Before you fish a particular body of water, find a lake map. By looking at depth indications and contour lines, you can find the best places to focus your musky fishing efforts. That’ll save you precious time for casting.
Musky Tip 2: Spend More Time Casting – Musky angler Dan Mayer says it simply: “Keep casting.” Musky fishing rewards persistence. Maximize your chances for success by making lots of casts. Cover all of the possible musky hiding spots before moving to the next location. Make multiple casts over really prime water. And don’t spend too much time switching lures. It’s more important to have confidence in what you’re fishing and keep on casting. You can’t catch muskies if you aren’t fishing!
Musky Tip 3: Stay Sharp! – If you want to increase your hook-setting success on muskies, you need to keep your hooks sharp. Before you cast that musky lure, make sure the hooks are all razor sharp. Carry a file in your tackle box for on-the-water touch-ups.
Musky Tip 4: Consider Going Barbless – A number of musky anglers are going barbless. Replacing barbed hooks with barbless or pinching down barbs will not reduce hookups. It will also make unhooking and releasing muskies easier.
Musky Tip 5: Use the Figure Eight – “Don’t forget your figure 8!” says Dave Tree Birkholz. At the end of each retrieve, bring the lure within a foot or so of the rod tip, then plunge the rod tip in the water and move the bait in a large figure eight pattern. Many anglers report that their biggest muskies are caught using the figure-eight maneuver. A boatside strike on a figure eight will be the most unforgettable angling experience of your life.
Musky Tip 6: When It Comes to Lure Color, Black is Best – When you’re in doubt about what color bait to use, go for black. There are fans of all sorts of bait colors, but black has the biggest following. The dark silhouette of a black bait running through the water is easy for muskies to get a bead on. Black is also fairly easy for anglers to see.
Musky Tip 7: Downsize in the Spring – In the first few weeks of the musky season, when water temperatures are still rather cool, use smaller baits, such as crankbaits in the six- to eight-inch range and small bucktail spinners. As temperatures gradually warm up, slowly increase the size of the baits you’re fishing.
Musky Tip 8: Go Big in the Fall – Fall is when muskies put on their feedbags. Use the biggest baits you have. A foot-long jerkbait or a 18-inch live sucker are not too big. Trophy size muskies like to consume prey that are in the neighborhood of one third of that musky’s length. For a 50-inch fish, that’s a 16-inch bait.
Musky Tip 9: Don’t Slow Down When You Have A Follow – One of the biggest mistakes a musky angler can make is slowing down their retrieve when a fish is following the bait. Keep steady speed or even slightly speed up the bait to potentially entice a strike. If the bait is near the boat and the fish hasn’t yet hit the bait, be ready to do a figure-eight. Keep doing the figure eight until either the fish strikes or it swims away.
Musky Tip 10: Trust Your Experience – Musky angling is about learning. It takes a long time to learn what you’re doing. But the experience you gain as you fish is invaluable. Keep track of your progress—the number of follows by muskies, the number of hook-ups and the number of landed fish. If you’re paying attention to how you’re fishing, you’ll surely notice steady improvement. Remember, every hour you spend on the water puts you one hour closer to catching that once-in-a-lifetime musky.
The way to become a better musky angler is time spent on the water. Reading about fishing and watching fishing shows on television won’t make you a great fisherman. You have to get out there and fish! As musky angler Pat Austermuehle says, “You can’t catch ‘em from the couch.”
