There are periods in a musky season where the big fish seem to move away from shallow areas, they either suspend while travelling their home range or simply follow the bait to deeper structures. During these periods trolling can be a very effective. Like every aspect of musky fishing, reading articles based on someone’s experience and opinions is merely scratching the surface, so instead of covering basics of all angles, for this first time I will discuss a few specific points in greater detail.
For this article, I will give pointers on the relationship between lures, speed and water color. Before using any trolling lure, it can be a crank bait or spinner bait. You must make sure the lure is well tuned and runs properly at the speed you are trolling. First clip on the lure to your leader and hold your rod over the side of the boat while it is moving (at a trolling speed) with a short line so you can see the lure’s action. Do this for about a minute, pay attention to the lure’s actions. The lure should be running without tipping over its side which would make it surface and then run out of play. If the lure does this it will mean that if you run this lure with 50 feet of line out the back thinking it will then be 10 feet deep, it will actually be running shallow, who knows how shallow, because it is not running true and keep flaring on its side. For all you know it will never go deeper than 4 feet. How do I make it run straight? You need to consider your speed. How fast are you going? Musky trolling speeds vary from anywhere from 2mph up to 7mph. If you are running at 7mph it is a possibility that the lure you are testing does not run well at that speed, try slowing down to 3-4mph. If the lure still rides on its side and surfaces then take the lure out of the water and grab a pair of pliers. Most lures will have an eye, a swivel or a split ring, using the pliers slowly and carefully bend or turn the eye holding the split ring where you attach the leader or swivel to the opposite side of where the lure was shifting while it was in the water. Do not bend it much, these are very slight adjustments if you bend it too much you will weaken or even break the lure, so be careful and use common sense. Once the adjustment is made, run the bait again along the side of the boat and see if the lure action has changed. It usually takes a couple adjustments to get it just right. Now that the lure has its desired action test your speeds again to make sure it will be working properly when you are trolling your structure.
Knowing that your lure runs properly is the first step, knowing where they run is another. So you have all these great lures and some even have instructions on the box that tell you how deep they run. Running depths vary based on speed, current, line diameter, line material and weight. Running big crank bait with heavy mono filament will not achieve the same depths as running it on a thin braid or wire line. The only way to know for sure is to test it. You can visit flats on a lake or river of different depths and test different lure. You know you are in 10 feet of water, so let out some line until you feel the lure hit bottom then slow retrieve until it stop and make note of the line counter or wrap count so you know how much line you need to let out for that specific lure for it to achieve 10 feet. You can then do the same for all different depths and write your notes down at first so you don’t forget. If you are fishing waters with current, try the same tests up and down current and make note of the differences. There was a book available online at some point, I assume it still is where all running depths for hundreds of musky lures using all different kinds of line was marked and documented. This would be a great tool and time saver! But learning is often the best part of fishing so go ahead and experiment.
Muskies live in all sorts of waters, gin clear, stained, murky and dark blackish waters. Trolling each of these requires different lure presentation and speed. Keep in mind that musky are not just sight feeders they also use there lateral lines to detect movement and vibrations underwater. Personally I have found that fishing each end of the water color scale prove to be the most difficult. Gin clear and dark murky waters with less than 12 inches of visibility are the hardest to fish. Because either scenario proves that the musky seem to rely on one of the hunting senses more than the other. Either more of a sight feed versus only lateral line feed. When the water is gin clear the fish are mostly sight feeding, which means they see you as well as you see them. In the clear water sections I tend to prefer more speed and flashy reflective materials. The speed is to try and get a reaction strike without allowing the fish to get a good look at that piece of plastic or wood they are about to bite. Adding a strong reflective “shiny” pattern will also help in keep the sun reflection so that it looks like a real meal and not coated paint. When fishing dark and murky waters fish cannot see more than a foot or two in front of them so the more vibration the lure has the better. Since the fish will then rely on the lateral lines to home in on their prey this doesn’t happen as fast as it does in sight triggered reaction. Slowing down the presentation and using a lot of vibration allows the predators to lock in and seek out the lure. Sight feeding is pretty much out in these cases, but none the less a dark color tends to produce more strikes. My personal favourite, fishing in light stained water with several feet of visibility is very easy. The fish can see your lure and you can keep it slow enough so that you can stay in the strike zone longer without them examining the lure for too long.
It’s easy to get fooled in to thinking a certain technique or tactic is a good one when you hit a spot that has a very aggressive starving fish, in those cases you can be using an a string of beer caps with a hook and they will strike. Paying attention to details and always keep an open mind about how, where and when will help put more fish in your boat. Know your baits, know where they are and what they are doing under and behind your boat so that you can pick the right ones for the right circumstances.
good fishin!
Loic Ayotte
owner of fishingisliving.com
loic@fishingisliving.com
