Early Season Scenario

Since I had dream earlier in the week about Muskie fishing I guess I better start talking about it, call it therapy.

Its early in the season and you have had little time on the water, because you know, it is the first week of June. How are you going to start? Feel free to elaborate on weather and climate scenarios also.

What is your tactical plan?

A) Fish on what you would perceive are the best spots and meticuously pick those spots apart. Very specific humps, points, breaks, etc. Slower presentations while paying attention to details.

B) Run and gun, trying to hit as many “fishy” spots as possible. Fast or slow presentation, but the idea is not about spending a lot of time at each spot.

C) Search and destroy method with topwater (more in lines of a topraider, not creeper) and bucktails, keeping the trolling motor on continous and just trying to find fish and cover as much water as possible. With the intent of coming back and presenting that big girl with another lure or the same lure.

I’ll take the Letter “A”!

Is it a secret, is nobody sharing?

I was thinking C, but with todays temps are we in for the long cool spring, maybe I should be thinking A.

The temptation is all the new baits from the winter off season and keeping with a few presentations, not trying out every new bait in the box.

Early in the year I am on a search and destroy mission. Cover water, and cover it fast. If I have fish follow, I come back to work them hard later in the day, depending on how aggresive they are. Typically when you find muskies early in the year there are multiple fish in the same place. You will find one big female, and a couple of smaller males. This is something that you will see prior to spawn and well after. Those males will hang with the female for a while. Finding this is easy if you are willing to put in some time. I like to go out and scout while I am fishing panfish early in the spring. The muskies will be in the same areas as the panfish, looking for warm water. As they start to move out of the backwater areas, they will stage shallow along shoreline weeds. Finding them is easy if you have a good pair of glasses. I will cruise around wtih the trolling motor just looking for fish. When you find them, you almost always see a few. These fish will use the same areas as the season progresses, but they my push out to the deeper water, or where the new weed growth it comming up. Just go back and work the same areas where you spotted the fish, you will catch them, not far from where you saw them. This will apply for about the first month or two of the season. It is fun to see those big fish in shallow, but it is even better when you come back when the season is open and you stick them knowing that your efforts paid off.

Mostly it applies to the weather.
So, with that said, are you going to “finesse” the tunas, or just run-n-gun for the stupid ones?

One thing I plan on doing different this year is remove all of my snaps/cross-locks on my leaders. I’m going to replace them with O-rings.

Reason being to force me to focus more on fishing the bait at hand, instead of switching colors to quickly. Kind of a psychological thing…..making it more difficult/time consuming for “me” to change baits. Keep my confidence level where it needs to be.

Plus the added confidence of a snap never wearing out and breaking/loosing a fish.

Gary, you may want to rethink the O-ring deal. I don’t think you are going to be happy with the way that the baits perform.

explain more please….

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explain more please….

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Yes why wouldn’t split rings work?

By no means do I have a lot of experience with doing this with many baits, but I did it last year with a Dunwright Jerk and it would not run correctly. I think that the split ring was causing the bait to track to far to the left and then to far to the right. I just could not get it to go. So my point was, don’t change out a ton of baits until you get a chance to hit the water and see how it is going to effect the action.

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One thing I plan on doing different this year is remove all of my snaps/cross-locks on my leaders. I’m going to replace them with O-rings.

Reason being to force me to focus more on fishing the bait at hand, instead of switching colors to quickly. Kind of a psychological thing…..making it more difficult/time consuming for “me” to change baits. Keep my confidence level where it needs to be.

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I might try this myself.

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explain more please….

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Yes why wouldn’t split rings work?

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I would normally chalk it up to Idiot Operator, but you were not in the boat