Musky Fishing: Pursuing the Water Wolf

Musky fishing is the stuff of legends. They talk
about a thousand casts before the first one is hooked,
and the obsessive behavior of musky hunters, and even
divorces and broken families resulting from the pursuit
of Essox. It can be that way, for sure. But it can also
be relatively easy.

When I lived in the upper Midwest, for more years than I care to remember, I really bought-in to the myths of musky fishing.

A hundred hours of casting between fish, goes one of them. Spouses coming to blows over the water wolf, goes another. Fisherman have driven themselves, literally, mad in pursuit of musky, goes yet another.

So, despite the fact all my friends were into chasing musky, it took a while before I could bring myself to give it a try. If anything, my buddies were more excited about it than I was.

“I’m finally going musky fishing,” I told my good friend Ken.

“Well, if you’re going, you’ll need some baits,” he replied. And handed me a suitcase full of lures, the smallest of which must have been nine inches long.

“I’m finally going musky fishing,” I told my buddy Jim, a custom rod builder.

“If your going you’ll need a rod,” he replied. “Wish I had known sooner, I’d have built you one. But, here, take this one---I’d made it for my wife, but she can wait.”

“I’m finally going musky fishing,” I told Friend Wife.

“If you’re going, go already,” she responded. So I did.

I took three days in Wisconsin to explore several lakes and flowages. In that time we boated 17 fish, most of them legal size.

How come the myths and the reality were so different?

For one thing, we fished mostly smaller lakes. My first fish, which hit less than 40 minutes after we launched the boat, came out of a puddle measuring only 55 acres.

“If those boys would get off the big flowages and start fishing some of the smaller lakes,” each of my guides reiterated, “their scores would go way up.”

That should have been a lesson.

But it took moving to Kentucky to teach me the truth about musky. If you fish for them correctly, they aren’t difficult to catch. No, they’ll never be as easy as, say, largemouth bass. But they’re nowhere near the challenge the legends make them out to be.

Lesson number one on Bluegrass musky was taught by the late Jimmy Dale. Bored with conventional tackle, which made catching musky too easy, Jimmy turned to the flyrod.

Initially, Jimmy fished the fly on the Kentucky River, by the dam at Boonesborough State Park. He rigged a hookless piece of broomstick on a casting rod, and used it as a teaser. When a musky made a pass at that lure, he’d switch to the flyrod and throw it where the fish has shown itself. Later on he dropped the teaser rig altogether, and developed flyfishing methods for lakes as well as the river.

He taught me the tricks and techniques he’d developed for that sport, and my first Kentucky musky was caught on a flyrod and a Jimmy Dale Special fly.

Lesson number two had to do with baits. Up north they reverse brag that walleye fisherman hook more musky than musky fisherman. Down here there was a similar situation, in that bass fisherman played that role. The difference: Up north they never learned the lesson, and insisted on their oversized baits. Down here, at least until recently, they did learn, and used magnum bass baits instead of the giants. Now that traditional musky baits are readily available, unfortunately, that lesson is being forgotten. But the fact is, you can still hook more musky on large bass baits then any other way. And they’re a lot less tiring to cast.

Latest lesson: Short-line trolling is one of the most effective methods for musky fishing.

Short-line trolling was pioneered by musky guide Greg Thomas. What he discovered is that musky are not as shy and retiring as is often thought, and that a boat passing over them often put them on the prowl, rather than spooking them.

This makes sense. Up in Green Bay, when the northern pike fishing is slow, they run their boats as fast as possible in serpentine patters over the weed beds. Then they go back and cast. The northerns really hit with a vengeance.

Musky are just the next step up among the pikes. So it stands to reason they would behave similarly.

And so they do. My first musky fishing trip with Greg was on Cave Run Lake. Jen Hooks, co-owner of Hooks Line & Sinker, a tackle shop serving that lake, was with us. She’d yet to catch her first musky, and we’d invited her along to do that.

Working the Zilpo flats area, we rigged four rods with various baits and lowered them over the side. Some of those baits were as close as five feet to the boat. And Greg ran us a bit faster than I thought logical.

But he was the expert. And he proved it by the fish we got into that day. Two landed and three other hits.

Later I would fish short-lines with Greg at other locations, notably Green River Lake. Although Cave run has the reputation, Green River actually has a greater musky density. And right now, particularly in the so-called “icebox” behind the state dock, is the time to hit them. For some reason, comes March and the musky stack up in the icebox, where they’re available to both boaters and shore-bound anglers alike.

If anything, we were more successful on Green River Lake than we’d been on Cave Run. True, the fish were more scattered, and we had to cover a lot more water. But that’s what trolling is designed for. And the results were spectacular. As I recall, we had five or six hits in just a few hours, and boated a beautiful fish almost 40 inches long.

So, if you haven’t given musky fishing a try because, like me, you’ve listened to the nonsense, get over it. Whether by boat or by shore, conventional casting, trolling, or throwing a fly, the musky are waiting.

Somebody is going to catch them. It might as well be you.