Luckily for us muskie fanatics, this could be your year to stop the questioning and finally catch that fish of your dreams. Thanks to a catch-and-release ethic among all but a few stubborn anglers, and strict bag limits on designated trophy waters, plus improved water quality on many Esox fisheries, right now is a good time to catch your first musky on the fly. It’s also a great time for veteran muskie hunters to find the biggest fish of their lives, those elusive 50-plus inchers.
Evidence: in 2015 Robert Hawkins landed an incredible, 57-inch long, fly rod world record muskie on Mille Lacs Lake, Minnesota; and, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources biologists, while electroshocking for walleye on Lake Mille Lacs, turned up a potential new world-record muskie measuring 61 ½ inches long, a fish estimated to weigh between 55 and 75 pounds. The longstanding all-time world record musky, caught by Cal Johnson on Lake Court Oreilles, Wisconsin back in 1949, measured 60 1/4 inches and weighed 67 pounds 8 ounces.
So how and where do you look for a muskie approaching those hefty dimensions? Those of us who hunt Esox masquinongy with a fly already know the “Fish of 10,000 Casts” is never easy. In fact, finding a muskie over 50 inches on any gear takes the game to a whole new level of difficulty. A muskie guide once told me, “Dude, you gotta have a lot of free time and a short term memory to do what you do.”
For starters, upping the odds for a trophy muskie requires a major change of strategy. As tempting as it is, spending all your fishing time on high percentage “action water” (large numbers of smaller fish) while hoping for one truly big fish, is definitely not the way to go. The smart money plays on big water, meaning lakes and rivers where genetics and the forage base—suckers, ciscoes, shad and panfish—support large fish with impressive lengths and girths.
But here’s the catch: it’s one thing to target obvious lake or river structure for muskies—like you’re banging the banks for big browns with a Zoo Cougar, or casting a Dahlberg Diver along the shoreline for smallies—and quite another to cover acres of open water, including fish-magnet spots with weedbeds, points, channel ledges and rock piles, without anything to look at other than a depthfinder and your fishing buddy.
So here’s what you do. You research the water like it’s a military exercise, whittle your muskie “postal route” to a few known big fish addresses, and keep pounding them day and night. You can’t cover water with a fly like you could with gear, but you do have an edge: the fly offers a subtle presentation that most big water fish haven’t seen.
Seasonal changes are also key to where and when to find trophy muskie. Fall is the traditional time for big muskies because they feed heavily at that time in preparation for winter, and they are in the best shape they’ll be in all year having spent spring, summer and early fall putting on weight. But spring is a close second, as mature females (in the muskie world, females are always larger than males) feed aggressively after the rigors of spawning. Look for these big girls close to spawning areas, especially around heat-retaining rocks and emerging weed growth that offer shelter and forage.
Muskie fly choice is another critical element to your success. For sheer casting efficiency and hook-up percentage it’s hard to beat a large streamer. Pick your flavor du jour and, so long as you fish a pattern with confidence, you’ll probably get bit. But getting the attention of a giant muskie is a real challenge in big water. For that reason, if a streamer doesn’t do it, and you are confident that muskie are around, it’s well worth throwing a large, noisy, top water fly to trigger a reactionary bite.