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MUSKY CLICHES

In a post I made at Muskystriker.com I joked:

"Don't know if anyone else ever feels this way, but sometimes the endless cliches about actual musky fishing and its techniques make me want to gag.

The only problem- the fact that so many of them prove to be pretty accurate when given a chance.

Here's a few of my faves:

"TOTW (Time on the water)"... if you camped on a spot for the rest of your life, would it eventually give up a monster?

"GREEN WEEDS OFF THE BREAK"... sometimes I wonder if some of these guys know what a breakline is? Maybe they mean "after the break" when they get back out there to start pounding the water again.

"BIG BAITS/BIG FISH"... don't tell Ken O'Brien!

"COLD FRONT TURNED EVERYTHING OFF"... This past Labor Day (Sept 1) in NW Wisconsin, I snapped a five day fishless streak after fishing in IDEAL conditions. The trick- bluebird skies, high pressure, cold-front! 8 muskies tortured me for 75 minutes (starting @ 3pm) with only one of them CPR'd.

One fish even tossed my BUZZBAIT on a four foot jump in front of me with the bait missing my face by about 2 inches! ALL topwater action. Nothing huge (32"-40"), but the action was brilliant.

"LOOK FOR CABBAGE"... guess those fish in the coontail, milfoil, muck, deep water, rock humps, sand flats and lumber are waiting in line for the next vacancy at Camp Cabbage?

Well that's enough of that. Thanks for letting me vent. -Wade

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"hey wade, i hear ya!! about a month ago my buddy spent a few hours on the internet gathering information for monster pike fall fishing. the first two articles were in direct contradiction about the essentials of locating the biggest fish. one said fall is the time of year where big pike move into shallow water, the other said the biggest pike will head for deep water. whatever. if there were really only a few proven techniques to catch fish, there would be nothing to read about in the magazines every month. even in describing breakline fishing they say the fish could be up on the shallow flats, right on the break, or a couple of hundred yards out into the open water. and yet they consider this all to do with the breakline. all that's telling me is the fish could be anywhere at anytime for any variety of reasons. i just look at all the different theories as backup plans for when my normal routine isn't working. and if one of them works, then maybe it will become part of my routine too." -skunk

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"Good one, Wade. Re: "Finding the cabbage" The cabbage is so favoured by weed-oriented skies because it is the deepest and the sparsest growing of the weeds. Milfoil and coontail grow into a very dense mats, making it hard to navigate through. Aggressive skies would still relate to those weeds, holding mostly on the edges. I am of the opinion that the only time they dig themselves into those mats is during the post cold-front conditions to veg out." -muskystriker
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"Hey MS, I have found musky using dense coontail in the heat as well (and in the slop, same as bass). I'm pretty sure the body of water will dictate most of this. Down in Sawyer County, Wi., we've started to see the first 100*F dog daze pop up. This has added a whole new twist to fishing in the summertime when water temps start to creep near 80*F. I've really started to pay attention to the condition of the cabbage since dying clumps are usually avoided (less oxygen right?) by those fish. My new target has been the greenest/newest cabbage in a lily field. For some reason the 3-5 foot depths have consistently held fish the past several seasons when there was a substantial cabbage patch present in a lily pad area. Add some wood and it's even better! Bobbies, spoons, TopRaiders/Hawg Wobblers and Buzzbaits have been the best bets." -Wade
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"Another cliche is "always fish the WINDBLOWN side of a stucture" well I agree, that this has some merit in that bait will be pushed against it. Both Graham's 57X28 (pictured on the Complexities page and at MS.com - Wade) and my 53X23 came off of the calm side of the same structure. Both days were fairly wavy and we were having trouble with three guys in the boat casting and trying not to fall in so we fished the calm side both days, The calm side happened to be the opposite soide the next day, but just goes to show there are no rules carved in stone." -DanZ
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"Pencil Reeds are a BIG fave. Buzzbaits in the pencils banging off of them and even walking them (catching a p/r so the baits comes over the top and comes gently back down to the surface). At least you feel like you're working it.

"WINDBLOWN SIDE" is a good one DanZ. (And congrats on your fish!) Although guys on Lake Shelbyville in central Illinois (an 11,ooo acre reservoir) have been doing well on wind blasted coves where the bait fish stack up with spinnerbaits. There's truth in all of these cliches of course. That's what got them to cliche status in the first place right?

As for striker's question about deeper lakes, most of the lakes I fish still have some areas with slop. And even with the deeper water available, I found them in water that I thought was too ridiculous to even consider.

Why are they in the jungle when they could be out in the wild blue yonder? Even shallow lakes have big temp drops as you get to the bottom, in just 10 feet of water. This summer I took readings on an 82*F day, with surface temps at 75*, the bottom at 9.5-11 feet clocked in at 61-63*F. I remember this well because it was the first day I tried my portable clock/air/surface gauge with a 20' lead out to the sensor. I was pretty surprised that 10 feet made such a difference. And in my wading slop experience (hence the name Wade) I've also benefitted from the cool down on those hot days

On one, very clear, very fast, river that I love to fish, the slop area I like lives in an eddy area behind a tiny island off the main channel. Not sure if it's baitfish or the BIG temp drop (or current break, etc.) but they like it in there. Now pulling them out is a whole 'nother matter... " -Wade
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"Hey Wade, whhaaazzzzzzuuuupp! Just reading your posts makes me think that even though we're quite a distance apart, actually only an hour & a half by plane, that our observations are very similar if not identical: I luv using the TR over mid-lake shoals (espcially with weeds) and around the open water reed/bullrush patches!

And the 'green weed in the fall' is my pet peeve cliche. Yep, I've caught them in the brown stuff > IMHO wave action (oxygen) and water temp are significant in this equation." - mudbear
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"Hahaha! I hear you on that, Wade! Just bear in mind that fishing mags and tv spots are a d v e r t i s i n g driven. Reduse, re-use, recycle. I'd estimate that at least 1/2 the writers out there are pretty poor at what they do. It's far easier to just regurgitate that to chew new food. Some of the stuff out there's so linera, predictable and pragmatic that it's painful to read. I find myself speed-skiming the bulk of articles I come across. Maybe the odd nugget, but mainly garbage in, garbage out. Same old tune.

My Dad says it best:

"You could live on GBay for a thousand years, fish 12 hours a day, everyday, and not hit 1/10th the spots."

Prety well everywhere you look looks about as 'classic' for muskies as you'll find anywhere. Run down the lsit of muskie preferences in terms of habitat and I've probably got a dozen within trolling motor distance from the house alone.

The key for me is the milk-run, not being afraid to burn some gas, and hitting known spots more than once every day. Come this time of year, the daylight is too scarce and the prime window too short to waste your gas, battery and mental/physical stamina on dead water. I'd estimate that this time of year I spend at least 70% of my time on water where I've seen and caught fish year after year. There's just too much water to go about it any other way. Heck, 5 Mile Bay alone's double the size of some Kawartha Lakes. It's only a spot on the Gbay chart!

I think that fish on big water move around a lot more than on small. The key is to get a bait in front of a fish that happens to be using an area are travelling to/from it. Some of my areas are good in that I can troll productive expanses between them." -DipLip
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"Diplip, Boy I'm with you on all of your points.

My only real complaint is the "pro" musky author that is barely able to write (and on posts also spell). I'm not saying they should have an editor proof their one-off on a MH thread, but geez, sometimes between the re-hashed "knowledge" that adds nothing new, and the thinly veiled advertisement for their whatever (lure, guide biz, book, map, resort, boat 4 sale, you-name-it) it's tough to stomach their expert opinion phonetically.

"I think that fish on big water move around a lot more than on small."

This is a great point/question. The telemetry study that John Dettloff/Scott Allen and others (Larry Ramsell??) contributed to seemed like a possible answer to this. But of course, the crowd out there that spends ALL of it's time "advertising" and bashing shredded the attempt while contributing zero. If the study was flawed make it better.

Muskies are big business now. The pissing matches have only begun I guess? Too bad, most are good fisherman. Just too busy trying to eek out a living and too busy posing as "stewards" of the resource as well. It must get in the way of real contribution?

Oops, fell off my soapbox... Guess I'm done." -Wade
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"You know, I started this thread as more of a poke at time worn expressions and I'm wondering if geography creates different interpretations?

My experience in Wisconsin & Illinois has been mixed in the TOTW area. What I meant was, it seems pretty much a done deal that anyone putting in the time will do better than those that don't. But some seem to interpret that down here to mean "my spot". And they OWN it, not for 1-2 hours, more like seasons. To me there's a huge difference between running & gunning and camping out. If a fish was hot I know I'd work it, but not to death. And I don't leave markers behind because it's not my spot (as opposed to keeping it hush by not identifying the location). My thought is, it's not ours. (And really, if we're all so good at this and couldn't turn that fish, is the next guy that much better? All the "help" in the world guarantees nothing.)

The all-time best example of this was relayed to me just this weekend. One infamous musky "steward" sat on a spot for so long, other guys built a mailbox with his name on it and stuck it on the point in the area.

Some guys down here do OWN spots. I for one try to share and have even given up my best spots, lures, whatever because I found some of those spots from word of mouth. And research. And helping others seems like a no-brainer. I think you may have more courtesy displayed in your area than mine. Perhaps Canadians look at TOTW to mean fishing all the water. I know some of these "campers" would say it's because you have so much more of it than we do." -Wade
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And so it goes. Got a tip that's today's cliche?

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