While I was in the UP a few weeks ago I realized I have a big hole in my arsenal of finding muskies. Up there aparently weeds don't grow like they do here, and to find the fish I had to attack the clumps that were growing sporadically around the edges of the lakes. I was quite successful in the few spots of pads I found, but the cabbage, and milfoil(?) was a diferent story. I fished over and around them, but could not seem to pull anything out, so i want to go right through them. Im pretty sure Ive got the right rod and reel/line (stcroix 8'6" big dawg, with a calcutta 400 and 100lb.) for the job, but any other part of the tactic Im missing.
Just curious if anyone has any good articles or any tricks for fish through weeds. I have not done a lot of this with any type of fishing that I have done, so Im curious what you all do.
Thanks in advance for any help!
My opinion on the topic…
Milfoil is a pain and requires finesse, you can't go deep through it because it is too soft and just wraps up a bait. For milfoil you need a buoyant bait that will back out when you make contact. Let it back up for a second then rip it forward to blow off any weeds. Best baits:
10" Jake – no Grandmas
10" Suick (unweighted)
10" Believer (my personal favorite)
Contrary to this would be fishing pockets in the milfoil where a suspending bait can be awesome. You're basically flipping pocktes with a muskie bait in this instance and any lure can work.
In cabbage you can get most baits through because it is stiffer and generally brittle. It doesn't require a buoyant bait that backs up so suspending and sinking baits can be part of your arsenal.
Coontail is between the two, you can fish through some, if not most, but it can be tough when it gets super thick and/or super tall.
When you can go through you need to rip baits hard, you'll be using the line/leader to cut a path for the lure and a dainty "twitch" isn't going to get it done.
It will be pretty hard to fish through big, thick beds on milfoil as that stuff can get REALLY thick. Pondweed or cabbage on the other hand can be fished through pretty easily. Lure choices depend on how deep the weeds are. If they are pretty shallow it is hard to beat a suick. It has a nice round nose to push weeds out of the way, and backs out of the weeds nicely when contact is made. It is amazing how weedless a suick can be when fished correctly. A believer is also a good choice and so are spinnerbaits like a grinder. If the weeds are deeper you can fish dawgs and deeper cranks. With these baits, especially dawgs, you will have to do some major ripping, but sometimes this is the only thing to trigger fish. There have been days where I can only move fish by purposely letting my dawg sink into the weeds and then ripping them out. Be ready for a hit right after ripping them out of the weeds. The first DVD from Greg Thomas – Gregg Thomas' Blueprints to Musky Success: Weed Fishing Volume 1 has a good amount of info on fishing different types of weeds like milfoil and cabbage.
I do love fishing suicks and other things like it over the weeds, and in fact all the hits I had on both Kingston and McKeever were when I would hang up a suick on some pads and rip it off. The weed beds, though small and sporadic were topped out, and fishing the suick over them was difficult. I tried dawgs but only got completely hung up. I did not try the jake however, Ill give that a go next time. I should invest in a spinner bait or two as I couldn't get through the tops with a bucktail. but like I said, I really needed to get in them, they weren't that thick, but just tough enough to not break when I ripped and would uproot with the big ole dawg going through them…
thanks for the tips!
Like the info in this thread! Have used spinnerbaits, weedless spoons and smaller Believers in thick messes, mainly for pike, but should trigger muskies in suitable sizes. Nothing new on that note, but this year my recent quasi-obsession with tubes has me rigging them almost weedless, with a single treble of the right size placed where the tube opens to the strands so that each hook point protrudes back forward over the tube portion and presses against the tube body to be pretty well protected by the fat hollow plastic, yet plenty exposed when a fish smashes down on the bait. If I wasn't inept on posting pics or diagrams I'd try to do so, but hopefully this explanation might make sense. It's the same traits that certain hollow body bass soft plastics utilize, and this year it has showed promise to help in my continued struggles.
A firetiger Johnson Spoon with a white 3" double tailed rubber trailer skips above the the top and drops into holes just like a frog. Thing is, the really big spoons don't produce near as well as the "medium" sized, bass spoons. Maybe because I can't find a trailer to make the big JS work right? Working right means the bait wide wobbles back to the boat while it slow wobbles and the white "legs" flutter on a drop. Killer to throw on shore in fall and spring.
368
18
1 Guest(s)