danmyersmn
Well-known member
I carpool with my wife and today she needed to attend a meeting that was going to have me sitting around for an hour tonight waiting on her. I have been having fits with one of my baitcasters and I took it apart last night to clean and lube. I wanted to test it before this weekend and decided I would bring some gear with today to fish after work tonight. Well...if I have gear with and I am close to a lake what's wrong with the morning? My thoughts exactly.
So, here is how I go about attacking a new lake.
First - What is a Tiger Muskie? Well, glad you asked.
The tiger muskie is the hybrid of the northern pike and muskie. It is usually infertile and has characteristics of both parents. The hybrid has distinct tiger bars on a light background, similar to the barred coloration pattern of some muskie. Its fins and tail lobes are rounded like a northern pike's but colored like a muskie's. The cheekscale and mandible-pore patterns are intermediate between a northern pike's and muskie's.
The tiger muskie grows slightly faster than either pure-strain parent in the first several years of life. It can exceed 30 pounds. Some tiger muskie occur naturally, though most hybrids are produced in hatcheries. They are useful in stocking because they grow quickly and endure high temperatures better than either paren does. Hybrids are easier to raise in a hatchery than pure-strain muskie, they reach legal size sooner and they are easier to catch. Because tiger muskie are usually sterile, their numbers can be controlled by changing the stocking rate.
Fish managers use the pure-strain muskie in lakes that can sustain naturally reproducing populations. The tiger muskie is reserved for lakes with heavy fishing pressure in and near the Twin Cities. Tiger muskie are subject to the same low possession limit and minimum-size limit that protect pure-strain muskie.
So, I dropped my wife off and hit a lake I fished a few times this spring. It has a fishing dock that is in about 12' of water. Early this spring it had milfoil growing out to just about the edge of the dock and lillypads a few feet back from the edge. This lake is also not known for big Tiger's but some smaller ones exist in it. I will be going to a different lake this afternoon that has some big boys in it.
Anyway, I was at the dock with forty minutes or so before sunrise. This location is literally dead in the middle of Minneapolis. Therfore, I had lots of ambient light and I figured it was light enough that a surface popper would be noticed.
So we start with this:
I casted this one for close to :30 as the sun started coming up.
I am limited by the dock and can't move around the lake so I plan to burn through lures after 20 casts or so. I switched to this one. I like this lure when I can toss it into the slop and it will not hook up into the weeds. It is still a bit too dark for me to see below the surface so I have to guess how close to the weed edge I am. It turns out I am still in the thick of the weeds but they are a few feet below the surface so this lure is small enough to bring some smaller fish out of the weeds and grab it.
Sun is starting to come up a bit.
I think every one of use has at least one fault. I have many. One of them is Meps Syclops. I can't pass them without trying to find one I don't own. I decided to throw this one today. It burns across the water just below the surface and is another good lure to keep out of the weeds when your tossing over them.
I haven't had any action and the sun is well up at this point. I decided to move towards deeper lures and see if I can pull up something swimming by deep.
I like these for running deeper presentations. This lake is not known for huge fish so I decide to go with the smaller of the two. I start fan casting from the side of the dock to straight out in front of it. I am grabbing weeds on the retrieve everywhere I go. It looks like the weedbed has grown out into the entire bay and I will only be finding smaller fish-if any.
So off that lure comes and I put one to cast a little cleaner.
I throw this one out 20 times or so covering the entire area around the dock. My fingers went numb 20 minutes ago and I am starting to not feel my toes. Its almost time to call it quits but I always finish off with one of my two favourite lures.
I love this thing! It runs at 2' and when its not being pulled it floats to the surface. This is one of the only lures I bother to use when fishing with my kids. I can stop in mid retrieve to attend to whatever crisis came up and it will float to the surface and hang out and wait for me.
Plus how can you resist a lure that has a nice toothy pattern like this.
That was it. I was only out for a bit less then 2 hours. I didn't see anything but I found out my reel still isn't working. I will fiddle with it some today if I can come up with some oil and try it again tonight.
Oh, and I guess here is a pic from this summer. I didn't measure this one since I was running solo that day and I just wanted it back in the water. Size 12 shoe
So, here is how I go about attacking a new lake.
First - What is a Tiger Muskie? Well, glad you asked.
The tiger muskie is the hybrid of the northern pike and muskie. It is usually infertile and has characteristics of both parents. The hybrid has distinct tiger bars on a light background, similar to the barred coloration pattern of some muskie. Its fins and tail lobes are rounded like a northern pike's but colored like a muskie's. The cheekscale and mandible-pore patterns are intermediate between a northern pike's and muskie's.
The tiger muskie grows slightly faster than either pure-strain parent in the first several years of life. It can exceed 30 pounds. Some tiger muskie occur naturally, though most hybrids are produced in hatcheries. They are useful in stocking because they grow quickly and endure high temperatures better than either paren does. Hybrids are easier to raise in a hatchery than pure-strain muskie, they reach legal size sooner and they are easier to catch. Because tiger muskie are usually sterile, their numbers can be controlled by changing the stocking rate.
Fish managers use the pure-strain muskie in lakes that can sustain naturally reproducing populations. The tiger muskie is reserved for lakes with heavy fishing pressure in and near the Twin Cities. Tiger muskie are subject to the same low possession limit and minimum-size limit that protect pure-strain muskie.
So, I dropped my wife off and hit a lake I fished a few times this spring. It has a fishing dock that is in about 12' of water. Early this spring it had milfoil growing out to just about the edge of the dock and lillypads a few feet back from the edge. This lake is also not known for big Tiger's but some smaller ones exist in it. I will be going to a different lake this afternoon that has some big boys in it.
Anyway, I was at the dock with forty minutes or so before sunrise. This location is literally dead in the middle of Minneapolis. Therfore, I had lots of ambient light and I figured it was light enough that a surface popper would be noticed.
So we start with this:
I casted this one for close to :30 as the sun started coming up.
I am limited by the dock and can't move around the lake so I plan to burn through lures after 20 casts or so. I switched to this one. I like this lure when I can toss it into the slop and it will not hook up into the weeds. It is still a bit too dark for me to see below the surface so I have to guess how close to the weed edge I am. It turns out I am still in the thick of the weeds but they are a few feet below the surface so this lure is small enough to bring some smaller fish out of the weeds and grab it.
Sun is starting to come up a bit.
I think every one of use has at least one fault. I have many. One of them is Meps Syclops. I can't pass them without trying to find one I don't own. I decided to throw this one today. It burns across the water just below the surface and is another good lure to keep out of the weeds when your tossing over them.
I haven't had any action and the sun is well up at this point. I decided to move towards deeper lures and see if I can pull up something swimming by deep.
I like these for running deeper presentations. This lake is not known for huge fish so I decide to go with the smaller of the two. I start fan casting from the side of the dock to straight out in front of it. I am grabbing weeds on the retrieve everywhere I go. It looks like the weedbed has grown out into the entire bay and I will only be finding smaller fish-if any.
So off that lure comes and I put one to cast a little cleaner.
I throw this one out 20 times or so covering the entire area around the dock. My fingers went numb 20 minutes ago and I am starting to not feel my toes. Its almost time to call it quits but I always finish off with one of my two favourite lures.
I love this thing! It runs at 2' and when its not being pulled it floats to the surface. This is one of the only lures I bother to use when fishing with my kids. I can stop in mid retrieve to attend to whatever crisis came up and it will float to the surface and hang out and wait for me.
Plus how can you resist a lure that has a nice toothy pattern like this.
That was it. I was only out for a bit less then 2 hours. I didn't see anything but I found out my reel still isn't working. I will fiddle with it some today if I can come up with some oil and try it again tonight.
Oh, and I guess here is a pic from this summer. I didn't measure this one since I was running solo that day and I just wanted it back in the water. Size 12 shoe
