as the water cools....

[fishcast]

This is my first year really targeting muskies and have pretty limited understandings of there seasonal movements and tendencies......

I am wondering as the water has begun cooling off now (right now where I have been fishing its been like mid to upper 60's)where do you tend to target and then as water drops further into the 50's....40's and down the line. In different temp ranges is there general location movements (deep? shallow? different use of cover types? and is there general preferences towards certain lure in the diffent temp ranges? Night verse day fishing as water cools off? Lakes versus River? (I'm spending most of my time now on a river system, but much of it with dams and stuff is quite lakelike) I guess most of it probably has to do with movement of baitfish which is probably often connected to individual bodies of water...

Thanks

[MUSKY18]

As a starter, as long as there are green weeds in the water, the fish will continue to relate to that structure since it is producing oxygen. As the water starts to cool down, in ciscoe based lakes, the schools of ciscoe that have been out over open water all summer will start a migration towards the shallows for their spawning. Along with them will come the muskies that have been feeding on them in the open water. Once the water is down into the mid 40s, they will move up onto shallow rocky reefs and shoreline to spawn. Progressively the muskies will move up shallow or hold just off the break so they can move up onto the break and feed on the spawning ciscoe's. There are differences in each and every lake though. I always look for the weeds, and once they start to die off and are no longer producing oxygen, move to the nearest rocky structure. Also, as the water cools, rocks will gather in the suns light during the day and put off heat, which will attract the fish and hold them in the vacinity.