Final Muskie and Pike report fro DL area

[copterjohn]

Closing up the Becker County area cabin for the season, but it was a great way to go out despite the wind and bouts with severe storms this week. Some great times with my buddies on the area lakes. Catching pike on a stupid plastic lizard was the highlight.

[Scott M]

Great pictures...How much fun was that....Boy, what a great time of year to be out and about. You know those fish are aggressive when they're running down that white lizard!

Bet you can't wait to do it all over again when you reopen the cabin next year.

[10,000 Casts]

Nice fish,

we were on Big DL Sat from 9 to 9,

We fished every spot on the lake pretty hard with no results. Pretty windy but I thought that would help things with high skys.

Glad to see that you guys did a little better!

Rk, was that your truck at the access? If you how did you guys do?

[RK]

Hiya -

I was there for a little bit Sat AM. Got a 48 right away (sun wasn't even up yet) but I think I'm going to file that one under 'stupid lucky' because it was pretty [PoorWordUsage]y after that. Slow lazy follows was all. I know it didn't feel like it with the temperatures, but it was still a post-frontal deal so I'm not all that surprised it was slow. When you look across the lake toward the sun and all you see is sparkling waters, I'm not happy... Had that in spades on Saturday. I went back to the cabin and pounded in a sand point instead

Cheers,

Rob Kimm

[10,000 Casts]

nice work on the 48,

Must have been cold out there before the sun came up. With the wind the way it was, I thought we might have a little luck later in the day but after that cold front moved in, the fish just didn't seem to want to eat and the fishing semmed to get worse.

What are your thoughts on a day like that? Should I have concentrated on deep weed edges mostly, or the shallows where the wind is pounding. Or should I just have open water trolled all day... ugh... This time of year should I just have looked for green weeds no matter what? I imagine that the barometer was rising and it was slowly getting warmer with the wind out of the south with the clear skys.

Say that happens on any lake in the fall... What are some things that we should be thinking about? Being in college for the last 5 years I have never gotten to fish much in the fall. Any Advice would be great.

Thanks

[copterjohn]

The weeds are going fast, but we caught seven skis all in weeds last week, and had three more misses. None in more than six feet of water and two on top water. Only one fish on a spinner. All the rest on jerks, cranks or glidebaits. Biggest strike on a tangled grandma flopping on the top, but tossed the bait after a few seconds of shear excitement. Another fish trashed a Believer when hooks were fouled with the flouro leader and it was flopping on top. Also a very large one. Third small fish missed a top raider, but we came back to the exact spot a day later and caught a 33" on a short arm single colorado spinnerbait. Some of the main lake spots produced fish, but more so along shallow shoreline structure. We also had wind to 40 kts one day, so fishing the main lake was tough, forcing us to fish new areas. If I get back for a final weekend, then it will be rocks. Been fishing up here more than twenty five years and have never had so much fun.

[RK]

Hey John -

My thoughts on days like that? Go home and mow the lawn...

Seriously, there are things you can try, but when they don't wanna, they don't wanna. Weather trumps everything.

I always figure you can go one extreme or the other on days like that. You either fish very fast and try to trigger one, or fish very very slowly.

Fishing fast is what I usually do in mid-summer when there's a cold front, especially the first day after a front when the fish aren't totally in a funk. I cover water as fast as I can with a small bucktail moving very fast, or a fast, erratic twitch bait - a Bomber Long A is one of my favorite cold front baits. Surprising how often you can get a fish to bite something going 100mph when they'll only follow slow moving baits. Cover as much water as you can, and hopefully the more fish you show a lure to, the better the odds one will make an unlikely mistake.

The other extreme is to slow way down and just fish the bejeezus out of good spots. In the fall, or the 2nd day after a front (3rd day too if it's a nasty front) this is more my approach. I fish deep diving crankbaits very slowly and erratically, slow roll spinnerbaits, pop a dive-rise jerkbait through the weeds, or fish a jig on the weedline.Basically just try to get in after them and make as much contact with cover as I can. Tough mentally to fish this way because you really don't get many follows. They either bite or they don't, and you might get one bite all day. But, if you have to grind it out it's probably the way to do it.

Cheers,

Rob Kimm

[propster]

To steal a line from Bill Gardner "It's been my experience that cold fronts shut down musky fishing for at least 2 days, and cold fronts come through every 3rd day." My son got 2 on Saturday evening, one just a few minutes after moonrise at 5:40pm off a weed edge in 12 fow on a spinner bait, and the other after dark at 8:30 on a DC. I hooked one in the second pass of the 8 after hitting the fish with the rod, which was kind of cool, but he let go No fish Sat morn (it was a little cool out), and Sun morn saw only one, Sunday night had 2 follows, including one that should have got caught after following 4 times in the figure 8 but not eating. We dang near got blown off Sunday.

[10,000 Casts]

RK, CJ and Propster,

Thanks for the great info.

I have a 3 day weekend this week so I am going to hit Leech.

Should be pretty predictable. Wind = rocks = Bulldawgs and maybe a little top water. Hopfully will equal a couple of Muskies.

If anyone is going to up here this weekend let me know!

[copterjohn]

My real job is a meteorologist for the CBS affiliate in Des Moines, and RK's cold front comments are pretty much dead on. Our "Secret" to the three lakes we fish around DL is always timing the front, looking at moisture for cloud cover and the pressure gradient force for wind. Fishing doesn't shut off immediately with the surface front passage, often there is a three or four hour window of hot action before everything shuts down. Saw this twice last week.

[propster]

10,000 - Are Bulldawgs the trick on the rocks? We've had so many follows on Submarine, Red Rocks, and West Bar, including a brute on Sub last year, but never any takers. Usually throw bucktails, sometimes burn the heck out of 'em trying to trigger, sometimes clank a crank off the rocks. Do you usually throw the Shallow dawg? Do they get hung up much or do you keep 'em moving? Thanks.

[10,000 Casts]

Yes I do like throwing Bulldawgs on the rocks. They can get hung up but I throw the shallow and the uptowns. Sometimes you just have to keep your rod tip high and use a faster reel. I have had the most luck on them so I figure that I will be throwing them the majority of teh time this fall.

Couple things:

You just named the 3 most popular rock piles on the lake! They are the most popular for a reason but they get pounded. I have had better luck on some "other rock piles" throwing your typical baits. I have had a few days where we saw over 30 fish in 2 hours on the same rock pile and if I told you which ones, you probably wouldn't believe me.

Secondly, durring the day, if its not windy or really, really overcast and windy you are problably wasting your time and should be up in Portage trying to find the weeds.

[Scoot]

Hey John,

Long time, no see. How's the move been for you? Have you had a decent year on Leech? Been out much? I've heard some tough reports from over that way this year- I hope they haven't applied to you.

[propster]

John, thanks for the info. Do you prefer sunny or cloudy with wind on the rocks? I remember reading an older Bucher article about rocks and he preferred sun, of course he preferred a willow blade bucktail as well and we know times have changed a bit there. Just curious. Also, we looked for weeds in Portage this summer and were hard-pressed to find any! I had some other questions for you about the Walker area - are you from there or do you live there? Would you consider emailing me offline? Thanks.

Keith

[email protected]

[10,000 Casts]

Scoot,

Good to hear from ya.

That Elk Hunt that you posted must have been amazing! I have heard too many stories of people heading out west and not having any results, but wow, you guys did it right. It bumped an Elk hunt up a few notches on my "to do list".

Its been a good summer. The new job is going well and its not hard to stay busy. Long hours every day but they are very good about time off. Its nice leaving work and being on the water fishing in 15min.

My house took a lot longer to get finished than I had anticipated but it livable now and we only have little things left to do. I had to go without cable and internet for a couple months but I managed.

Leech was verrrry slow June and July. It picked up in August and it has been pretty good for the past few weeks. The weather had been screwy though. For us it has been pretty good, you just have to hit it at the right time.

If you are going to be out this way this fall let me know and maybe we can get out there.

[10,000 Casts]

Propster,

We have had luck on both sunny and overcast days out there. It just has to be windy. Enough wind to bounce the boat around a little but stay safe is definitly a good thing.

Night fishing is another good option too.

One thing that I have found out this year is that feeding windows play a big role in success.

Portage did have some weeds this year and if a guy wanted to fish them right it would take some time on the gps. I only went up there a few times with no results. There are fish up there, but its not what I am told that it used to be. The Inc Tourney was won up there, the guy, I forgot his name but he caught his fish in weed pockets with Bulldogs. And one on top water.

Shoot me an Email at

[email protected]

[copterjohn]

So you want some wind....

See forecast surface pressure chart for 1pm Saturday.

A quick and dirty way to forecast your wind speed several days ahead of time is to count the number of isobars (lines of equal pressure) from west to east across the state (assuming width of MN or IA). Each isobar is spaced at 4 mb intervals, which equates to about 10 kts of wind per isobaric line. So, the fcst chart of Saturday (as of this posting) has 3 (nearly 4)isobars equating to wind of 30kts with higher gusts, then subtract about 10% for frictional effects. So Saturday, look for gusting 25-35mph. With low pressure, the sfc wind turns into the low, so almost due south looks good right now. Just above the ground, the wind will blow parallel to the isobars, so more sw. Gusts are normally higher with sunshine as vertical mixing will get the stronger winds aloft down to the ground, while cloudy days prevent as much thermal mixing.

The fcst position of the front can be noted by the kinks in the isobars extending from the sfc low. In this case, across southern Nodak, to the Black Hills, to around Cheyenne. In short, looks like a muskie day if the storms don't cranks up too much.

My best walleye trip ever...Dead Lake a few years ago with a fellow meteorologist from Grand Forks. "Isn't that a tornado?" "Why yes, we can call the office on the 2 meter after you get your fish in." Ottertail County seems to get pounded a lot lately.

[10,000 Casts]

Copter John,

Great post, there isn't a fisherman on this site that shouldn't read that!

Thanks

[cjac]

Copter John.... I think this should be a weekly post from you!

For real, great post, thank you.

Chris

[steffanf]

Too bad the NAM hasn't been handing the Vort Maxes too well. The GFS looks a little better now, but normally is inferior to the NAM. If you look at the current run of the NAM, it looks like there's going to be some storms developing by noon... and not moving out by late. DL may get most storms in the morning and early afternoon. Also, with the current Isobaric pattern, the winds will be SE to start and back to due south before midday.

-Gregg B.

[copterjohn]

Ha, looks like we better start an outdoors weather discussion forum with all the weather types lurking about in this and the trout forum...and break it down so we don't use secret acronyms! See SPC (Storm Prediction Center) has come around on the Tuesday threat. A lot of disparity between NAM (Computer forecast model with 12 to 40km resolution) and GFS (Global Forecast System) now. Winds are cranking now down here. Just got out of a highly swaying deer stand.

[steffanf]

Maybe you're right, John... about having some type of Minnesota outdoor weather report/forum. And I thought I was the only meteorologist on this site. Not sure if I want to decipher all the weather jargon... I always thought that being a meteorologist has always given me a little bit of an advantage when it comes to fishing.

-Gregg B.

[copterjohn]

QG Forcing: The Little Known Muskie Trigger.

Ha. email me offline sometime at [email protected]