Muskies - The fish of a thousand casts?
I don't think so!

While Muskies are indeed not a common fish, they needn't be too difficult to catch. It's unusual if we don't catch several muskies a day when we go out fishing, whatever the time of year. Here we give you some of our Muskie-catching tips.

Now I wouldn't class my fishing buddy and business partner, Bill Jones and myself as Muskie Hunters. I would say we're more like Incidental Musky Catchers. I know there are a lot of fishermen just like us who love catching all kinds of fish. Bill and I rarely go out fishing specifically for Muskies, we're primarily Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass fishermen. However, we catch plenty of Muskies incidentally while we're fishing for Bass.

The very best time to go fishing for Muskies is throughout the Fall. Why? Because the fish are more concentrated and more accessible in the cool water periods of the year. In the Spring , Muskies come into the shallows to spawn and hang around for a while because there is a plentiful food supply. However, the bigger fish leave soon after spawning and take up positions on the main lake structures, closest to the spawning areas; points, reefs etc.
Bill Jones the inventor of the Black Mamba™ jerkbaits, with a healthy 44 inch Muskie caught in 5 feet of water in the late Fall on a white Ribbed Willy™

In the Fall, the weeds are dying off and the Muskies' food becomes more accessible to them. The food is more concentrated in the remaining weedbeds and clumps on the weedflats. The same weedflats you were catching Bass on in the Summer. You will find relatively large numbers of Muskies patrolling the outsides of weedbeds in 3 to 10 feet of water. They have no natural enemies other than bigger Pike and Muskies and Man, so there is little reason for them to hide. They put on the feedbag and feed voraciously to put weight on for the upcoming hard times of winter. We catch both numbers and big fish in the Fall. What's more, we usually catch them on or just below the surface. Seeing Muskies smash your lure on the surface is the most fun you can have with your clothes on!

The waters that we fish tend to hold smaller fish, usually between 34 and 40 inches, on average. However, a normal day's fishing for us is 3 to 5 Muskies. Our best day this year was 11. On the same day, we also caught about a dozen Smallmouth between 2.5 and 4 lbs, a couple of 2lb Largemouth and a 2.5 lb Walleye. We had cold front conditions, a 25 mph wind to deal with and 56 degree water. Considering we weren't even fishing for Muskies and the weather was crappy, I'd say that's not too shabby! We were fishing in 3 to 8 feet of water around the remaining green milfoil clumps of weeds.

Our top choices for baits are the Black Mamba™ Slick Willy™, Ribbed Willy™, Wild Willy™, and Atomic Wedgie™. The biggest baits are the first two and they are around 5 1/2 inches long by about 3/4 inch wide and about 1/2 inch thick. In second place would be a Bass-sized spinnerbait and in third a buzzbait.

Now, the average Muskie Hunter will take one look at these baits and dismiss them as being too wimpy for the type of fishing they do. How wrong they would be! We have caught fish as small as a 7 inch Largemouth, 8 inch Smallmouth and 10 inch Walleye on the Black Mamba™ baits and fish as large as 40 to 50 inch Pike and Muskies. In fact, every species of predatory fish we have thrown these baits in front of, has eaten them.

Why would a decent sized Muskie want to eat what at first glance might appear to be too small a meal? It's all in the presentation and the actions, my friends!

A Golden Shiner coloured Slick Willy™
A Golden Shiner coloured Slick Willy™, almost actual size, as the fish would see it from underneath.

In order to understand why these baits work so well, you have to consider the baits from the Muskies' perspective. The Muskie is underneath looking up at the bait against the backdrop of the sky. Three of the four baits have exactly the same elongated teardrop-shaped profile as either the belly or the side of a baitfish. If you consider it as the side of a baitfish, it's medium sized. If you consider it as the belly, it might represent a Muskie snack of maybe a pound or two. We believe it is this profile that cause the baits to appeal to such a wide range of fish, both in size and specie.

How will these baits benefit you as a Muskie angler?

We much prefer to fish the baits on medium heavy bass baitcasting tackle with 20lb PowerPro or Fireline and we like to tie our own steel leaders made from 20lb stainless seven strand directly to the hook. If there's a chance of hooking either Muskies or Pike, we always tie a leader on. It's cheap insurance and the Bass don't seem to care, even in crystal clear water.
Dave Wraxall, Black Mamba's President pictured here with a 42 inch muskie caught in the late Fall with a Perch coloured spinnerbait using a white Ribbed Willy™ as a trailer.

You might consider 20lb line and leader material too light for Muskies. Understand that the average fish you will catch will weigh between 8 and 15 lbs. If you have a good rod and a good reel with a quality drag system, you should able to handle fish well over 30lbs without too much difficulty. We have caught hundreds of Muskies and we have never had one break us off. While we were in Florida shooting saltwater footage for our infomercial, we caught a 40lb Redfish on a 6' 6" medium heavy spinning rod and reel used for Smallmouth fishing at home and 10lb Fireline. It fought harder than any freshwater fish we've ever caught and it took a while to get it in, but get it in we did. And, we have the footage to prove it!

The benefits of rigging this way are that the action of the baits is better than if you use stiff Muskie rods with heavy line and heavy store-bought leaders. I prefer to use a 7' 6" Flipping Stick. I get the best of both worlds; I get the length and backbone to play bigger fish properly and I get the whippier tip to cast further and work the bait better.

If you fish the baits without a leader, the baits will virtually suspend. As you add weight they will fall faster the more weight you apply. Store bought leaders are often over-engineered and too heavy. If you add a leader our way, the rate of fall is much slower, presenting a much more enticing target for the fish.

The baits will remain completely weedless as you only have the wire coming out of the front of them. There is no snap to pick up weeds. We cover off tying your own leaders in the Instructional Video which is included with the fishing system.

You can add a nose weight before tying it to the hook if you want to get the bait down and the bait is still weedless. We have caught a ton of Muskies and Pike, particularly in cold front conditions, flipping weeds, just as you would when fishing for Largemouth Bass. For a weedbed to have Muskies inside, it must be of a type that allows for a lot of room underneath for the Muskies to move around. That is why you will find them in Cabbage and occasionally milfoil weedbeds. I've been having a lot of success lately using the baits a little like a jigging spoon fishing weedbeds, deep weedlines, rockpiles, points and mid-lake humps.

The front of the baits is shaped just like the front of a boat. This shape adds some phenomenal features which we've never seen with any other bait. Firstly, the shape provides lift so that if you pop your rod tip, the bait will jump out of the water just like a scared baitfish! This action really turns fish on.

When they only want to follow and won't commit to biting, I'll immediately fire the same bait back out to the general area the fish went in and pop the rod tip and reel in as fast as I can go. Usually, the same fish will explode on the surface and smack the beejeezus out of the bait. If that doesn't work, I'll throw a weighted bait, either on a jig or with a nose-weight (I like the rattling nose weights from Gambler) and jig it up and down. Often, the follower will eat the bait in a hurry.

If you are fishing a Wild Willy™ and have a follower, stop reeling, point your rod tip toward the fish and let the line go slack, the bait will turn 180 degrees and swim right into the following fish's face. It is usually met with a reaction strike where the follower just opens his mouth and eats the bait without thinking. The Wild Willy™ is the best Smallmouth bait I have ever used and the bait was designed primarily to catch following Smallies but the same action fools Muskies just as well.

All these baits have a really decent "Walking the Dog" action. However, it is not in the slightest bit mechanical as with most Muskie baits. The action is very fluid and natural and doesn't give any negative cues to the fish that it isn't food. I believe that it is this smooth fluid action that cause all-caution-to-the-wind explosive surface strikes.

If you jerk your rod tip up instead of down, water pressure hitting the flat upper surface of the bait, causes it to walk the dog subsurface. If you move the hook point a little further back in the bait, the water hitting the slightly downturned nose, causes the bait to dive like a crankbait. You can get the bait to walk the dog several feet under the water. That's something the Muskies won't have seen before!

When fish grab the bait, they won't spit them out. They swim off and eat them because they feel and taste natural, so you have plenty of time to set the hook.

We fish these baits Texas-rigged with a single offset gap worm hook. For bigger toothy critters I prefer to use 5/0 Gamakatsu Extra-wide Gap hooks for the extra 'beef' they offer. I have never had one straighten or break on me. For Bass, I usually go down to 3/0. With our system, so you can use whatever hooks you have confidence in. Call me old-fashioned but I have never been able to get down with a 40 inch plus fish thrashing around with an oversized bait dripping with treble hooks, dangerously close to my hands. This isn't an issue with these baits as you only have one hook to pop out. Often, you can remove the hook without even taking the fish out of the water. This also protects our precious resource better as the Muskies don't get hooked all over their faces and risk losing eyes, a potential kiss of death to a predator. The Muskies also don't have to endure multiple hooks being removed or cut off. The Muskie suffers minimal damage, living to fight another day.

We've also been having great success in using the Black Mamba™ baits to 'add value' to other baits. Use them as a trailer on a spinnerbait (Bass or Muskie size), they offer a bigger and more realistic profile than the spinnerbait alone. The bait also adds a little buoyancy which helps when slow rolling deep weeds. The more off-colour the water, the bigger the bait you want to use. In the dirtiest water, use a Ribbed Willy™, you can feel it pulsating through the rod as it cuts through the water. If you can feel it, the fish certainly will. The addition of a Ribbed Willy™ makes the spinnerbait a much easier target for the Muskies to find.
A Black Mamba™ Ribbed Willy™ used as a trailer on a spinnerbait.

Use them as a trailer on a buzzbait. Buzzbaits are exciting baits to use because of the surface explosions they draw but they are also low percentage baits for hooking fish. This is mainly because buzzbaits must be fished pretty fast to keep them bubbling on the surface. Unfortunately, too fast for many fish to hit them with any accuracy. The big advantage of using the Black Mamba™ baits as trailers is that you can fish the buzzbait much slower because of the extra buoyancy the bait adds. You'll catch 3 to 4 times as many fish when a buzzbait is the order of the day.

Try taking that honking treble hook off your favourite bucktail and substitute a snap swivel. Then add your Black Mamba™ bait on the hook of your choice. Voila, a weedless bucktail for buzzing across weed flats and over the tops of weeds! Never mind adding a 4 inch grub, give them a REAL meal, add a Ribbed Willy™! Not only that, but you can change baits and therefore, the colour in about 7 seconds. Not having to keep stopping to clear the crap off your lure will result in more fishing time and that equals, MORE FISH!

I gave Gord Pyzer a bunch of these baits to try out. Gord writes regularly for the In-Fisherman magazine and also for one of Canada's top magazines Outdoor Canada. Gord is a professional fishing guide up in Kenora, Ontario, Canada and guides mostly on the Woods for gargantuan Muskies. He liked these baits so much, he asked us (tongue in cheek but serious nonetheless) to hold off selling them for a year so he could keep them to himself for Bass tournaments. We sent him a few prototypes of the Magnum-sized baits for Muskies and Pike, which we will release down the road. He can't seem to wipe the smile off his face!

Another side benefit to using these baits for Muskies is that you don't have to be built like Arnold Schwarzenegger to throw them and you won't have to keep saying, "I'll be back" in broken English because you'll catch the suckers the first time!

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