Stay on the search and keep an open mind for spring muskies

OK, so “muskies” and “easy” is probably a stretch. Muskies are rarely easy. But even if they’re difficult, there’s no need to make them complicated, especially early in the season.

Oh, but early season – that’s when we want so badly to complicate things.

It’s been a long offseason. You’ve read and reread every article, gone cross-eyed watching video after video on YouTube, doom-scrolled TikTok and the ‘Gram. You went to the shows, heard the seminars, and did unspeakable things to your credit score buying the latest lures and the hottest colors.

By opening day, you’ve got it all figured out. Exactly how you’ll catch them. You know the spot, the lure, the exact presentation. You. Have. A. Plan.

Who knows? Maybe it’ll even work. Even if it doesn’t, it gets one through the winter. But it doesn’t work more often than it does.

Why? Because of the nature of early-season muskies. Spring muskies are usually fairly predictable. But they’re also often very moody. Muskies spawn late, and, depending on the year and body of water, can be anywhere along a wide spectrum of seasonal transition.

Early warm spring and a shallow lake that warms up quickly? Fish may be well into early summer in terms of location. A cool, wet spring on a big, cold lake? You may be dealing with fish that are still post-spawn.

In almost any case, spring muskies are more prone to react negatively to changing or unstable weather than they are at any other point in the season. Minor weather changes that would have little effect on fish activity during more stable periods such as midsummer can send spring muskies into a funk.

MORE MUSKIE COVERAGE FROM OUTDOOR NEWS:

Targeting muskies and other big fish with classic spinners

Bemidji State University to study muskie survival, movement in Minnesota’s Leech Lake

Jeremy Smith: Time to take a pinpointed approach to managing forward-facing sonar

A simple approach

So what to do … My approach is a simple one: Focus on shallow to mid-depth flats between likely spawning areas and nearby summer habitat, and cover water to find fish in transition. Early-season muskies, especially shallow fish, tend to be scattered and can park for short periods of time on whatever structure is available.

A fish here in a patch of shallow junk weeds, another crunching bedding bluegills outside a shallow rush bed, a couple over there prowling over the tops of an emerging bed of cabbage. Another tucked into an inside turn in a still-green stand of last year’s weeds.

Accept that putting together a true pattern may be difficult, and where you find one, fish may not tell you much about where you’ll find the next one. Stay in search mode, and keep an open mind to what may hold fish, even if it doesn’t seem like a “muskie spot.”

Early-season fish have a habit of parking next to whatever random thing they bump their nose on en route from Point A to Point B. My biggest opening-day muskie ever came off the end of a shoreline rock finger in 2 feet of water. There’d never been a fish there before, or since. But that day, there was.

What lures to use

Early-season lure selection? Classics such as twitch baits, flashy minnowbaits (for a thorough discussion of early season minnowbait tactics, see this story from Steve Heiting), small glidebaits such as Phantoms, Warlocks, the Drifter Hellpuppy, or the venerable baby Reef Hawg, paddle-tail swimbaits in your favorite flavor, as well as a variety of swim jigs all have a place.

Small glidebaits in particular are good “finders.” Even if they don’t get hit, they often get fish to move and show themselves, giving you a potential target for the witching hour when the sun is hitting the trees or when weather conditions improve.

I likely throw bucktails more than most early in the season, and baits such as the classic Blue Fox Vibrax or similar baits – slender, on the small side, and usually with a French blade – have been a high-confidence bait for me for decades.

All those options have a few things in common:

• They can be cast long distances to cover water efficiently, sweeping shallow- to mid-depth flats from long range. Along with covering more water, long casts keep baits away from the boat longer. Shallow, post-spawn muskies can be spooky and boat-shy, especially in clear water.

• The have a wide speed range and can be fished erratically. Varying pace, moving vertically or horizontally, and at different layers of the water column can help you efficiently explore presentation variables to trigger fish that might not quite be in high gear.

• They tend to have at least above-average hooking percentages. To be fair, this is an important consideration any time of year. There are some baits fish love to eat but I refuse to use because I’ve missed too many fish on them. But when you’ve been waiting all winter for a bite, it’s nice to actually hook the thing

• They are all fairly low-resistance to cast and retrieve. When casting muscles aren’t quite in midseason form, easy-to-throw baits keep you focused on what you’re doing, not how much your arms or shoulders hurt.

For some reason, getting those muscles in shape takes a lot longer for me than it used to. That’s probably due to the weather or solar radiation or anything other than the fact that I’m closing in on my second 30th birthday. Whatever the case, I like baits that don’t wear me out.

All in all, keep it simple, cover water, keep an open mind, and just go fish. You waited all winter for this, so enjoy it. So put the trolling motor down and go. Don’t bend your brain trying to puzzle out the whys. There’s plenty of time for that as the season rolls along.

Muskies being what they are, the one thing that’s never in short supply are reasons to ask “why?” For today, the only answer that really matters is “because it’s muskie season.”