Targeting Tiger Muskie

For the sake of transparency, and to be courteous to your time, this spoiler is necessary. If you are reading this article in hopes of a fairytale ending and picture of a grip and grin with a four foot long fish you came to the wrong place, my apologies. Trust me, I am more disappointed that the picture does not exist than you are. What you will find here is an in depth explanation of my strategy when it came to chasing this coveted fish from the perspective of someone with zero background experience.

A habit of mine that has persisted from high school classrooms, to college lecture halls, and now to my office cubicle. Each detail of the experience from the location to reel size I want to set the hook with is filed in my brain as a prophecy I need to fulfill in my life. It took me a long time to build up the courage to plan and carry out one of these trips. It wasn’t until the spring of 2019 when I learned of an excellent Tiger Muskie fishing opportunity, just a eight hour ride, located in Upstate New York.

For those of you unfamiliar, the Tiger Muskie is not the fish most people think of when they hear “Muskie”, what they are referring to in that scenario is the Muskellunge. A Muskellunge is the largest fish in the Pike family, a family of large toothy freshwater predators. The Tiger Muskie is a cross between the Muskellunge and the Northern Pike. The result is a fish that can grow well over four feet long while sporting almost exotic colorations. In terms of its demeanor, it carries all the aggressiveness of its Northern Pike with the elusiveness of the Muskellunge.

Muskies are often referred to as "The fish of ten thousand casts”, wish an alias speaking to the level of difficulty and almost randomness associated with catching them. It is not uncommon, in fact I know people personally that spend half a decade chasing these fish before finally hauling their first catch into the boat. With that being said it is prudent to point out, my experience as a muskie angler is non-existent, and my plan was to drive eight hours and try and catch one in two days. Based on the background information I have provided to you, one could easily arrive at the conclusion the deck is not stacked in my favor.

When fishing, there is only so much left up to you to control, so, when it comes to a hail mary trip like this it is crucial you do the things you can control 100% correctly. This process starts well before you hook up the boat and start the truck. You must do your homework. I like to start with gathering an idea of what the fish are doing at that time of year. This means reading up on your target species behavior in relation to weather, water temperature, spawning patterns, etc. It can be a daunting task, especially when fishing a body of water far away for the first time. I typically find that your best information comes from following predictive patterns based on water temperature. What I mean by that is a simple google search for “Muskie activity in 75 degree water” would generally start you off with a good guess. Now, there are far too many external factors to follow that pattern religiously so be prepared to pivot to plan B, C, D or even E.

There is a reason the biggest advancements in the fishing industry have come in the form of devices that help anglers find the fish. In my opinion, it’s the hardest part of fishing. For that reason, when approaching a new outing I recommend coming up with a couple loose strategies based on potential scenarios you might encounter as you make your first cast. In math there exists a root finding strategy called the “Bisection Method”. In layman's terms it essentially means to go back and forth across a sweet spot in decreasing increments until you hit said sweet spot. My approach to fishing is quite similar. Say I start the trip throwing top water baits onto shallow shoals , my next move might be pitching hair jigs on deep main lake points. Those two being examples of extreme ends of the finesse to power fishing spectrum. From there I work myself towards the solution by varying levels of finesse amongst a wide range of structures in various water conditions, making tweaks until I locate a good bite. This can be a lengthy process if you are too reluctant to leave a spot, and equally destructive to your day if you jump the gun on leaving too soon. In both cases you risk missing the bite right under your nose. Unfortunately, there is no all including indicator to tell you when you have sufficiently covered a theme and method and it is time to move. It is here that experience comes into play, experience that can only be earned through fruitless hours on the water changing baits and spots. In other words, don’t be afraid to hop around and try to put a pattern together.

When it comes to picking those potential locations with greener grass, the first thing I like to do is examine a contour map of the water I’m on. For those of you like myself, who are less fortunate in the marine electronics department, i-Boating makes a great online tool to get a general idea of the bottom contour in almost every body of water.

With next to zero Tiger Muskie knowledge aside from what can be revealed in a google search I started to mark spots based on a combination of a contour plot, a satellite view of the surface, and wild guesses. The bottom contour of this body of water was relatively plain, absent of major humps, saddles, and other features that I typically look towards to hold fish. Instead, I found small unpronounced points and shallow coves where I could also see thick weeds from a satellite view. My reasoning for locating this habitat is that it provides a cooler place for the fish to hide during the heat of day while remaining in close proximity to rock bed transitions for hunting in dwindling light conditions, making an optimal position for predatory fish to set up their home range. This is a pattern I’ve applied to find bass for years, and while I recognize the tendencies between the two species are greatly different, a predatory fish is a predatory fish and in many cases you will find what is good habitat for one fish is good habitat for most fish, try not to overthink finding your spots when you are first starting out.

After I had scrutinized the minimal information available to me I was left with a handful of spots represented as “pins” in my apple maps. All that remained to do was to put the boat in the water and hope my homework pays off.

On a side note, one with better electronics on their boat could circumnavigate the pouring over of maps and satellite images and answer the question “what lies below the surface” with greater accuracy and greater ease. These resources can be a great tool to find the structure and the fish if you have access to them. Unfortunately at this time, I did not. It was my lack of these resources that also prevented me from trying to target these fish suspended in deeper water or gathered around deep weedlines. Once again, you have to make judgment calls to give yourself the best chance of success. Knowing what lies within the realm of possibilities for you and your equipment is something to consider on trips such as this. With the goal of this trip being for me to catch my first Muskie, with no prior knowledge, and not much time, I elected to keep it simple and save exploring the depths for another trip.

The next crucial element to consider is timing. Knowing when to fish what spot can make all the difference, in many cases you could have picked out a honey hole, but missed the bite window and left skunked. I find that time of year plays the biggest role in this situation, finding the coolest or warmest places (depending on ambient temperature) as the day progresses will generally put you on the fish. I figured my best shot at catching one of these fish during th hot summer months would lie in the low light windows around sunup and sun down. The water would be cool enough to make long fan casts at my targeted areas with jerkbaits, flukes, walking baits, and square bills. I selected these baits, because they allowed me to cover water quickly whilst still maintaining some level of stealth to not spook these heavily pressured fish. Most importantly as a new comer to muskie fishing, this is what I happened to already have on hand and have confidence in throwing.

I had three morning windows and two more in the evenings to make something happen, and after the first morning I was already questioning my decision to drive eight hours north on a hope and a prayer. Fortunately, my internal dialogue was silenced by the fantastic largemouth fishing I stumbled across during the long midday lull. Pitching jigs for three to five pound fish in the grass until your thumb is shredded to bits, is worth a much further drive than eight hours to me. Internally I had already begun to seriously doubt my chances of catching a Muskie, and after failing on the first two morning bites and one of two evening bites I had come close to writing off my chances of catching one at all. At that point I was mostly going through the motions just to say I tried.

By the final evening my bass thumb had propagated down both hands almost reaching my life line on either palm. I was content with my success on this trip already and saw no need to waste more time, so I strolled into the tackle shop for a bag of ice ready to call it a night when I began talking fishing with the gentleman behind the counter. It was as I was checking out that I was reminded why this lake drew me in from three states away. The store counter was coated in countless pictures of people with trophy sized tiger muskies. He picked up on my disbelief from my hanging jaw and nodded to the picture closest to the register and said, “I’ve heard they are biting pretty well on flukes the past few days”.

Fifteen minutes later I was on the water with a five inch fluke at the end of a split shot rig, trying to give these fish one last shot. A second wind had filled my sails and I was determined as ever to boat a fish like those included on the tackle shop wall.

After twenty minutes of fan casting the sun had just dipped below the horizon and while braving the onslaught of mosquitoes I felt a bite like none other I had felt before. It was one that nearly ripped the rod out of my hand followed by dead weight. On the other end of my bass rod was a fish that would play dead for a few seconds then occasionally wake up to furiously peel a few yards of line off the spool as it neared the boat. I knew this wasn't another green fish and my buddy was on a similar wavelength, and had reeled his lure in, picked up the net, and launched himself into position in one fluid motion. He was just in time too, because in a blur of violent thrashing and panic at the side of the boat the fish’s hard boney mouth had thrown the light wire worm hook just as the net came underneath it. As the water calmed and the bubbles cleared I stared down at what I estimate to be a twenty inch tiger musky safely submerged inside the net. My heart was pounding in my ears, while this fish was no wall hanger by most standards it was validation. Validation that planning a trip with a goal as arduous as this one was worth all the time and planning. The final box had been checked.

Now as I said in the beginning of this story that there is no grip and grin included, you may have been thinking that's because I went for a long drive and ended up skunked, but no, jokes on you for doubting me. However, the joke falls on me for this very embarrassing twist. As I was reaching into the net to grab the fish behind the gill plate it woke up and propelled itself 18 inches out of the net and back to freedom in open water all within the blink of an eye. Leaving with the same voracity and speed in which it came. Truthfully it was a poetic conclusion to the interaction, but I am still pretty sore about it nonetheless.

Although I missed my photo op, I am grateful for that fish, for the validation I needed on my first long fishing road trip, something far more valuable than any picture. Something that has paid itself forward tenfold in the form of many more trips since then, and even more planned for the future.