Ok so I am taking on a new challenge… I have a medium sized body of water (30ish acres) not far from my house (about 15 min. drive), that has a very good population of tiger musky in the 35-50 inch range. I’ve just finished building a very stout 10wt rig and nowI’m wanting to tie some flies… for the musky.
So my question being, who out there is just nuts enough to try and catch one of the giant beasts on a fly??? If you do happen to have the same mental instabilities as me what might you lash to a hook to try and dredge one of these guys up from the deep? I’m looking for some subsurface patterns as I have about 50 of the largest perfect poppers they make and I have a hand full of some smaller salt water poppers (8"-12" long) but I need some ideas other then tying a whole rabbit skin and a full hank of flashabou to a hook bigger then my head and the try to false cast it!
You have set a real challenge for yourself. Don’t they call Muskies the “Fish of 10,000 casts?” On a fly rod, it may have to be called the “Fish of One Million Casts.” Anyway, good luck with your new endeavor. You may tangle with some very impressive bass on your way to catching this muskie…
For subsurface flies, I have two suggestions. One, borrow shamelessly from saltwater fly tying methods, particularly those flies that are designed to imitate bunker which are big, heavy, full-bodied fish. Convert these designs for freshwater use by changing the colors to look like perch and other native fish. BTW, I don’t think that you can go wrong with a big Deceiver in native colors.
Two, tie up the biggest, meanest Woolly Bugger that you can throw in browns. black and olive to look like suckers or bullheads. Good luck. 8T
I’ve never fished for musky, but I often use a 10wt in the salt and occasionally for pike.
I’ve seen people attempt to throw some pretty hefty streamers, but for me that’s not only not much fun, I feel it’s overkill
In my opinion, you only need so much size to attract the attention of a large game fish.
The largest I go now is a 3/0 deceiver of about 7-8"
That’s a mouth full for any fish, salt or fresh, and a hell of a lot easier to cast all day than any 12’ dust mop.
For pike, I tie them in red over yellow and all black
I the salt I use all yellow or chartreuse over white
Musky will eat smaller offerings, too. Try a Clouser, sparse with synthetic to make it between 4 and 6 inches and some krstal flash or flashabou. Chartruse and White, Red and White and Black and Orange are good combos. Good luck and always remember to have a long pair of pliars.
Not crazy at all. Well, maybe a little. The big decievers, clousers, bucktail streamers, double bunnys and most of the stuff you use for bass both surface and wet will work. Not mentioned yet, use a piece of 20# mono 8 - 12 inches long for a bite tippet. These guys are not leader shy. In fact make your leader with a butt of 30#, a mid of 20#, a tip of 15#, and a bite tippet of 12" of 20#. Make the whole mess around 10 foot long.
Google – “Tube Flies” and “Snake Flies” Big flies with smaller hooks easier to cast or troll. When the big fish strikes the fly goes up the leader and its just fish and hook. I tie the tubes on hollow Q tips use a short plastic coated wire leader, single double or treble hooks. BILL
just wanted to add that if you tube fly it your best tube is the empty bic pen ink cylinder just cut in half for 2 flies. I use old guitar strings for leaders on musky,pike, pickerel,bluefish, and shark ,tough stuff. I get mine from friends who play the guitar.
Jcntheriver
I’ve caught pike on the fly. Scare the cr-p out you when they hit a Dahlberg Diver. Even scarier when you think a) you’re float tubing and b) these monsters are in the water with you.
Not crazy at all…until you hook one…
The saving grace in casting heavy Musky flies is that you generally don’t need to cast far, accurate, but not that far, at least for the structure I fish. (weed pockets, deadfalls, edges of weed beds, shoals etc) You can actually get pretty close without spooking them. I rarely cast more than 40’. Keep your loops wide and slow the stroke down a bit.
All the flies mentioned will work. A large all purple or all white wooly bugger is a pretty consistant fly. To make them long (6-8") you can use two hooks. The front is all body (I use marabou wrapped around the shank vs chenille to keep the weight/wind resistance down), and the back is half body and tail. The jointed body gives a nice wiggle when strpped and stopped. Other good combos are red/white, yellow red and yellow black. I’m sure other colours will work.
Good Luck, Let us know how you make out.
We fly fish for pike a lot and many are in the average musky size range. Several things have become real obvious: Natural colors outfish outlandish colors every time (they charge the wild fly but stop). Small sometimes works much better than huge. Long shank hooks are harder to keep in their mouths because of the leverage issues on a fish that tends to roll more than run when fighting. Articulated flies with short-shank trailers maintain hook-ups. Steel leaders are neither needed nor fun to fish.
A technique we use a lot with two people is having one cast a huge attractor while the other waits with a delicate morsel (dragonfly nymph, bunny or lake leech usually) ready to drop right in front of fish that show themselves and break off the charge. The smaller fly outfishes the larger by a huge margin.
Deerhair mice, D. Divers, bunny leeches, maribou leeches and minnow pattern streamers are our usual attractors.
art
Don’t know much about no Muskie, but them 4 legged snap’n things that live down deep love just what 8t suggests" Big and mean" GOOD LUCK I’ve caught several snappers mean and hard to bring in. GOOD SOUP Though!
Dave
Well I did the unthinkable and went bass fishing out that way with a freind and just for giggles threw a couple big double hook rigged rattle snakes. Now the worst part aboput this was I’m fishing an older Fenwick streamer 6wt. I actually hooked one and had it on for about 20 minutes or so until it ran into my backing again… and then proceeded to snap my leader like nothing when I finally decided to really try and turn his head (bad idea). But let me tell you about an adreanaline rush like nothing else I’ve ever experienced before. I watched this fish fly throught the water from 40ft away. Then come almost completely out of the water less than 10 ft from the boat to absolutlely crush my fly!!! I never even had the chance to set the hook I just held on really tight and screamed like a frightened little school girl.
As for most of the flies, I have been trying to keep the hook length to a bare minimum and have been using mostly double hook and articulated rigs with circle or octopus style hooks so I don’t run into all the problems with leverage. Yes I have been told that a musky is a fish of 10,000 casts and if you use a fly rod to multiply that by 10 to 50 but I have a really good inside edge on these fish and have them confined to a relatively small body of water (100 acres or so) and they are fairly common to see as well. I’m loving the natural colors and such idea as most of the fish I have watched feed have been feeding on schools of small crappie so I have been tying a good deal of crappie colored and sized flies. Thanks for all the input and I’ll give you all some eye candy as soon as I get one to the side of the boat.
On a sadder side note I talked to the local friendly conservation agent just yesterday and he said that the tiger musky stocking program for that lake will be discontinued due to a lack of deeper cold water that it takes for propper growth… I’m very disapointed but hopeful that I can get into them for a couple years to come in the very least
Steve,
I’ve heard from a couple of reliable sources that Mark Twain Lake has a pretty good population of pure-strain muskies. How far is that from your house?
This is easy. Tie up some clousers in larger sizes. Then, tie up some N. E. W. Bluegills, and Yellow Perch in larger sizes. You could even weight them, if needed. That should zap the muskies.
Dave, Mrk Twain is about 2-2.5 hrs. away, I have plans to fish it in the not to distant future though as I hear that those fish are very prolificand can be had rather easily.
Anyway, good luck with your new endeavor. You may tangle with some very impressive bass on your way to catching this muskie…