T-Billy

👆This. Muskie baits are still very much a cottage industry as well. A large percentage of them are handcrafted in small shops here in the USA and Canada. Nah. Lots get caught while fishing for other species, but not in the numbers that muskie anglers catch them.

Update: We got around 5" overnight and the DOT plow crew apparently decided to sleep through it. I drove about five miles of snowy slippery mess, turned around, came home, and called off. I don't care if every well in the Utica shuts in, this guy ain't hauling crude in that mess.

When it comes to bass in lakes, it drifts back and forth between LM and SM as the years go by. That said, river SM will always be king. Big river brownies in current are quite a handful. My favorite species available to me locally is the muskie, and second place ain't even close.

@TnRiver46 you need one of these rigs.

Same here this morning, luckily not much wind. Supposed to be around 20 when I start work at 04:00 tomorrow morning, but they're calling for 3"-5" overnight. Good chance I'll be throwing chains to get into my first well pad. Booo..........

This is key. I don't have wide feet, but I buy wide cold weather boots. Gotta have some insulating air space in there even when wearing wool socks. Preach it brother. It ain't easy getting two inches of wiener out through six inches of clothes. Err... Uh... So I hear...........😂

Good to hear. Thanks for the update. Continued prayers................

Wooo.... Gotta dig deep in the wallet come re-tube time.

I became a big Owner fan this past year. ST-36 in 1/0 - 3/0 have served me very well on my smaller muskie cranks. They're easy to get sticky sharp and are super strong for their wire diameter. I feel your pain on the lost footage. I was standing on the front deck with my PB LM in hand when I realized the digital camera was home on the computer desk. I had left it there the previous weekend after uploading pics of my new PB caught that day. 🤦‍♂️This was prior to me carrying a phone.

You should try that in a crude transport if ya really wanna have a good time!!! It's extra super fun when your trailer starts trying to pass you!!! 😂 It's looking like we're gonna get a real winter in OH this year. I'm guessing mid March before the lids come off the lakes if the extended forecast holds.

Well said, and I couldn't agree more. It was a frustrating search for me, but well worth the effort and $$$. The nighttime chatterbait bite that goes down starting when the water gets up to about 70 in late May/Early June, is my favorite way to catch them, followed closely by pitching the thick stuff.

👆This is the correct answer. The only way to find out if that stick works for you is to go fish it. I'm personally in the heavy power, moderate action and braid camp. I landed there after trying a bunch of different setups. The braid gives me solid hooksets at long distance, and the mod taper keeps 'em pinned. I lose a lot of fish throwing a CB on faster rods, but some others don't seem to have that problem.

Beaver. Double tail grub.

Too close. It was about 1/4 mile away when we first saw it and it looked to be coming straight at us. I pulled the baits up and jumped in the back and started the motor thinking I'd try to run from it, but it had already disappeared in the sheets of rain, so we just sat tight rather than running further from shore. We regained sight of it just after it hit the marina dock and we watched it tear across the lake and into the woods on the other side. The whole ordeal went down in less than a minute. I seem to be a tornado magnet. 😂 The wife and I ended up within 100yds of an F1 years ago on our way home from fishing, and we had an F3 skip over our house and touch back down a block over. We looked right up into the eye of that one. There were pieces of houses and big tree limbs swirling around hundreds of feet in the air. That one kept skipping all the way through town. The street crews were a couple weeks cleaning up all the downed trees. It splintered giant oaks and maples like they were nothing and tore a bunch of roofs off.

Dang, that was a crazy video!!! Glad they're OK. My oldest granddaughter and I were just around the point from the Leesville Marina when this one came through last spring. It missed us by just over 100yds. We had had rain on and off all day, but there had been no thunderstorms or anything to indicate a tornado was even possible for probably 7hrs or so. We saw it coming from over a hill then lost it in the rain. It must have lifted up then touched back down at the marina. Lucky for us it was just a small F1. Still... Major pucker factor. The untitled place mark on the right is on the dock destroyed in the video. The place mark on the left was our location. Yes @Susky River Rat , we were muskie fishing. 😂

Atta boy!!! Keep grindin. They gotta eat sooner or later.

Git'n yourself a little taste of muskie fishing. 😂

Yer fixin to get cuffed and stuffed when the North Woods Wardrobe Warden sees this. 😂

See you in March.......... On second thought, March will be all about ice out muskie. See you in April. 😉

Absolutely. You either have to get good at sharpening hooks, or get used to losing a lot of fish. Heck, even with sharp hooks you're gonna lose a much higher percentage than any other species I've ever fished for. Those big head shakes are effective at throwing hooks.

This is a good point. I've found VMC's to be particularly susceptible to this. They require a light touch even with a "smooth" file. The Swiss #4 cut is finer than a US "smooth" file and is just the right coarseness IMO. I also find the diamond shape of many hook files like the Luhr-Jensen and Rapala files awkward and much prefer a flat file. It also pays to purchase a quality file. This is one tool where you'll generally get what you pay for.

Amen brother.

I've tried several files on several different brands and styles of hooks, most chemically sharpened. I've found a Swiss #4 cut file to work best. It'll get them sharper than new without removing too much material.

One thing in our favor is the limited number of lakes. They only stock muskie in 9 lakes in OH so it's not like trying to stock the vast number of lakes y'all have up north. They've been stocking since 1953, and in 1982 began stocking "advanced fingerlings" averaging 10", because the survival rates are much better than fry or smaller fingerlings. Muskie fishing here is also growing in popularity. Time will tell, but the ODNR does a great job compared to the DNR's in many other states. Not just with muskie, but with hunting and fishing overall.

Thanks. We're really blessed with an excellent stocking program here in OH. We have no meaningful natural reproduction and are completely reliant on stocking by the ODNR. Hopefully they're able to continue the current stocking rate going forward to maintain our current population density. They stock at a rate of roughly one fish per acre in our 9 muskie lakes. Of course some of those are lost to predation, but we have very good population densities. I know they had a significant shortfall last year covering the cost of feeder minnows. The Ohio Huskie Muskie Club has a minnow fund that most of us members donate to, and the club also makes donations. I believe Muskies Inc. does the same. ODNR also has a tagging program, and the Muskie Angler Log, where anglers can log their catches to help them monitor size structure and catch rates at each body of water. A couple things I feel pretty good about are my average size, 37", and my 19 huskies in 2024. ODNR calls muskie 42" or greater Huskie Muskie, so roughly 20% of my fish qualify as Huskies. I feel like that's a pretty solid rate.