T-Billy

This is how my day started. Those are my fresh tracks. Access road to a well pad. Roughly a 15% grade. Producer was slacking and hadn't touched the road. I was a mile back into the woods, and backing out wasn't an option, so I chained up and gave it a go. I spun out, then slid backward until my trailer slid over onto the shoulder and gave me enough traction to get stopped. Fortunately there was enough shoulder there for me to back down to the bottom without it getting away from me. I backed out to a wider spot, made a call, then spent 5 boring hours waiting on a plow truck to arrive and plow and cinder the way into the pad for me. Amazing how scared you can be at 3mph. I was puckered up so tight you couldn't have hammered a needle up my butt with a sledgehammer!!! Lol. #Crudehaulerlife

Seems to work pretty darn well for ya.

Grinder. I have a handful of confidence baits, and I'll most generally grind all day with one or two baits that I have confidence in for the given conditions. Most days I can be found pitching the gnarliest cover I can find with a flippin rig, and chucking a moving bait of some sort in between prime pieces of cover. The past few years, a flippin rig and a chatterbait have put more bass in the boat than everything else put together.

Say what!!!??? Hey buddy, this here's a family friendly forum!!! 🤣

He's pried at least $4k from my wallet since last August for muskie gear. He can afford all the bananas he wants. DANG!!! That escalated quickly.

I found a heck of a deal on lefty 7 speed Daiwa Lexa 400 HD's a couple weeks ago. $200 a pop on Amazon. I picked up a pair. They're $329 everywhere else. Got a couple 8'6" MH Prorex rods a couple days ago. I really like the pair of 9'5" XH's I picked up in Dec. They're a lot of muskie rod for the $. Daiwa's X45 blank construction, Fuji palming seat, and o-ring guides with a tungsten tip top. Dropped almost $400 on bucktail components and a wire twisting tool this morning at LPO. The bait monkey is small Bananas. The Muskie Monkey is a full grown silverback.

I'll second that. I thought I had broken one of my Lexa 300's last Dec. I had been battling ice all morning, and the level wind quit working altogether. A couple hours thawing out in my bibs pocket remedied it though.

Phenix Feather 7'1" ML and L. Curado BFS on both. 6# XT.

Fins, XS Big Game, really impressed me this past fall. Very smooth, strong, color fast, priced right, MADE IN AMERICA. Nothing about it I don't like. It'll be my braid for muskie and chuck n wind bass baits going forward. I think it'll be a very good braid for flip'n too, but I've got a large stockpile of 832 for that. Mono/Copoly, I've really become a YZH fan, but I've been very happy with XT and Siege as well.

As much gap as possible. I'm a big fan of straight shanks for Trigs, and 28/30 degree jigs.

Stained water = black and blue. Clear water = green pumpkin. I never use rattles.

Carp will eat em too. I've caught several. Biggest was over 13#, on 6# XT. When you see them rooting around on bottom in the shallows, toss one into the mud cloud and prepare to go for a ride. That's actually a good smallmouth pattern at times. Smallies will follow those carp around and pick off crawfish they root up.

The small 3.5" Big Bite"Yo Mamma's" are great too. Available in bulk packs at a very reasonable price.

Oh come on, it's not a drum for crying out loud!!! 😂 Even if it's a carp?

All my life. This is the mildest start to winter that I can recall. We've had some others that weren't much colder though. It's been this way all year. With last year's spring being long, and unseasonably cold, everything's been about three weeks late this year. The spawn, weed growth, the fall cool down... That carried right over into winter. Ol Man Winter is on the way though. Snow all weekend, then temps falling into single digit lows, with highs in the teens and twenty's next week. Looking like an "interesting" work week for us truck drivers.

Amen to that brother. First time I've ever been able to fish clear into January. We got a bunch of warm rain two days ago, but the extended forecast is looking like typical January. If it holds the lakes will have a lid on them by late next week.

Dunno about fish, but they'll catch woodpeckers for sure!!!

Unseasonably warm here, and all that rain yesterday brought the lakes up a foot, and warmed the inflows. Likely moving shad and muskie up onto the breaks, and suspending high in the basins, but I ain't fishin in today's 20-40 mph winds. I'll be chipping away at the winter honey-do list instead.

There's not a ton of choices in musky rods in the shorter lengths you're looking for. If 7'6" will work for you, then there's many more options. Daiwa has a 7'6" H Prorex model that should work for all the baits you mentioned and then some. I've been impressed with my 9'5" XH Prorex rods. They're a lot of rod for the $$$ IMO, $149. Their moderate taper also lends to versatility. I'm comfortable throwing everything from mid size cranks to double 10's on my XH.

First place I check these days. I just picked up a couple Daiwa Lexa 400 HD's for $200 each. $329 everywhere else I looked. I won't be ordering any more rods from them though.

I understand. I was just trying to make the point that it's easier to throw on heavier gear, and that strike detection and hooking/landing smaller fish on that rig shouldn't be an issue.

I'm throwing rigs on a 9' H muskie rod. Heavy wire 6/0 hooks. Wire is .082 and .088. 1/4 oz heads and 4.8" keitechs. I'm targeting muskie but, I've had zero issues hooking and landing bass and saugeye with it. Average cast is 80-90 feet without a ripping it, just lobbing it out there. I used to use a 7'11" flippin stick and it worked fine also, but I found it more tiring to use.

I have bass swimbait rods rated 2-8 oz and muskie rods rated 2-10 oz. Two different animals. The muskie rod is MUCH stouter. That assault stick should serve you well for throwing rigs. That additional power of the muskie rod, while not needed for fighting bass, makes chucking a rig easy compared to even XH bass rods. Sensitivity shouldn't be an issue. Rig bites generally aren't subtle. Give it a go and see what you think about it. Just make sure to set your drag appropriately for the hooks you're using.

Sometimes small details make a BIG difference. It was a super frustrating Nov/Dec for me. I was on fish. I was getting LOTS of follows, but getting bit was a struggle most days. I was having a multiple fish day here and there, just not consistently like last year. EVERYBODY is throwing rigs for muskie around here now after seeing my guide buddy's success last fall. I thought maybe that was causing the drop off in my success, but wasn't convinced because he had an epic fall on it again. Out of frustration, late in the day, on my last trip of 23, I put a 4.8 on a jig head, and the light bulb came on the instant I saw it on the first retrieve. I made a hand full of those jigs, and went right back to catching them, in 38 degree water. Small change equaled BIG effect in this case. Side note: My guide buddy and his clients boated exactly 400 muskie over 30" in 23. Talk about a "Hammer". The man is the definition of that term.

Pretty much since last August. I'm not done bass fishing by any means, but I'm finding muskie to be a whole nuther level of fun. Having a beast like this rocket up from the deep and smash your bait in the 8, literally at your feet, is HIGHLY addictive.