Storm Chasers
When muskie fishing on your favourite lakes is in the doldrums, there's a short window of opportunity that can lure out lunkers
Looks like a storm brewing," I pointed out to Bill Friday, my fishing partner. "Do you want to get off the water before it hits?"
"Let's hang in and see what happens," he answered. "Doesn't look like thunder and lightening, and it might stir up that big muskie I saw on this shoal earlier in the trip."
Three days of casting had produced a dozen big pike, but zero muskie. We'd seen five of them in the 45- to 50-plus-inch range lethargically following our bucktails, but as is often the case in muskie fishing, they were just looking, not hitting.
As we waited cautiously for the storm front to hit, Bill flung his bucktail at the shoal. The sky was darkening gradually and we could feel the wind increasing. Sheets of rain were coming down far out on the lake, so we prepared for the onset of the storm.
When it hit with full force, the rain was light, but the wind blew the lake into 3-foot swells that pushed up over the rocky shallows and broke into whitecaps. As the wind drove our lines sideways to the shoal, we struggled to cast our lures. The green buoy tossed back and forth on the rocky shoal and made manoeuvring the boat even more complicated.
Even under these difficult conditions, Bill was reluctant to give up. He'd seen before what a storm front can do to lethargic muskie. His black and orange bucktail sailed out to the windward side of the green buoy and his 30-pound Dacron line caught on its metal edges. When the line popped loose, though, a large muskie came out of deeper water and right up on the shoal to hammer the bucktail. When we finally boated the fish, it measured 51 inches by 22 inches in girth.
STORMY FACTS
Let's look at the trophy-muskie feeding cycle in Canadian Shield lakes such as Eagle and Lake of the Woods. Most muskie that reach the 50-inch mark tend to move to deep water to feed. Points, reefs, and islands adjacent to deep water harbour these large fish because they offer boulders that attract the right baitfish. However, the largest muskie frequent reefs that top out in the 15- to 25-foot range and drop down to 40 or more feet in the main lake. This is because muskie prefer to feed on cisco(lake herring), whitefish, and suckers that lack the spiny fins common to shallow-water prey such as perch and walleye. Soft, silver-sided, fatty white-bellied fish are the food of big muskie. When they finish their deep-water dinner, muskie move into shallow warm-water areas to increase their metabolic rate to help digest their food.
THE FOLLOW-UP
The fact muskie arrive in the shallows with their bellies full helps to explain why they follow anglers' baits without hitting them. Full from feeding in deep water, muskie are only visible to anglers because they're curious about the bait that's been pulled past them, so they follow it. They're not hungry.
There are several theories about why a large muskie, in the shallows to digest food, will hit a bait just as a storm front moves in, yet it refuses the same bait over and over prior to the storm's arrival. The most obvious reason could be the muskie has reached the end of its digestive cycle and is once again thinking about eating. If you can find such a fish, this is the easiest one from which to elicit a strike.
An approaching storm - and when a storm hits - creates a number of conditions that are ideal for predator fish such as muskie to be triggered to feed, even if they're relatively full from feeding in deep water and only in the shallows to digest food. Wind and rain create a surface disturbance that goes several feet deep into the water column. This causes baitfish and other aquatic organisms on shoals and in weedbeds to be dislodged from their protective areas. This makes larger forage fish that feed on the smaller fish more vulnerable to predation by muskie. Low light levels created by cloud cover of incoming storms make it easier for muskie to conceal themselves from prey fish on shoals and thus they expend less energy chasing and eating them. Opportunistic muskie instinctively take advantage of the disorganization created under the surface and will feed on high-protein food that requires little energy expenditure to capture.
BACK TO REALITY
After a storm has passed, there are a couple of reasons why muskie do not actively feed. First, they're full and revert back to warm-water metabolic digestion. Second, the opportunistic low-energy-expenditure scenario has disappeared and chasing down a meal requires too much energy for the protein intake. In either case, fishing returns to dog-day sightings with few hookups. Terminal tackle for storm-front muskie need not be elaborate or complicated. Bill and I have had great luck fishing with bucktails. The rules for colour are simple: black bucktail with a silver blade work well in clear water, while fluorescent colours such as orange or chartreuse produce well in stained waters.
USE COMMON SENSE
Extreme caution is necessary when fishing storm-front muskie. Always head in when winds cause dangerous wave conditions. Besides, thunderstorms tend to send fish deep and the danger involved negates any benefit from staying out. If, however, you've experienced the frustration of large muskie following your lure to the boat without hitting, then consider waiting for a storm front. Several days of fishless casting can suddenly turn into you catching a muskie of a lifetime.
