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Posts: 1906
Location: Oconto Falls, WI | This past weekend was the National Championship Musky Open tournament in Eagle River, WI. Over 1200 anglers took part in the tournament, and what I found interesting was to hear the patterns of the anglers that were catching fish. There was a pretty obvious pattern in with that brought home hardware as well as those that didn’t quite get enough fish to bring hardware home. To place in the top 6 you had to boat at least three fish yourself, and then not even that was enough as there were several anglers that boated three fish that didn’t get in the top six.
So what was the pattern? Rubber. Well that’s no shocker to most of you I am sure, but it doesn’t end there. The effective method of fishing that rubber was key and that was to fish it slow rather than fast and erratic. There were a lot of good sticks in the tournament that didn’t do so well and threw rubber but what they were doing differently was they worked the rubber hard and fast. A lot of times that is very productive, but this past weekend that was not the case.
Our boat did fairly well with my brother and I boating 5 fish, losing two more, and missing 5 fish on the hookset (they hit but when you set the hook they were not there). The lake we were on is a notoriously good rubber lake and the winner has come from this lake many times in the past. However what was crazy is we boated 5 of the 8 fish registered on our lake. So what was the difference for us? Hardheads! It wasn’t until people were hearing we were getting our fish on Hardheads that they started using them. By then it was too late. We were the only two throwing hardheads, and also fishing them slow and fairly non-aggressive. I firmly believe it made the difference. The compact design of the Hardhead is a much different look than the standard bulldawg and in a tough bite I think different mattered. Throw on top of that we could control our drop rate (several ate on the drop) and make it drop as slow as we wanted we were continually tweaking the bait to make the fish eat. I ran the Hardheads with much less weight than I normally do.
I started the tourney in great shape boating two decent fish in the first half day, and by the end of the day lost another and missed another on a hookset. My brother on the other hand was being stubborn and did not want to throw the hardhead and thus his day resulted in no fish. Sat morning started with me losing a big fish in the first 1 ½ hours, and it was then he finally gave in to using a hardhead. I made the mistake of taking the hot color off to throw the fish a different color and he snatched it up. How the tides turned! By the end of day two he put two quality fish in the net, and I couldn’t add to my total. Sun. he was certain to put a hardhead on, and he ended up putting a third fish in the net catapulting him into 3rd place overall. That was a pretty dramatic turnaround from day one to day three all a result of switching to throwing a Hardhead. While I didn't place with my two fish I did snatch up the Big Fish award for our lake family with that fish being caught on a Hardhead after we saw the fish porpoise.
So I just thought I would share with some of you that were in our lake group that couldn’t figure out how we were getting fish. The two keys were throwing Hardheads, and fishing them in a manner that most people don’t throw rubber now days and that is non-aggressively.
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Posts: 114
Location: Kingston, Ontario | Interesting story. What was your depth control like to catch fish? Close to bottom? |
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Posts: 1906
Location: Oconto Falls, WI | Good question. We found that you couldn’t base where you worked in the column off of one fish. We contacted fish from the surface all the way to the bottom. So we continually mixed up where we worked the baits. As far as where we fish we were fishing deep weedlines and just outside of them. Some fish came right off the weeds and some came out away from them on clean bottom. We caught fish anywhere from 12’ (right on the edge) out to 18’ (clean bottom). |
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Posts: 620
Location: Seymour, WI | Great report Travis, Congratulations again to you & Shawn! |
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Location: Ontario | Good on you guys!
Still trying to convince my local fish to bite HH 
Edited by lifeisfun 8/19/2013 1:29 PM
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| Travis, congrats to you and your brother on the nice showing against a very large field. Your story suggests color may have played as much of a role as anything in your success. Thoughts around that? If it was the lure itself, wouldn't any color have done the same job? Reason I'm asking is that I have been seeing very specific color preferences of the same (plastic mass produced) lures of late. It's stupid how the fish will react so differently to the same bait of different colors.
Brian |
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Posts: 1036
| Congrats on the great tournament! And thank you for the write up, very informative. |
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Posts: 833
| Did you find any specific action / movements were necessary to trigger the strikes? |
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| what were the other top 5 winners getting their fish on? |
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| So what was the hot color? Probably one of the vast number Roger used to offer. Phantom only has a few colors. I like the Hardhead a lot but when I let it sink freely even for a few seconds, it seems to often tangle in the leader. I need to keep the front of it pointed toward me even from the moment of splashdown. I'm using the smaller version and unweighted but also have the larger one with a lot of weight. |
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Posts: 941
Location: Freedom, WI | Guest - Type of leader? Probably to free fall, if not using any weight it would be sinking pretty slow tail up. I would suggest keeping the line a little tighter, they do often hit on the fall and if to much slack you would not feel the hit. You could also turn the tail down as it would give it a more nose down sink. |
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Posts: 1906
Location: Oconto Falls, WI | Brad P - 8/19/2013 4:02 PM
Did you find any specific action / movements were necessary to trigger the strikes?
Like any other rubber bait either a drop or right after the pull. Although I had two hit the hit while slowly reeling. Those however were not there when I set. |
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Posts: 1906
Location: Oconto Falls, WI | 123 - 8/19/2013 1:23 PM
Travis, congrats to you and your brother on the nice showing against a very large field. Your story suggests color may have played as much of a role as anything in your success. Thoughts around that? If it was the lure itself, wouldn't any color have done the same job? Reason I'm asking is that I have been seeing very specific color preferences of the same (plastic mass produced) lures of late. It's stupid how the fish will react so differently to the same bait of different colors.
Brian
We had three different Hardheads that were getting action so I don't believe it was solely a particular color. One did get most of the action, but that one also spent the least amount of time out of the water. |
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Posts: 1906
Location: Oconto Falls, WI | Guest - 8/19/2013 4:12 PM
what were the other top 5 winners getting their fish on?
1st was a depthraider
2nd was bucktails
3rd was Hardhead
4th was Bulldawgs and Medussas (although all of his I think were caught on a dawg)
5th ???
6th???
I believe either 5th or 6th were also dawgs/medussas, or maybe both were but I don't remember now.
Lots of others that caught fish were on rubber of some sort. Like I said above our success came on Hardheads, and what we had in common with the others from what I was hearing was fishing our baits slow. I am curious to know if the 1st and 2nd place winners were fishing their baits slow or faster. |
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Posts: 1906
Location: Oconto Falls, WI | Guest - 8/19/2013 4:30 PM
So what was the hot color? Probably one of the vast number Roger used to offer. Phantom only has a few colors. I like the Hardhead a lot but when I let it sink freely even for a few seconds, it seems to often tangle in the leader. I need to keep the front of it pointed toward me even from the moment of splashdown. I'm using the smaller version and unweighted but also have the larger one with a lot of weight.
Hot colors were natural. They all had lots of black in them. I'll leave it at that as I have to keep something to ourselves.  If you were at the Awards ceramony I believe Shawn said what the most productive color was.
I am sure Todd and Phantom will have great colors that produce fish. His patterns always have been fish catching colors.
As far as tangling in the leader. I use both single solid strand and flouro leaders. I rarely have issues with the bait fouling on the drop. Just like any other rubber it works best to "lay it out" at the end of your cast. Simply thumb it a little bit at the end to make the tail swing away from you and have the head point at you. Try not to let it tumble in the air on the cast otherwise it could also catch the leader in the air. As Roger mentioned it also helps to keep a semi tight line on the drop. You should be doing this anyway as many fish will hit on the drop and you can tell much quicker with a tight line. Best way is once the bait hits the water slowly reel to the point of when the line tightens.
If you still catch the leader then the front hook may be too big. Go down one size and try it. I get this once in awhile on the Bucketheads (now Magnum Hardheads with Phantom) if I go up to 9/0 or a 10/0 hook.
Edited by CiscoKid 8/19/2013 7:03 PM
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| Roger and Travis, thanks for the feedback from experts. I'm using single strand steel leaders and do keep the nose of the bait pointed toward me. I may need to use some weight to let the bait run deeper while still reeling enough to keep the nose pointed toward me. I've been using the bullhead model with a yellow tail. Maybe a black tail would be better. |
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Posts: 696
Location: Northern Illinois | Great info!...Anyone know if there is a spot to see the results? Link? |
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Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Excellent report, thanks! I gotta get me one of those baits. |
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Location: Madtown, WI | Congrats guys!!!! |
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Posts: 104
Location: Grantsburg, Wisc | sworrall - 8/19/2013 9:11 PM
Excellent report, thanks! I gotta get me one of those baits.
X 2 !!!!! |
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Posts: 20218
Location: oswego, il | great story travis! I do have a question regarding tactics. what made you decide to slow your baits during a warm water period? were you first working them fast then change? it does go against conventional thinking of working baits fast and aggressive and catching them in a feeding window. second place caught fish on bucktails, slow or fast? this is a great thread! |
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Posts: 1906
Location: Oconto Falls, WI | Todd our decision to go slow was based on two things. First I spent the first hour tossing topwater and it did little. So I decided to slide out deeper. My decision to go slow was based on my thoguht that the water temps had just spent over a week dropping continuously to the high 60's. Although it was warm for the tournament I figured the quick cool down followed by the quick warm days may have the fish in a funk. Throwing that topwater early in prime conditions solidified my reasoning enough for me to go slower.
On top of that it helps that my naturual tendency is to fish much slower than most. That's why I wanted to start this thread as I know the tendency for others is to naturually fish fast. So when the fish want it slower I do better, but when the fish want it fast I actually tend to struggle a bit. Point being is pay attention to what the fish are telling you and be willing to adapt. |
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Posts: 5874
| Great thread. You just don't get this kind of useful info anywhere else. Congrats and thanks to Travis and Roger.
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| Did the winners use these baits or did they manage to win without this bait? |
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Posts: 81
| Congrats. Sounds like I need to pick some of these up |
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Posts: 1906
Location: Oconto Falls, WI | BenR - 8/20/2013 7:22 PM
Did the winners use these baits or did they manage to win without this bait?
Ben read above as I listed what the winner used. Also read my initial post where I said the Hardhead is what we used. |
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Posts: 20218
Location: oswego, il | travis, second place used bucktails. imho they were fishing fast. I tend to fish fast and with erratic baits. when you think about it, a muskies behavior towards suckers bears out your aproach most often. great discussion. I wonder how much forage base conditioning plays as a factor too. I fish mostly shad based water, erratic fish.
Edited by ToddM 8/20/2013 9:23 PM
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Posts: 24
| Travis, were you working your hardheads similar to a bulldawg? A jerk-pause type of action or were you letting them sink to the bottom and then working them? I haven't caught a fish on a hardhead yet but have caught most of mine on dawgs and was curious as to how you typically work your hardheads. |
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Posts: 1906
Location: Oconto Falls, WI | Todd I guess 2nd place got one fish on bucktails, and three on rubber. That tells me they probably slowed down but that is an assumption. Forage base may have something to do with it, or it may not.
RangerDanger I fish my Hardheads with more reeling than jerks. Typical cast sequence at splashdown is to let it sink a bit, give it a "pop", reel for awhile and then give it a pop, continue reeling and just stop reeling, reel to boat and then give it several jigs boatside. The number of pops and stops during a retrieve is continually changed. Sometimes I let it drop after a pop which is deadly. Sometimes I let it drop all the way to the bottom, and sometimes I start the retrieve right at splash down. A "pop" is more than a pull, but less than a rip. It's a pull with a crisp stop if you want to think of it that way.
This is what works for us but I am sure there are many other techniques that work as well. |
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| The winner caught her four fish on a Depthraider. |
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Posts: 1906
Location: Oconto Falls, WI | Guest - 8/21/2013 7:33 AM
The winner caught her four fish on a Depthraider.
Thanks for confirming what I already mentioned above. |
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Posts: 504
Location: Ludington, MI | Well, you convinced me, Travis. Hardhead ordered this morning from Thornes. That is a hell of a sale they're having. |
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Posts: 104
Location: Grantsburg, Wisc | tundrawalker00 - 8/24/2013 6:55 AM
Well, you convinced me, Travis. Hardhead ordered this morning from Thornes. That is a hell of a sale they're having.
LOL....
I did the same thing and received them already. |
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Hardhead Crucial to Tournament Success