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Posts: 55
Location: SW Michigan | It's like the bane of our local lakes any more. How do you guys approach fishing it? It's like a solid mat from the surface out to the edge and creates a wall of weeds on the drop off all summer. And it propagates by breaking off, so its in its nature to do so on your lures. Saw a show this weekend with a bass guy flipping the stuff, right in the weeds & shaking his weedless lures right down in it & tearing out some nice bass. Got me thinking, but pulling a 4# bass out might be a little easier than a 40" Musky! Do you think the Muskies are right inside of it or just cruising the edges (inside & out) mostly & I should just concentrate on those? Sure gets tough on my local lake when the weeds are at their peak. Thanks
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Posts: 354
| A while back I think it was Gregg Thomas who had a pretty good article in MH on barrier vs. non-barrier weeds. The article discussed how one can approach the two with different techniques etc. It would be worth you checking it out. |
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Posts: 1023
| Last summer we hammered muskies up to 50" in milfoil and 4 - 9' of water. There are usually pockets in there. Try a J-MAC jig and trailer and fish it like a buchtail through lanes and around clumps - it will work!! This year I am going to try weedless rigged tiger tubes with a 1 ounce bullet style lead for getting into the denser stuff - we'll see what happens. A friend of mine has been getting bit off regularily on white frogs too so I also bought myself a frogzilla and a magnum propwash toad to try. |
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Posts: 1023
| One more thing: there is a lot of clear water under this weed as it tends to pile up on top - plenty of room for big fish to sit under. We were amazed at how many quality fish we hooked in this slop. We had previously avoided this type of structure and fished more classic main-lake rock-weed type areas. I think these slop muskies are largely overlooked. Mind you the lake we fish is fairly shallow with minimal rock structure. This slop produced far better than the classic deep weed edges. Hopefully the pattern holds up this summer as we hooked over a 100 skies in 7 trips last summer using only this pattern. No exaggeration. We hooked fish over 40 every day. We were very pleased being fairly new to muskie fishing. Not the 50" fatties that I see caught by the serious trophy hunters on this site but we sure had fun! |
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| fish love milfoil, just gotta goudy your casts |
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Posts: 55
Location: SW Michigan | Thanks guys.
I'll try to locate the article. Great ideas on lure selection, too. Think I'll load up on some over size flipping stuff: toads, frogs, jigs, tubes, sluggo's etc.. Sounds like fun hooking up on a short line. Might even land one!
Thats kind of the thing, once you get through the mat it opens up to perfect cover underneath. Maybe I'll carry a long stick to gouge through the stuff. Ha! |
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Posts: 373
Location: Browerville, Minnesota | Another good lure choice for the stuff is a Pearson Grinder. You will be amazed at how this will run right through the milfoil and comeback clean. We were throwing the 1 and 2.5oz baits. Great baits and they are easy on the wallet as well. |
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Posts: 8
Location: Indiana | Cast bucktails and spinnerbaits right next to this stuff!!!!! I used to fish a lake in northern Wisconsin that was loaded with this stuff. You can even use bass spinnerbaits with tail and cast it into the pockets, but sometimes it is real difficult to pull a musky out of that stuff cause its so thick. |
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Posts: 2427
Location: Ft. Wayne Indiana | Productive ways to fish Milfoil:
1. BullDawg Salad
2. S.S. Shad worked like a Suick with long pulls
3. Gliders worked at mock 10 above the "fishable" weeds |
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Posts: 2384
Location: On the X that marks the mucky spot | Edges, edges, edges! |
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Posts: 20248
Location: oswego, il | I seen a post on the shabbona lake website where they want to try and keep the dnr from spraying the invasive millfoil. Shabbazoo is probably the most fished per acre body of water in the state and I would suspect transfers a ton of the invasive weeds to other bodies of water. This lake used to have alot of coontail and some cabbage too. They need to spray these weeds. Even if the lake did not ave weeds which it always will have some specie take over, the habitat is second to no lake. |
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Posts: 929
Location: Rhinelander. | Jigssssss!!!
Heavier the better and be sure to let get to the bottom. A tactic that has been working for me to cast jig otside of it and then work it back through it. So I may be up in with the boat and cast past outer edge. Work it back to your boat then.
Pfeiff |
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Posts: 55
Location: SW Michigan | Some good ideas on working over, around & through the stuff. Last year, early then again in the fall, did really well when the weeds were down some. But hit the wall (literally) when it maxed out. Looking forward to the challenge, now.
Yeah, it's forever changed some of the lakes around here. Completely smothered out some of the native weeds. The lake behind my house was ultra clear & had scattered clumps of cabbage. Now it's completely surround by an umbrella of weeds out to 17 feet. Not a cabbage anywhere. It's made the lake more fertile, more bait fish & more predators, too. But it used to be the premiere Bluegill lake for huge slabs. Now the size is down but the numbers are up. It'll never be the same. Good and bad in everything, I guess.
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Posts: 2384
Location: On the X that marks the mucky spot | Pheiff, jigs don't work... |
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Posts: 929
Location: Rhinelander. | OH YEAH THATS RIGHT TREATS, I FORGOT.
PFEIFF |
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