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Posts: 1
| Of course, with the advent of fall comes the proverbial sucker bite. Most of the time, I use suckers on the typical spots (weed edges, breaks, bars, rocks, etc.) However, I have been mulling around the idea of drifting open water with suckers during the fall and into late fall. Has anyone tried this? I've heard stories, and it sounds like limited success does occur. I'm just curious what others think about it. My reservation is that I usually drift super slowly with suckers, and I probably wouldn't have enough time to drift open-water zones efficiently. |
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Posts: 1341
| We hang a sucker over the side of the boat and cast up shallower over weeds and stuff, I'm a fan of moving the boat out a cast and cast where my sucker would be if I was up casting shallow. |
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Posts: 2317
Location: Chisholm, MN | If there are fish in open water, they will bite your sucker same as they would if they are shallow |
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Posts: 3861
| Sure thing. If you're allowed two lines then cast with one and hang the sucker down with the other. It's your auto-throwback bait.
I was once casting a shoreline with a quick strike sucker hanging within sight on a rod with the "clicker function". Never saw one follow up, let alone two but looked down and there they were, two upper 30"s fish nosing the terrified sucker. One finally attacked and a millisecond later the other did too and within about 3 seconds my 20" sucker was torn in half, each half hanging on a treble hook. Both muskies circled for a minute then they drifted away, out of sight and never to return. It was awesome to watch. |
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Posts: 415
Location: MN | I've tried this a limited amount on a smaller water on some small specific spots they like to suspend (holes adjacent to structure). I spotted one there last Nov and tried easing over to it with a sucker. When I got about 40-50 ft away it noticed the sucker and swam over but never ate. I casted a dussa at the next one I found and it also followed but didn't eat, so that's probably not worth much!
If you can spot them on sonar or really narrow down the search area, it seems like a reasonable presentation. I don't know about searching large areas of the basin though - that seems like a questionable gamble, considering you have three things working against you:
- low search speed
- short bite windows
- on most lakes the population isn't suspended en masse this time of year |
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Posts: 1258
| If your lake has a sheer wall, a straight drop off only a few feet from shore, break out a sandwich and turn on a football game on the radio, and do lazy circles and criss crosses from shore out to as far as 50 yards from shore. |
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Posts: 199
| Our group has done very well using sucker in open water. Our home lake has numerous humps that top off at 8' and we found the muskies like to suspend off the humps over the transition zone which runs at approximately 30 to 35 ft. During the cold front last week we had a 4 fish on suckers. 3 on release bobbers 25 feet back and one right down below the transom. Surprisingly enough we found our best bait to be a squirrely hell hound. Due to slow drop speed count to 20 seconds and retrieve using reel pops only. Much easier to throw than a huge chunk of rubber. (I'm 70) If you have the right lake with open water forage it can work great. Fish ran 39" to 44" with a 43.5 hybrid. BTW I run at typically move at .4 with a 1.5 ox egg sinker 2' above the bait. |
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