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Posts: 8831
| So...
I've been at this muskie game for 9 years now. Samantha has been at it for 3. She is fully englufed in the "lure-stupid" phase. They are like shoes to her - has to have every one in every color. I went through it. I get it. I went to a muskie show in 2006 and bought some 50 lures. I am to the point now where less is more. I've been selling stuff at the swaps, giving it away (I gave her some 30 lures or so), and just plain leaving a lot of them at home most of the time. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what lures to use when and where under what conditions. Looking at her stuff and my stuff all in the same place? Holy stupid. We probably have 500 lures between us. I have a good 20 that I have caught fish on, and another 20 that I have for certain places, times, and conditions.
All in all, I can put everything I would ever need in one lakewood and be done.
We've all talked about the bare minimum, 10 lures that would do everything you need, etc. But what do you really think you would need, to fish anywhere, under any conditions, at any time of the year, and have your bases covered?
I've looked at everything we have between us, and I got to 30. For the two of us. I could scale it down to 30 lures, and be prepared to fish spring, summer, and fall, on any lake of any size, any type of water, under aqny conditions, and be able to pick a lure that's appropriate to that body of water/color of water/time of year/water temp/type of structure, and a lure for someone else to throw.
It's fun to have a wall of lures, and have a color for this lake or that lake or lures you only throw in May or November. But if I had to live the rest of my life with 30 lures, I could do it and be confident that I could do everything I ever wanted to do, with the possible exception of trolling.
What's your magic number? |
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Location: Eastern Ontario | I could do 10 for casting and 10 for trolling and some of them wouldn't get wet very often. I find I seldom use more than 5 or 6 on any given day. If I started fishing all the lures I own tomorrow and fished each for an hour I probably wouldn't live long enough to get them all wet....how stupid is that.. the excuse I use is a lot came off raffle tables
Edited by horsehunter 8/6/2012 7:23 PM
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Posts: 537
Location: Gilberts IL/Rhinelander WI | Is this not taking in to account that lure get damaged often after one fish. Buck tails get bent and don't spin , dawgs get ripped cranks get broken , etc. So is this 30 types of lures not including back-ups? I bring around 150 in the boat, but a lot of the same ones. Probably around 30. |
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Posts: 532
Location: Ogden, UTAH 10 minutes from pineview reservoir | just curious what the 30 you would use are? if you wanna let us know at least |
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Posts: 4266
| I tried to scale down the size and quantity of boxes and lures that my daughter and I took on a 2 week vacation to Vermillion the last week of June/first week of July and wound up unprepared. We were also targeting Smallies and Bluegills, so one compartment was all Plano boxes of Smallie cranks etc, and a soft-sider of all jigs/plastics.
With the hot weather, I was unprepared to be trolling open water through schools of Whitefish that were gorging on Mayflies. The trolling lures that I had either ran too deep, or were nowhere near the 12"+ length that I should have had for trolling open water.
I might own more lures than I'll ever use, but the better I get at making lures, the more you'll be seeing at swap meets. Shooting for a boat loaded with 75%+ of the lures being ho-made.
On a weekend, I could get by with 30-50, but for a 2 week vacation, I'm taking as many as I can fit in the boat, because you never know what the fish will be doing.
Beaver |
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Posts: 2754
Location: Mauston, Wisconsin | Beaver - 8/6/2012 8:17 PM
I tried to scale down the size and quantity of boxes and lures that my daughter and I took on a 2 week vacation to Vermillion the last week of June/first week of July and wound up unprepared. We were also targeting Smallies and Bluegills, so one compartment was all Plano boxes of Smallie cranks etc, and a soft-sider of all jigs/plastics.
With the hot weather, I was unprepared to be trolling open water through schools of Whitefish that were gorging on Mayflies. The trolling lures that I had either ran too deep, or were nowhere near the 12"+ length that I should have had for trolling open water.
I might own more lures than I'll ever use, but the better I get at making lures, the more you'll be seeing at swap meets. Shooting for a boat loaded with 75%+ of the lures being ho-made.
On a weekend, I could get by with 30-50, but for a 2 week vacation, I'm taking as many as I can fit in the boat, because you never know what the fish will be doing.
Beaver
Ditto!
Have fun!
Al. |
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Posts: 395
Location: NW WI | Give me one dark water and one clear water lure in the following class and I'm a happy camper:
1. Surface bait
2. Bucktail
3. Jerk bait
4. Twitch bait
5. Crank bait
6. Glide bait
7. Bull Dawg type lure
So it's 14 lures for me. |
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Posts: 1749
Location: Mt. Zion, IL | I tend to be a crankbait fiend. I have different baits (for running depths, not action). I have a select few colors typically natural and a hot color in most every bait. I also usually am packing for a guest whether it be my wife or friend so with some baits this means 4 of each for when we get on the hot bite. I have a lakewood monster full of crankbaits and it goes with me to any type of lake. |
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Posts: 8831
| MuskieCat94 - 8/6/2012 7:49 PM
just curious what the 30 you would use are? if you wanna let us know at least
It's a simple as this:
1. Big/Slow Walk the dog (Weagle)
2. Small/Fast Walk th Dog (jackpot)
3. Tail Prop (Top Raider)
4-5. Shallow Running Crank (Shallow Raider)
6-7. Deep Running Crank (Depthraider)
8-9. Crank/Twitch (Grandma)
10-11. Suspending/Twitch (DDD)
12-13. Rubber (Bulldawg)
14-15. Double 10 (Cowgirl)
16-17. Double 8 (Shumway Flasher)
18-19. Spinnerbait (Grim Reaper)
20-21. Weighted Jerkbait (Suick)
22-23. Unweighted Jerkbait (Suick)
24-25. Side to side glider (Phantom)
26-27. Erratic Glider (Sq. Wabull)
28-29. Bondy Bait
30. Fuzzy Duzzit
For all but the surface lures, and #30, I'd have a bright (dark/stained water) and a natural color of each. 30 lures. Done.
It's always good to have backups for the stuff that gets trashed, and some fun colors, maybe different sizes of some lures, but I'm pretty confident that 30 lures would do it. If I was a troller, I'd probably say 50. |
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Posts: 1220
| I fished a tournament recently with a guy who makes baits as his main job. He showed up at my boat with one (only one) small plano box and two rods. (I was impressed) Usually, you see a boat partner making six trips back to his truck and your stomach sinking at the idea of whether you will get the boat on plane. I said,"Now there's a confident man!" He responded, "If you can't catch a fish on what's in this box, you can't catch a fish!" Then he said something I totally know is true, "Most guys bring everything they own...and then they end up fishing with the same FIVE baits!" To me, musky fishing is (more or less) who can keep a quality bait moving through quality water. Clearly, a lot goes into that but spending a lot of your day looking for a miracle inside your bait box takes away from it. It's like trying to catch a fish while you are running around all over the lake with the big motor. Like Tom Gelb says at his seminars, "There's a time during the day when a beer can with two hooks on it will catch you a fish." The trick is to be fishing when that happens, and any bait you've used on that lake that actually caught you a musky will likely catch you another one! |
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Posts: 415
| 90% of the time I can get away with just 3-5 lures. It is however, that 10% of the time when the fish aren't where I think they'll be or not reacting to my usual 3-5 lures that make me bring 100+. Some of my best trips every year come during that 10% of the time with a lure I wouldn't have with me if I limited myself to the bare essentials.
Edited by Ja Rule 8/7/2012 1:43 PM
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Posts: 4343
Location: Smith Creek | The rapper is right on.
Last year there were 3 of us in a boat, all using lures proven to catch fish on the lake we were on. We were getting spanked, no lookers no eaters. My brother who fishes muskies one week out of the year pulls out the Flying Witch. I told him to put that darned thing away and keep casting his "proven" bait, the fish will turn on and he doesn't want to be casting that turd when they do. For some reason and it may have been the first time in his life he heeded my advice. Third guy in the boat knows better than to take my advice and clips on his own rarely used Flying Witch and caught a 39 and 45 within 15 minutes of clipping that ugly turd on.
Obviously no one who was in that boat listens to me anymore. With good reason.
So I bring proven baits but make sure to bring some oddballs too.
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Posts: 200
Location: Minnesota | Wait a minute. So someone has actually caught a fish on a flying witch? I thought that was more of a gag for rookie fishermen with lure-itis. |
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Posts: 415
| Flambeauski - 8/7/2012 3:25 PM
The rapper is right on.
Haha, I like that someone actually knows who I am. I figured most of the old crumudgeons on this board would have no clue who I was. (Not saying you are one of them) I was also a really good actor, ever see Fast and the Furious? |
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Posts: 32930
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Was? |
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Posts: 470
Location: Blaine, MN | Ja Rule - 8/8/2012 7:45 AM
Flambeauski - 8/7/2012 3:25 PM
The rapper is right on.
Haha, I like that someone actually knows who I am. I figured most of the old crumudgeons on this board would have no clue who I was. (Not saying you are one of them ) I was also a really good actor, ever see Fast and the Furious?
I thought that was Tyrese? |
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Posts: 532
Location: Ogden, UTAH 10 minutes from pineview reservoir | tyrese or ludacris? |
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Posts: 415
| http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWJmVAQJK58
The first Fast and Furious |
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Posts: 334
Location: Madison, WI | "I live my life one cast at a time, Nothing else matters, not the mortgage, not the family and all their Bullspit, for that 1 minute or less, im free" - Vin Diesel's quote, slightly modified for muskiefirst folks  |
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