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| Reading some of the recent discussions about very large baits, such as Ultra Dawgs, the new, larger swimming Dawg, makes me wonder about bait size and whether it is something that depends on the size of prey fish in the body of water.
For example, I have had some success with regular size Dawgs, but not much luck with Mag Dawgs. Same thing with double 10s vs 8s & 9s. A guide who fishes the chain I live on said his experience has been similar. One of my nephews who fishes on Green Bay a lot doesn't use his big baits when fishing smaller lakes in northern Wisconsin, based on past experience.
Is this a matter of the size of bait fish? We don't have ciscos, but there are suckers and good sized perch in the chain I am on. Muskies have no problem going after 12"+ suckers in the fall.
Last year I spent a lot of time throwing Mag Dawgs after getting a good reel/rod combination for big rubber and all I got out of it was some good exercise. Baits look great, lots of action but no fish. I fished the basin and breaks with Mag Dawgs, used a shallow mag Dawg over the top of weeds and everywhere in between. Just looking for ideas. |
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Posts: 1204
Location: Walker, MN | I've caught them on 2" shad raps all the way up to 15" giant lures...there's no right answer. Pressured fish see lots of 7"-10" lures, so small and XL can really shine. I usually have the luxury of 2-3 lures going at once, I take full advantage of that by experimenting with size. |
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| Masqui-ninja - 2/7/2022 12:49 PM
I've caught them on 2" shad raps all the way up to 15" giant lures...there's no right answer. Pressured fish see lots of 7"-10" lures, so small and XL can really shine. I usually have the luxury of 2-3 lures going at once, I take full advantage of that by experimenting with size.
Thanks. |
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Posts: 8722
| It's been my experience with both artificial and live bait in N/WI that it's largely lake dependent. Some lakes just don't seem to have a "big bait" bite. I guess it makes sense with the "typical" perch and panfish forage you find in the smaller less fertile waters, but it's doesn't explain why you see the same thing on the larger lakes where you have ciscoes. Generally speaking, the only advantage I've found in using the larger stuff for muskies vs double 8's, regular dawgs, and smallish suckers is you can cut down on the number of incidental pike.
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Posts: 20180
Location: oswego, il | What I find interesting is the casters on LSC.and GB have great success with giant rubber while the trollers do very well with 6" baits. |
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Posts: 1196
| I own big stuff but day in day out I do best with 6"-9" inch lures or if I catch something with a 10" Jake it's a 33 incher.
I do love my XX rods for a good hard rip! |
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| ToddM - 2/7/2022 3:06 PM
What I find interesting is the casters on LSC.and GB have great success with giant rubber while the trollers do very well with 6" baits.
Good point. My nephew who fishes GB has caught some giants there trolling the smallest jointed depth raider. Hardly any paint left on it. |
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Posts: 688
Location: Northern IL | I'm no expert on either gb or lsc but have been out on both a number of times. Smaller cranks are used because most run shallower vs larger lures. Boards are used to keep the lure from hitting the bottom and getting hung up.
Size, speed and activity level go hand and hand,,, and hand, no matter what swims in a particular body of water. Fish with large mouths such as muskie, pike and lm bass etc. will strike a larger lure or bait when given the choice, "when active" over the smaller.
Fish with smaller mouths will only strike a large lure or bait when in a highly aggresive state. When all fish are in a non chasing or dormant state they may not even hit a dead minnow, which is most of a typical fishing day.
Running large lures keep most smaller fish from hitting, running smaller lures give the fishermen a indicator to activity level. |
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Posts: 4080
Location: Elko - Lake Vermilion | I use larger lures 90% of the time because I'm after the largest fish in the system.
I've had sub 30" fish just crush a pounder or a 10-12" swim/jerk bait.
That said I'm getting to the point that the larger lures are starting to hurt this Old Guy... what's up with that !
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| Top H2O - 2/8/2022 10:41 AM
I use larger lures 90% of the time because I'm after the largest fish in the system.
I've had sub 30" fish just crush a pounder or a 10-12" swim/jerk bait.
That said I'm getting to the point that the larger lures are starting to hurt this Old Guy... what's up with that !
If I remember, you fish big water, correct? Is it a cisco based forage base? Clearly in some areas big baits are the ticket. Just have had very little luck with them on the smaller water I fish in N. WI. |
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Posts: 490
Location: NW WI | Hmmm. All good points. The thought of "Large Lazy/Wounded Prey=less calories spent per calories earned" obviously isn't a staple. The slow river water I've spent more time on than any other other body completely surprised me this year. Daytime youd hear and see central water prey fish activity,Dusk to Night the banks edges would get exploded. Water is packed with Suckers and Carp. So for the longest time I always assumed forage was Carp/Suckers/ Unknown minnows for day, Frogs and Craws when the sun goes down. Givin that the entire water is your A-Typical Bowfin Scum, I've been very Successful with strikes just on a frog. However hooking esox with a frog is fricken hard, much less landing em. So much so that myself and the few ive taken out there have dubbed this water "VENDETTA"
This year I vowed to hammer it, and I did. Hence the whole reason I joined the forum. In the past I always put down the rod and picked up the shotgun for waterfowl. I knew little of primetime musky angling.
I'm kicking myself for not writing down Vendetta's EVERYTHING (date,temp,time,lunar, weed growth cycles, fish behavior,success.etc.) but importantly what I found night angling, with moderate success, was that loads of 4" Walleye (that I never would have guessed could thrive in this water) were holding up tight to the banks at moonrise June-Aug.Which than forced the theory that those bank hits were on the walleye. So once the weeds went down in late October and subsurface to 3 ft deep was possible,I started throwing medium to big. Had 0 success. Switched up to 6" swimbait, weed demon, and mini dragon. Boom it was like a like a light switch was flipped.
Now, I understand there isn't enough solid evidence to write in stone with that tale. But it does cause me to beg the question: "How well do we know the forage?". Sure, if your specific water has had dietary studies performed,than you have ground to stand on. But we all know that ground isn't exactly solid. The normal to the black sheep of the population isn't covered with these studies. It's an average. |
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Posts: 480
Location: Northern Illinois | This is an interesting topic to me. You hear about specific colors doing well on specific lakes and the success rate of smaller baits on some lakes vs other lakes where large baits do well. I do believe there is more to it than the relative aggressiveness of the fish. On the shad based lakes I fish in Illinois, I've done better trolling with smaller baits like in St. Clair. But casting bigger baits like double 10's, big Jakes, and Shallow Invaders works too.
Edited by RLSea 2/8/2022 8:53 PM
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Posts: 455
| I would feel fine throwing a bucher 500 series in Northern Wisconsin, but wouldn't consider it in Minnesota. |
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Posts: 608
Location: S.W. WI | I have done well on small ponds in WI using baits the locals tell me are "way too big for this lake". (Like Mag Dawgs on a hundred acre lake)
I remember the early days of Cowgirls hearing "they don't work on The Chip, (or other Wi flowages) they're too big". "Small-sparse bucktails rule". That was from well known guides. Well, Cowgirls did work- and still do. (Tanner even did well on Super-Models out there)
I have seen the size I catch go up since using big bucks, Mag Dawgs, other bigger lures. Undeniable to me- the correlation. I downsize early season and on rare occasions the rest of the season. But just throwing the bigger stuff instils confidence in me that I may well catch a unicorn. Confidence rules.
Edited by Rudedog 2/10/2022 9:49 AM
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Posts: 51
| I fish the St-Lawrence lakes around Montreal... I've been fishing(trolling 90% in fall) 8"-10" cranks pretty much always and pretty much every fish I would catch were between 42-48. This fall I got myself a handful of 12-14 cranks because fall = giant bait time(right?).
I've never caught so many fish with the big baits(12+), 4 outings with 2+ fish... All under 42 inches. December 15th I go out with a friend of mine who actually guides for a living. We caught one 48" casting pounders and the bite died.. We started trolling, him with a 8" perch bait and me with a 14" Jake... He out fished me 3-0, one of them a 52.5".
This isnt alot of data to make any kind of a definitive statement, but Im starting to wonder if bigger = smaller over here.
Edited by MKevin 2/23/2022 11:38 AM
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Posts: 156
Location: Alexandria, MN | A friend of mine explained the "downsized bait" theory as follows:
"If you just polished off a huge steak dinner - complete with salad, soup, potato, vegetable, bread, and dessert, and someone walked by and offered you another full steak dinner.... you'd probably turn in down flat. However, if someone walked by and offered you a bite-sized Snickers bar, it's probably better than 50/50 you'd bite" |
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Posts: 1971
| phselect - 2/23/2022 11:52 AM
A friend of mine explained the "downsized bait" theory as follows:
"If you just polished off a huge steak dinner - complete with salad, soup, potato, vegetable, bread, and dessert, and someone walked by and offered you another full steak dinner.... you'd probably turn in down flat. However, if someone walked by and offered you a bite-sized Snickers bar, it's probably better than 50/50 you'd bite"
I've caught many muskies that clearly just took down a large meal.. a 46" comes to mind that hadn't even got a 3 pound pike down its gullet when it decided to hit my pounder...IMO muskies are NOT hitting our offerings because they feel "hunger" the way that we do..they hit double 10's for the same reason a junkie hits a crack pipe! 
Edited by IAJustin 2/23/2022 1:08 PM
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Posts: 32801
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | I have written volumes over the years here on Stimulus Response and muskies, I'm fascinated with the concept. There are so many variables it's difficult to cover in a post or two. Think a little about this; compared to living things, a lot of muskie lures have a MUCH larger footprint than body size. Hang a hydrophone over the side of the boat in a well-populated with fish area and listen hard, you won't hear much. Then run a crankbait through that area. Then a big swim bait. Then a 9" Suick. |
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Posts: 1188
| Bet you can hear that Suick half way across the lake.
For about the last 15 years, my neighborhood tiger lake, seems to be up-side down. The bigger fish seem to prefer smaller baits, and the little fish can't resist big baits. |
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Posts: 1971
| ^ I've seen the same tendency with pike - many times, especially in clear water... snot rockets will hit anything...want to really trick a 40"+ pike 9 out of 10 times throw a 4-5" black bunny strip fly in front of their face!
Edited by IAJustin 2/24/2022 11:25 AM
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Posts: 714
| Every seminar I ever did started with the statement that everything I talked about would be a generalization and rarely would just one thing be completely dominant...but there is still always a best way to approach things. So, I spent some time around Bass tourneys on Minnetonka back in what I would call it's heyday for Muskies. On average a 100 boat event would have maybe 3-5 guys who caught a Muskie on bass lures over the course of the day. A 100 boat muskie event would generally produce 15-25 Muskies. Yes location and presentation make up some of that difference but commonly the fish would be using similar locations on that lake throughout the soft water months. At least on the MN and Canadian waters I commonly fish size does seem to matter. Downsizing has it's place (meaning there are times when it may be better) but over time you would be more productive just throwing a range (small to large) of muskie sized offerings...so a smaller muskie sized lure vs a bass sized lure. On another note I remember doing a guided float trip on the Chippewa river...I was told the fish would ONLY hit small offerings and rarely hit at the boat (my guide had never seen one caught on the 8) I caught 6 that day on Super Models and four of those hit at boatside. There are tons of factors that influence what they will hit but Pressure seems to have the most impact and when your dealing will lots of it many times throwing the extremes in size and color seem to matter the most.
If your fishing water where 30" is average and a 35" fish is a big one none of these statements may apply as I have no experience on those waters.
Edited by bturg 2/24/2022 4:40 PM
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Posts: 1204
Location: Walker, MN | I'm a bit surprised that we don't hear more about A-Rigs for muskies (where legal). It seems like fish keyed on smaller baitfish would loose it over an A-Rig. I've thrown a single hook version a few times, but didn't get the timing right, went back to big stuff. |
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Posts: 206
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota | Masqui-ninja - 2/26/2022 6:57 AM
I'm a bit surprised that we don't hear more about A-Rigs for muskies (where legal). It seems like fish keyed on smaller baitfish would loose it over an A-Rig. I've thrown a single hook version a few times, but didn't get the timing right, went back to big stuff.
I’ve been thinking about the same thing. I picked up one of those muskybama a rigs and put blades on all of the outside arms and will put a swimmin dawg or Poseidon on the middle arm. Dozer blades obviously work so why wouldn’t a big dozer with multiple arms work |
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| Thought about trolling an A-rig last fall after passing over a school of bait fish that was so thick my sonar showed a false bottom. Not sure how I would rig it but something to consider. |
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Posts: 714
| FWIW I made a giant A rig a few years back when they were the rage on the bass tours. The shorter outer arms had blades and a bit farther back I rigged Dawgs, Super Models and 10's, larger cranks like 10" Jakes and similar up to 14" jakes. I trolled them quite extensively over open water in the early and mid season and never had a sniff. Different circumstances, timing, lures, etc may produce a different result for someone but at least for me that set-up is on the shelf. Jigging multiple plastics with one intrigues me but with it not legal to use multiple lures with hooks it doesn't seem viable where I fish. |
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Posts: 20180
Location: oswego, il | There's a great jigging video in Canada using shadzillas on an a-rig. I would think you could cast it too |
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Posts: 490
Location: NW WI | Made these 2 late this summer out of a heavy gauged bass rig I was given, clipped it apart and retied. The crank one was just a "ah what heck let's try it" idea. It sort-of works, obviously all that rear drag limits its wobble, but it does wiggle and tracks erratically. To my eyes anyways both setups look best retrieved with a hard pulll, short pause, switch direction and pull again. I didn't throw em a whole lot since I was normally solo and dragging live bait. But out of the little time I did throw em the 3 micro dragons saw 0 action. The crank and 2 micros setup caught a small pike that hit the crank, and a largemouth that hit a dragon. No muskies.
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