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Posts: 51
| For those of you that target tigers, I am curious about your approach. Do you generally fish with the same size lures and tackle that you do for muskie or do you downsize somewhat and fish with gear more suited for northerns?
Some of the lakes around me have a healthy population of tigers and I am always torn how to approach them. |
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Posts: 444
| I like to use single #8 bladed buctails (ghost tails!), muskie size spinners like the bionic bucktail and 9" suzy suckers. |
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Posts: 82
Location: Minneapolis,Mn | No Differance,use anything and everything you would use for a pure strain muskie. A fish is a fish! |
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Posts: 208
Location: North East PA , 20 mins from Chautauqua | I did some searching about the same subject a couple of years ago and I got a lot of great tips some worked and some didn't . What I have found works for me on my local tiger lake is that nothing works very well for me early in the season I catch more pike than tigers by far most of my action picked up in early june . But with that being said I have found that casting off the deepedge worked much better that casting over top of the weedbeds . My bait of choice was a tuff shad glide bait in the brightest orange you could get and gold being 2nd best color . I tried using larger baits 10 suicks mag dawgs and other large casting baits and didn't get a sniff ,the only larger baits I had luck on was trolling baits . I picked up a few on wiley head shakers and the eight inch tuffs . I'm sure you will hear to long line troll and troll slow but the tigers will hit short lines and my avg. speed trolling was 4.5 mph. The key for me was to pound the deep edge,even set the boat ontop of the weedbed and cast outwards . Good luck and if you need more info PM me .
Lance McFeely
"THE FERD" |
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Posts: 1030
Location: APPLETON, WI | My buddy caught his PB Tiger last year on my "custom" Fleet Farm exclusive TopRaider... they're gorgeous looking fish! |
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Posts: 13688
Location: minocqua, wi. | la agua fría señor, como un pica |
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Posts: 18
| Meat (Suckers that is). Tigers love the meat! And of course Bulldawgs!
Edited by gmittlestadt 3/17/2010 3:30 PM
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| thanks for all the info. hopefully it will pay off when the season opens in a few weeks.
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Posts: 1504
Location: Oregon | In the west, much smaller baits get our tigers............bass sized stuff. Rapalas, 5 inch gliders, spinner baits, swimbaits.
RM |
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| Ask Sorno. |
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| Riverman,
Is the fact that "smaller baits" work because that is what everybody throws 90% of the time? |
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Posts: 994
Location: Minnesota: where it's tough to be a sportsfan! | I used to fish a lake that had Tigers early season. I actually went to stand up jigs and trimming down reaper tails, We'd drag them on the drops & edges like fishing Walleye almost using the Trolling motor while having the front guy casting. The guy in the back ALWAYS had twice the fish as the caster. Hope it helps |
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Posts: 51
| The spring has been a struggle to get them. Slowing down with jigs and plastics is certainly one of the changes that I was looking at for this spring. |
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Posts: 32884
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Guest,
Not necessarily, no. I fish hybrids in a few lakes around here, and find downsizing my presentations has helped in boating number AND size.
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Posts: 285
Location: NE Wisconsin | Over the years I have noticed, that like northern pike, natural tigers seem to like bright colors. |
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Posts: 1764
Location: Ogden, Ut | NY Muskie - 3/17/2010 8:54 AM
For those of you that target tigers, I am curious about your approach. Do you generally fish with the same size lures and tackle that you do for muskie or do you downsize somewhat and fish with gear more suited for northerns?
Some of the lakes around me have a healthy population of tigers and I am always torn how to approach them.
Disclaimer - info I provide is based on my experience managing and angling two reservoirs. Why just two? Cuz within 3.5 hours of my house, that's all there is. And tigers are the only Esocids, so you can't 'target' anything but them.
I have thrown baits from 3" to 14" for hundreds of hours for these critters and have trolled about 1/3 that many hours again. I do find that the fish tend to come more frequently to smaller baits (<6"). So anymore, I don't downsize - I appropriately size. If the vast majority of the forage in the system is smaller than 7" long, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to wear myself out all day pitching pounders. Sure, I'll eventually drag a big bait in front of a willing fish and it will eat, but by that time, my boat partner is likely to have had me net 3 or more on a Berkley Frenzy. I also find that my lure color choices have tended to favor naturals (or at least natural patterns w/ different colors). I do have friends that fish nearly exclusively chartreuse however. Personally, I think that in most instances, color matters more to the angler than the fish.
Spinnerbaits can be killer.
The trick is to be able to use the 'smaller' lures on tackle heavy enough. Leaders have been a particular problem for me. How do you get a J-13 Rapala to maintain any type of enticing action w/ a 130 lb. fluoro leader - which by some accounts is the absolute minimum you should leave the house with or risk being labeled irresponsible. Some of the knot-able wire products have shown promise as have slightly lighter fluoro. Also, make sure the components on the smaller gear is up to the task (split rings and hooks often need to be changed).
If I was fishing a water that had pure muskies and tigers, I wouldn't bother doing anything different I suppose. I wouldn't care much which one bit.
Your mileage may vary...
S. |
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Posts: 138
Location: Utah | sorenson - 3/19/2010 8:56 AM
How do you get a J-13 Rapala to maintain any type of enticing action w/ a 130 lb. fluoro leader - which by some accounts is the absolute minimum you should leave the house with or risk being labeled irresponsible. S.
Guess were labeled as irresponsible then as we use 'no' leaders tat all. I've been called much worse. Experiment a little and go without a leader don't know unless you try it. We're Reeled up with 65# test super braid quality bearing swivel and again never any problems with us pulling in Tiger of nice size from Pineview on the troll or on the cast. We prefer smaller profile lures but have found several traditional Musky lures of late to be very productive. Hot colors along and Neutral colors are selected all hinging on water temp and clarity. |
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Posts: 32884
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | 30# sevenstrand wire. Use it still today for some of my creatures. |
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Posts: 1764
Location: Ogden, Ut | sworrall - 3/19/2010 12:37 PM
30# sevenstrand wire. Use it still today for some of my creatures.
C'mon Steve, that's so old-fashioned. It can't possibly catch modern muskies... 
S. |
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| I use 36 lb Titanium Leaders by Stringease for tigers,my best bait at Lime Lake the first week of May is a Baby Shallow Raidere in Miller Perch color twiched at drop off edges.Also the charturse colored 6" tube by Red October Baits worked slowly like a jerkbait with 1 1/2 ounce of weight on the jig hook set up..
Capt. Larry D. Jones
www.mostlymuskies.com |
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Posts: 51
| I used to use the titanium leaders but have had almost all of them break, even the very high lb test ones. It seems like they are very susceptible to metal fatigue. |
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| Its all in how the crimping is done on Titanium leaders.Stringease does it correctly,I have never had one fail yet,but have never caught a Tiger over 44" either!
Capt. Larry D. Jones
www.mostlymuskies.com |
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Posts: 138
Location: Utah | Largest Tiger we've boated with all other sizes 45" and above including smaller without any leader was 51". Only one tackle issue was the dang bearing swivel pulling apart on the cast of a potential bertha Pineview catch. Should've listened to my little voice when pre-inspecting the gear when I noted the bearing snap swivel looked iffy...my irresponsibility as I didn't change it out right then. And of course on that early spring outing I lost a bertha took the offerings right at the brush edge and off it went. Got the fish stopped and turned around felt a couple of head shakes and fish dove...then line went slack. Reeled up to find that dang bearing swivel pulled apart. Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Lesson learned on my part if the tackle looks iffy take the time and R2 it. |
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Posts: 2515
Location: Waukesha & Land O Lakes, WI | My advice is to fish harder in the dog days of summer rather than 2-3 hours and packing it in for cocktails. Because a Tiger is part northern, they handle warmer water better than a straight musky. Some of the nicest Hybrids I've seen were caught in August. |
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Posts: 1207
Location: Pigeon Forge TN. | Washington State has Tigers, you can get a wealth of info from their site on Tigers at htp://www.wafish.com/
Edited by Stan Durst 1 3/31/2010 7:07 AM
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| Gander Mt Guide - 3/22/2010 8:18 PM
My advice is to fish harder in the dog days of summer rather than 2-3 hours and packing it in for cocktails. Because a Tiger is part northern, they handle warmer water better than a straight musky. Some of the nicest Hybrids I've seen were caught in August.
This doesn't seem accurate. My understanding is that muskies handle warm water better than pike. Big pike go deep or to a cool water source when water temps get to or slightly over 60 degrees. Is that correct? Muskies can tolerate more than this. Warner temps. If this is true, then it seems to follow logically, that muskie-pike hybrids, "tiger muskies," would tend to favor cooler water than pure maskinonge. But I would tell you that I have had tiger action in Southwest PA in late July and mid-August, but it has been at 20 feet. Interesting. |
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