Dissecting New Water

 By Evan Goetler

I am quite green to the Musky fishing world at the time of writing this. I have put my focus into these fish for roughly 2 full years, this one being my 3rd. I have had some awesome success as well as some rough lessons learned. There is something nice, though, that comes with being this naive: I am willing to try new things. 

The most successful Musky anglers I know often tell me tidbits of insight about a fish they have caught and I find myself reeling back, pardon the pun, and saying, “What the hell am I supposed to do with that information?” 

“Why in God’s name was Howie Dempsey throwing a Rat-L-Trap?” 

“I NEED TO BUY RAT-L-TRAPS!?” 

These types of things often escalate quickly in my mind… I digress 

More times than not, I think the information throws me off more than it helps, but the deeper I dive into this thought I realize it is truly a good thing to have all of these little “useless” pieces of information because at some point, they add up. 

This past 4th of July, I was up north with Matt Bright in the Phelps area. Neither of us had anything going on that weekend, and even though I would rather be dead than on the water during the 4th, this trip had appealed to me. We would be up north, which meant there was a lot of water we could utilize to avoid the usual 4th of July business that plagues lakes. 

We began the trip on Lac Vieux Desert. We moved a fish early and thought that things were looking promising. This proved to be wrong as we closed in on lunch time with no other action. We started planning and thinking. The PMTT had just been in the general area and had boated a record 91 fish. The pattern seemed to be bucktails over weeds. We discussed and ended up deciding to fish Big Sand Lake. This made sense because we, of course, knew nothing about Big Sand. (I hope you can sense my sarcasm) 

Small fish that kept our confidence going on Big Sand Lake.

We spent the first part of the afternoon trying spots we thought looked “fishy.” This consisted of shallower weeds and points, and we were moving some decent fish. We kept fishing and eventually Matt poked two 30’s on a Musky Innovations Mo Joe. Had we discovered a rubber pattern? Seemed fair to assume at the time, considering these fish came within 15 minutes of each other on the same 100 yards of shoreline. We spent the remainder of the day with Matt working deeper weed edges with rubber and I stuck with a bucktail because I could not ignore the results from the PMTT. I ended up with a small fish on a bucktail I had made and we reveled in our 3 fish day, on a lake we had never really fished. It was a win in our book, but a small one because no fish had really even broken the 35” mark. We were going back the next day and we were going to get one of those 40’s we had seen the day before but did not connect with. 

We got a few tips from our good friend, Larry “Mayor of Phelps” Emerson, about Big Sand and had some new insight and ideas to try Sunday. We immediately boated to a spot we had overlooked the day before and within roughly 30 minutes we moved a 45”-50” class fish. She was big. She was the one we wanted, and this stemmed from doing something we had ignored the day before. We never connected with that fish, but we continued to work that spot at different times throughout the rest of the day. We hit spotlock to eat lunch when I said to Matt, “You have those new rod holders, why don’t we troll for a bit?” It was the heat of the late afternoon, we were tired, and the idea of not casting for a bit seemed super appealing. We tossed on the rod holders and away we went, neither of us having any clue as to what we were doing. Matt drove and I dealt with our lines. If you have the idea that trolling is lazy, you are wrong. It is demanding and not easy. The reward for trying this was great for us. After clearing lines for what seemed like the 50th time, I set my rod back in the holder and grabbed a seat, only to be jolted back out by the line ripping off my Revo Toro NaCl. Looking back, this was clearly not weeds, but at the time I had no clue. I got up to clear the line only to find those weeds pulling back hard. Chaos set in on that boat as I was trying to figure my drag out, get the fish out of the weeds, and actually reel it in. All the while, Matt was trying to figure out if he should stop the boat, keep it moving, figure the net out, and deal with his line. 

We put that fish in the bag, a beautiful 40” chunk, that ended up being my first Wisconsin 40” class, but we wouldn’t have if we had stuck to “what we know.” We both gained some confidence in our ability to troll a bit. We still know very little, but we are both more open to trying it now. We also have a new spot that we previously overlooked. It pays to be open to new things because at the end of the day it is important to remember that those fish make all of the decisions, you just need to be there when they do.