Clearly A Time For Livebait

Livebait may be your best bet to catch a finicky giant from ultra-clear water.

- Ryan McMahon

Fishing with suckers as bait has been a popular and effective way to catch muskies since the beginning of the sport. In late fall, fish are looking for big easy meals and what’s better than giving them the real deal?

There seems to be a good sucker bite in most Minnesota and Wisconsin lakes that I fish, maybe with the exception of the larger lakes that have large tullibee populations. I like to focus on medium-sized lakes with clear water that have good weed growth in them. Clear lakes with big muskies can be challenging to fish most times of the year, but later in the fall you will find the lake’s biggest predators in relatively predictable spots.

I have been fishing muskies for over 20 years but have only really used livebait the last seven seasons. I’ve learned so much about how these fish stalk, hunt and eat their prey. There’s definitely more than one way to skin the livebait cat, but I’ll run down how I like to do things in clear water and hopefully it can help your boat find success.

In Minnesota, I usually wait until post-turnover or water below 52 or 53 degrees, before I start using livebait. Muskies will eat a sucker in warmer water but I like to be casting and covering water quicker when water temperatures are in the upper 50s/low 60s. The sucker bite only becomes stronger once the water falls below 50 degrees. Often your best fishing will occur right after or during a cold front during which you lose three or four degrees of water temperature. You can tell the bite is good when suckers are getting eaten without any foreplay. The bobber goes down and the muskies cruise to the outer part of the breakline to start eating them.

Rigging Up