Number 1

Joe’s top tactic during the difficult times of 2018 was twitching suspending minnowbaits. Here’s how he did it.

- Joe Bucher

Throughout the nearly 30 years I’ve been writing for Musky Hunter, I have always tried to take you into my world of musky fishing — how I think, where I am fishing and what I am using. Check the MHM article archive and you’ll surely see I’ve covered a lot of subjects, water types and lure techniques. In this article I promise to deliver on all those fronts.

Last spring I got on a roll, so to speak, with a specific lure style and technique while bass and walleye fishing that carried right into the musky fishing season. As many of you know, I spend a significant amount of time bass fishing in early spring until our northern musky season opens. I rely on my bass fishing roots a great deal and even preach that doing a bit of bass fishing is bound to improve your musky game. Well, this might be the ultimate example of this process.

A late ice-out combined with cold early spring weather patterns kept water temperatures on the cool side in the north throughout the month of May, enabling anglers to target multiple species in a pres pawn pattern. Pike, walleyes, large mouth and small mouth bass were in close proximity to one another, and it also involved an occasional musky hook-up by accident. Often times, anglers would encounter mixed bag catches on any number of spots. Whenever this happens, some terrific fishing is bound to occur yet specific tactics always jump out as THE way to catch em. This is where I began to uncover a lure genre and its subsequent technique that simply outperformed everything else this particular spring.