377 - Clayton Spiess - Mid Summer Musky Talk

So let's talk a little bit about trolling for g- you know, you, you talked about how you learned this year that maybe those fish are a lot higher up in the water column.

That's definitely something that I had seen probably, man, I don't know, I'm guessing like 20, 20 years ago.

So we were fishing northern Wisconsin and a buddy of mine, he, he didn't like trolling, so I'm like, "Okay, what we'll do is we'll cast and then like midday we'll switch over to trolling.

Like it'll just get, kinda give us a break." And I think I had like a jet ski buzz pretty much right over the top of one of my baits, and my baits were pretty high up in the water column and it like, it got ripped shortly after the, the jet ski buzzed it.

So not only do they not care about jet skis that much, but they are also very much up in the top of the water column.

Took us about a half an hour.

We put two fish in the net and I said, "Well, you wanna keep trolling or you wanna cast?" He's like, "No, I think I'd rather cast." I'm like, "Oh, okay." Like so-

[laughs]

We, we finished the day out casting and we didn't end up with anything the rest of the afternoon.

Kinda makes you wonder how many you would, we would've caught had we, uh, stuck to the trolling pat...

You know, the, that, that pattern.

But whatever.

I mean, I'm, I was, I aim to please sometimes, you know? So I was like, "All right.

Well, do whatever you want.

I don't care." And so that's what he wanted to do.

But I'm all about catching muskies.

I tell you, I tell people all the time, if we, if you're not doing it many different ways, you're missing out on, on, you know, bites, right?

That's true.

Some people don't wanna troll.

Some people don't wanna troll, and that's fine, but there's definitely, you know, trolling bites that open up and, and they're in accessible areas where it's easier to troll.

And I mean, let's be real, trolling's a pretty effective deal.

So, you know, bait-wise, is, have you f- seen a preference on things that they're eating, jointed, straight? You know, what's the, what's the deal up there?

I think this year, uh, re- it really depended on what lake we were on.

I would say jointed baits were getting more bites than, than anything really.

But our biggest fish honestly ended up on every single lake.