Got fish?

When I was young, I would see others fishing near me and they would catch tons of fish while I catch hardly any. I was about to go insane and realized this guy knew where these fish were. He didn’t have a ranger, a depth finder, and fancy lures. He just had a sheet of all of the depth mapped out in the lake I was fishing in. He just pointed them out and fished the fish out of it. He found weed beds by seeing through the clear water, while I was fishing on sandy grounds where nothing but perch would bite if you were lucky. So I studied how to fish through trial and error. Eventually I got to a point where if I took a rookie out to fish, I would get five before they even get one. It is all about indication where the depth is, oxidation levels, drop offs, structure, and the lures you are using. Other people would just depend on worms. There are variety of fish I go after, but the ones I mainly go after is the Muskie and northerns. They hang out on top of the weed beds when the barometer is in the 29 range and when it’s cloudy and less UV rays out, it’s all about common sense, fish sense. You would likely use blazing neon lures in clear water over those weed beds, and when it is murky, chances are good to catch one if you use darker colored lures, mepps, spinners, and non- crank bait lures work best. Jerk baits work the best when it is an unusually calm morning or evening only with any color. When it’s really cold they are in the bottom zone feeding on perch, so you could use crank baits and troll around the weed beds where they disappear. The image below is an example of the weed bed area, where the pan fish are inside of to protect themselves from big game fish that I am after. To catch muskies you should troll in the empty space on the maximum depth side, because they will hammer on the pan fish that pop out of the weed bed with no shelter. To catch smaller fish like bass, sometimes northerns, crappies, you should take the minimum depth side to cast and reel in lures the classic way.

Some of these monster muskies can be up to 50 pounds, and yes they do live in Iowa, and Palo; the neighboring county of my hometown Cedar Rapids, as well. So it is pretty much like a shark that lives in the lakes of the cornfields. This fish below is the kind of fish I’m after, and is a great thing to win.