trollin' for muskie

[LincolnLunger]

hello everyone, have any of you guys tried trollign for muskies at wagon train? if so did you have any luck? I am thinking of trolling some lures this fall but dont really have much experience trolling, expecially for muskies if you could give me some tips that would be great

LincolnLunger

[Fish4Fun]

I have never pursued muskie in NE water but here are a few tips.

1. Fish transition areas as much as possible, (ie, drop offs, points, structure changes)
2. Don't troll too fast. Usually go about as fast or maybe a notch more than outboard will go before you are idle. Usually a few mph's
3. Try different colors. You may try a bluegill/firetiger pattern and a shad/sucker pattern on the ther other rod
4. Check every 10 minutes or so to see if you are pulling weeds. Unlike casting sometimes trolling can be tough to detect if you picked up weeds and if you did you drastically decreased your chances.
5. Be patient and add a rod sweep every now and then to make your bait all of a sudden stop and then speed up. Sometimes a fish will follow it for a while and this can trigger strikes.

[danager]

I have trolled WT once for muskie. It was late summer, end of July. We did not have any luck that day. We tried cocentrating on finding some large schools of shad and troll through them. Looking back now, my guess is I had too big of a bait on. The shad were probably not as big as the super shad rap that I was pulling. There are some nice points, drop-offs, and secondary points to work around at that lake.

The gentlemen that took me fishing there has caught a real nice ski' trolling (in MN). Speed trolling (5-9 mph) getting a reactionary bite can be the thing to do.