After the last few articles I have completed on Musky lures, I thought I'd start the season out with detailing a solid opening day program that you can use for your maiden voyage. Another point of interest is that this presentation got my PMTT partner Gregg Laffin and I our first PMTT musky last month in Kentucky on Cave Run Lake, along with "big fish" honors on day two of the event.

What does Kentucky have to do with Wisconsin you might be thinking right about now? When we were there the muskies had just finished spawning, so they were in a post-spawn pattern, very much the same as our fish should be this weekend. While we had success trolling and caught 3 legal fish on Friday pre-fishing, we only caught 2 short fish during the first day of the event trolling the same pattern. On day 2 we trolled again without any fish for our efforts and at about 10:30am I heard Gregg say, "Suick". We went back to a bay that got hammered hard with trolling pressure, and hoped that it maybe pushed this fish up tight to cover. We began working tight to some flooded timber throwing Suicks and within minutes had a fish come up and completely miss a lure. At 10:45am we were netting a solid 40" musky and making our way over to a judge boat!

The moral of the story here is this. Not all early season presentations need to be the traditional smaller, down sized, twitch bait presentation. Think about a Suick for a moment? Is it the smallest lure in the box? No. It has a larger profile than a stick bait, or twitch bait does…I think that's a good thing. Is it a slow presentation? Yes. You can cover water very effectively, and with the fish generally being on the sluggish side early in the season, this is an easy target to hit. If you think it's too big, then get a 6" version, but you're not going to need it. Go find a shallow bay with either new weeds growing, or with some downed timber, or better yet, with both, and work it slowly with a natural color Suick. If you don't get any fish to follow or hit, move out and work the mouth and edges of the bay.

Try throwing a Suick this year as your season opener selection, and you'll be cashing in on a big musky yourself! AND, don't forget; ALWAYS do a figure 8 at the end of each retrieve. It is very common to get late or slow follows this time of year, or even fish that will come out from under the boat! So sharpen those hooks, tie fresh knots, and go catch a musky!

Good luck to you all, and be safe.