Hot water muskies

[muskie26]

Just got back from fishing a northern wisconsin flowage that I have fished off and on for ten years. According to our logs, we have never seen the temperature above 74 degrees, even in August, but we recorded water temps as high as 78.9 degrees this weekend!

We were unfortunately fishing classic shallow water adjacent to deep water and only raised two nice fish over 3 days. We are pretty sure they came from under the boat (10+ water depths), not from the shallows.

Now that I have had time to think about what we did wrong, I'm pretty sure we should have been fishing much deeper (8ft and deeper) along the break (bottomed out around 20 on average), especially since we were locating bait fish suspending along the break in about 8 feet pretty consistently.

Can anyone enlighten me on fishing northern WI/MN water that is this hot? Does unusually hot water drive these fish out of the shallows? We thought they would be highly active, but that was not the case.

Thanks

[gb musky stalker]

Where I fish the water temps are also about 77 to 79 now, too warm. Every fish we've seen or boated has come out of 15 to 30 feet off the deep edges of structure and shorelines. During low light times the fish may move up into the more shallow water or you may find a few smaller fish up there all day long but the biggest fish are usually deeper..

I have a suggestion for you, something that I use during conditions are like this. First, Most guys position their boat out in open water and cast into shore or up onto rocks and weeds but most follows in these water temps come within 20 feet of the boat or like you said from under the boat where the water is deeper and cooler. What we do in these conditions is the oposite. We move the boat up onto the structure or into the weeds or even within a few feet of shore and cast out into the deeper water... This way your bait starts deep and works shallow. This may not work on your water but for us we primarily fish very big fish and we will often move huge 50" - 55" fish suspended off these deeper edges with this technique.

Fish Hard, Fish Fast,

gb
www.ontariomusky.com

[ACE]

I Agree! Fish the deep edge. Many fish taken with Bull Dawgs.