This post comes from something that’s been on my mind a lot lately.

Time and again, when I do a seminar, attend a MI meeting, or fish with guests, common questions I hear are: “When’s the best time to fish?”, “When’s Prime Time?”, “What’s your choice for ideal weather?” These are good questions. I’ve spoken and written frequently about moonrise/moonset and majors/minors (see www.solunarforecast.com for good information about majors), and keeping these times in mind is always an important part of my game plan. It’s important to be returning to a previous follow or hitting your confidence spots during any of these times. Likewise, when weather conditions suggest a good bite, it’s important to fish hard and hit the best spots.

However, using forecasted prime times or a cold front as an excuse to take it easy or skip fishing altogether is a mistake – a big mistake. This season has again reinforced what I’ve been saying for years, which is to stop guessing and fish hard as much as you possibly can. Forecasted prime times are not a substitute for time on the water. This season there have been a large number of fish caught during times of the day that I thought would be slow, and lots of prime times that were dead. Similarly, there have been numerous awesome trips on post-frontal days that most people thought would be slow. I don’t have a crystal ball. I wish I knew exactly when the action would occur, I’m sure we all do. But it isn’t that easy. Nothing in musky fishing is easy. To do the very best during your trip or to maximize your success though out the season on your home waters, it’s important to fish hard as much as possible, even when they’re not supposed to be biting.

I started thinking more about this topic after a couple recent trips. Here are just a couple of many stories from recent trips that illustrate my point:

I had a recent successful trip that went as predicted. We fished a long, hard day and had a couple follows, but it was fairly slow. At 9 pm one of my guests caught a 42”er, his first musky ever. His first musky was followed by a 52”er at 10 pm. So he caught a couple milestone fish an hour apart, and the whole day went according to planned and the fish hit when they ‘should’. The very next day, however, was a different story. With exactly the same weather conditions and with very good fishermen in the boat, we again fished a long, hard day but finished at around midnight without ever using a net. [We got skunked] During the day we saw follow after follow after follow, many of them really hot, but didn’t draw a strike. The evening and night periods of the trip were completely dead – not even a sniff. In hindsight, maybe we could have made an adjustment to make fish bite or performed better figure-8s – who knows. Even though we didn’t put fish in the boat, at least we were out there during the best action of the day. Even though it was hot and sunny, we were out fishing and having a lot of action. If we’d only gone out in the evening and night for the “Prime Time”, we wouldn’t have even seen a fish.

A few days ago I had a trip that started at noon and went past midnight. One of my guests had a big fish on at 2 pm that didn’t correspond to any majors – not exactly prime time. The fish was big and would have been a new PR, maybe even his first fifty, but it shook off about twenty feet from the boat. The wind eased a bit late in the afternoon and I was able to reach my top spots for evening and night, but as you’ve already guessed, evening and night were dead. That fish at 2 pm was our only shot of the day. It didn’t go in the net, but we were twenty feet from a milestone fish – at a time of day when we nearly had the lake to ourselves.

I have dozens of good post-front stories, but two really stand out from this season. First, I’ll explain that I have a number of previous guests who are on “stand-by” – if I have an open day or cancellation I’ll run through the list and see if anyone can fish. These folks often get the call when the forecasted weather looks nasty. I had a guest from out of town cut short his four-day trip because a strong cold front moved in and destroyed his confidence. The stand-by folks who joined me and fished the day he skipped were rewarded with two good muskies, one was a 51 incher. Clearly, leaving a day early was a big mistake. Similarly, about a month ago I had a couple guys stay home and fish local waters instead of coming to Mille Lacs because of a forecasted cold front and wind. I didn’t feel sorry for those guys at all when we boated two and lost one on the day they cancelled; those that hit the net were 46” and 51”. The “fair-weather fishermen” blew it, and those were some of the sweetest fish of the season.

Everyone has a busy life with work, family, and other obligations. It is rare the person who gets to fish as much as they’d like. When you get a chance to go, don’t waste any precious fishing time by hanging back or taking it easy because you don’t think they’ll bite. Don’t guess and don’t try to forecast the bite – fish hard as much as you can.