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We had a very hard time finding active fish over the weekend granted we were using artificial lures exclusively. Our water temps finally decided to rise steadily but things were dead most everywhere we dropped the trolling motor. I am not quite sure if it was solely the high pressure/blue bird skies or what.
Was lake fishing or the lower river any better?
Got some nice pre-spawn muskies last weekend so went back to the same lake this weekend thinking it would be good again. Wrong...we struggled too. We had stable, warm weather, new moon, and front approaching at the end of the weekend. I'm not sure what the problem was either, but we blamed it on spawn.
What's up with the artificial comment? Do you ever use live bait, or are you talking about species other than muskies?
I think if we would have stayed out for another 4 hours, things would have been different. When that big front came through I was already home deeply rooted in my couch when the dark clouds came and barometer started to fall.
Regarding the artificial comment.......I never use livebait for muskies but when guys want to chase other species, we stick with artificial lures 99% of the time because it is so hard to present the bait the way it needs to be presented while fishing areas with current because each line drifts into the person beside you or someone hangs up and we all have to pull in and free the snag (which can happen every 5 minutes in certain areas). The person at the stern of the boat ends up having all the lines right in front of him which makes for some hellacious tangles at times. It takes tons of practice getting the feel of drifting live bait from a moving boat (in a river) not to mention trying to coordinate multiple drift lines efficiently. It's enough to drive me crazy plus the waste of time re-rigging without a first mate to control the boat.
For those 7 of you who read my reply to Ivan's post before I could fix it, here is my retraction:
My boat never uses livebait for muskies.