Switching Target Waters
In warm weather, muskies often prowl inshore weed beds and can be caught on a variety of lures. As the sun gets higher during the day or the water cools down in autumn, however, the biggest fish migrate to offshore haunts and become more vulnerable to deep-jigging techniques. Plan to cover plenty of water, because muskies still might move around a lot along drop-offs, humps and similar deepwater structure.
Jon Bondy and I were prospecting for muskellunge, jigging in water more than 20 feet deep with baits the size of the fish many people catch. By the time we finished our short afternoon trip on the Detroit River, we'd boated two specimens that any muskie angler would have been tickled to hook.
Bondy, an Ontario fishing guide, has found that he can catch more and bigger muskies with an unusual method of his own invention. The deep-jigging technique he came up with was born out of his frustration with typical fishing approaches for muskies. While presentations such as casting topwaters, jerkbaits and bucktail spinners in the vicinity of weed beds work in low-light conditions, Bondy concluded that they were all but useless after the sun rose high in the sky and muskies moved offshore.
Where Midday Muskies Live
Bondy's attempt to find a deepwater muskie pattern followed a logical progression of ideas. The guide first reflected on the results of previous fishing trips. Every spring, his customers caught a half dozen or so muskies from the river while fishing the bottom for walleyes. Some of his clients even boated a few muskies on hot summer days while fishing tubes or skirted grubs for smallmouth bass at Lake St. Clair. On several occasions, Bondy had seen muskies rush in and kill bass hooked by his customers in deep water. Which led him to wonder: If muskies inhabit deep water at least part of the time, why not fish for them there?
Bondy decided to start spending the noon hours of his muskie fishing days exploring the deeper water beyond shoreline weed beds and past the river's drop-offs. At first he plumbed the depths with such lures as big bucktail jigs. Next he switched to the largest soft-plastics he could find. He caught a few fish, then
tried a homemade soft-plastic lure equipped with two large treble hooks and a tailspinner. That's when he hit the jackpot.
"Last spring I caught eight thirty-pounders during the first two weeks of the season, and they all came from jigging my lure," says Bondy, whose fishing technique for big muskies in 20 to 30 feet of water has become the talk of the Midwest. "I'm convinced this technique will work anywhere there are big muskies-
the St. Lawrence, the Niagara, in running water or in lakes."
His fishing approach is simple: Working along the drops outside productive shallow-water areas, Bondy lowers his 7-ounce "Bondy Bait"
to the bottom. He then snaps the bait up 2 or 3 feet and allows it to sink again in a controlled descent. Because of the size of the muskies he's likely to hook, and the fact that the lures are huge, Bondy favors an 8-foot All Star Big Game Series bait-casting rod and matching Pflueger reel loaded with 80-pound-test braided line and a wire leader.
Bondy's hand-poured Bondy Bait is fish-shaped and designed to mimic a freshwater drum (sheepshead), one of the top prey fish in the Great Lakes muskie diet. The baits measure slightly more than 8 inches in length, and although they're large enough to entice the biggest brutes, they sometimes catch undersize muskies. Bondy has even boated a
number of walleyes weighing up to 7 pounds on his homemade lures.
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