A Successful Technique For... Catching Those Uncatchable Musky By: Richard Quade © 1998 How many times have you been on the water chasing the elusive Musky only to draw follows and no strikes? If you’re like me, you enjoy follows as they get your heart pumping and your concentration rising, but they are inherently disappointing. They don’t result in a landed fish. The lake that I most often fish seems to draw a follow rate of about 4-5 followers for every hooked fish. A technique I like to call "suckering" the Musky can greatly improve your hookup to follow ratio, if you don’t mind the added effort of carrying 5-10 live suckers on board with you. "Suckering" is deadly and extremely simple to execute. Here’s how it’s done. Simply float a sucker with a "quick-strike" rig. Leave out no more than five feet of line from the boat. Set the drag on your reel extremely light or leave it in free spool with a rubber band or some other device to keep the line from paying out. If you prefer, you can add a spinner blade to the tail of the sucker for added attraction. Keep your sucker as deep as possible but it is important that you are able to see the sucker. One friend of mine swears by large goldfish because he says both he and the fish can see them better. This is a photo of a 42 inch, 23 pound Musky that I "suckered". This fish never hesitated, he came right off of my bucktail and in one motion devoured my 10 inch sucker.
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