I have written before, that I love night fishing for Walleyes, because during the day, Walleyes have many places they prefer, but at night, the Walleyes come to my shoreline location. I normally don’t fish for Muskies, so when a great friend (CACTUS CHARLIE) who is well versed on catching these huge freshwater sharks and is an accomplished Bass fisherman, asked if I would like to try night fishing for Muskies, I was a little apprehensive. Chip has told me, landing a good size fish during the day can be tuff at times but catching, landing and then releasing a Muskie in the dark can be difficult. The more I thought about this, I decided it would be a learning experience from a person who has done this many times and against my best judgment, I agreed to go out last week. Once on the water, I told Chip I would watch him and take mental notes on what he was doing and write about the how, when and where for Muskie night fishing.

This is what I learned that night. To my surprise, Chip told me Muskies can see well at night, the lures were similar to what you would use during the day, as were most night locations. He also said at night, Muskies will hit the bait more than following it. We were on the water for about two hours, and I will say, just like walleye fishing, we never saw another boat. I asked Chip if he ever used topwater baits and he told me he has but not often because at night, most of the time Muskies miss them.  As I watched, he started casting to shallow outside weed edges that dropped off to deeper water using spinners with blades for noise but couldn’t raise one. Not having luck at our first spot, CACTUS said we’re moving on to rocks that start in 8 feet and then dropped off to 12 feet, but he switched to soft plastic.
On the third cast a 38-inch Muskie took the bait during Chip’s figure 8 and let me tell you, the water just exploded. He told me over 50 percent of Muskies he has caught night fishing, were next to the boat during his figure 8.

That 38 incher was the only fish caught in the two hours we were out and because of the darkness, I couldn’t tell you if Chip had more follow ups or not. Before leaving the lake, Chip said, I needed to go night trolling with him some time for Walleye and that could be something else to write about. I will let you know after I do.