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GOING VERTICAL

By Pete Maina

From The Next Bite – ESOX Angler Magazine 2006 Fall Issue

I’ve been lucky in a lot of ways when it comes to fishing vertical for muskies.

Years back, a great friend and guide in my home area of Hayward, Wisconsin, Bill (Fuzzy) Shumway, created a sonar-style lure intended for muskies. I remember pondering the whole thing when he showed me the Fuzzy Duzzit while fishing together. I was one of the first to get a hold of one.

Just prior to this, I’d gotten to know a guy who very quietly (‘quiet’ is a rare trait these days, but I recall him telling me if I ever took his picture or mentioned his name publicly, there’d be no more friendship) caught more big fall muskies from area lakes than anyone. He was ahead of his time on bottom-hugging muskies and hard-to-soft bottom transitions.

I recall some joy back then when I started to realize the potential in coupling his knowledge and Fuzzy’s new lure to fish an area body of water that was generally thought to be a tough fall lake. I found fish in different areas and on totally different structures from where most of the pressure was directed. It was a tough pattern to figure out on this water, since the forage didn’t expose itself on electronics well at all. And, it generally meant working the deep edges of very sharp, irregular breaklines. I quickly found the best way to fish these areas effectively was to fish them vertically.

But other than heavily-weighted live baits, I’d never had the tools for the job. To fish 15 feet deep or deeper, fish vertically, and still cover some water, requires specific stuff. Sure, jigs were around and used, but 3/4 or 1 ounce jigs don’t cut it here, unless you’re willing to accept moving at a snail’s pace. Apex predators are present in the lowest densities, and you have to cover some water to increase your odds of coming in contact with them. Waiting for them to come to you gets old (as you will, from boredom if nothing else).

The combination of a vertical presentations with good boat control is just flat effective, especially for fall muskies. Yet, since vertical isn’t nearly as glamorous as casting, it’s easy to simply forget how well it works, even when you should know better.

I was reminded, again, of the effectiveness of vertical jigging last fall while filming a muskie episode for The Next Bite television show. Huge northwest cold-front winds changed my plans quite drastically the first day of the shoot. I was limited to a sharp, western-shore rock break—only place I could hold the boat position well enough to effectively fish. None of our casting presentations were working, but I noticed the forage seemed to be tight to the bottom on the base of the break. I dug in the box for old Fuzzy. Three muskies were taken vertically while other presentations didn’t work all day. Later, a nice muskie on a Jake too, but remembering to think vertical turned what would have been one-fish day to a four-fish day. Big difference.

Certainly, how effective or appropriate the vertical jigging approach will be depends on the body of water and its make-up. It has to do with a combination of things, one of the most significant being the lake makeup mentioned above: sharp and irregular breaklines. If fish are holding tight, especially if at the base of the break, vertical presentations become the most efficient way to go. Sometimes, it can be the only way to go. If the fishery has bottom-hugging forage species as the predominant food source, you have the ultimate case for vertical approaches.Well, wait…Add in tough conditions, cold water and/or just fish with bad attitudes that just aren’t willing to exercise much for a meal. Nothing says “in your face” like vertical presentations. For fish not wanting to move for food, consider what an irregular, sharp breakline means for a normally very effective water-covering tool: trolling. Trolling becomes less and less efficient the more complex the cover gets, and the tighter fish are holding to it. If it’s really sharpbreaking, it can just be hard to place the right lures, at the right depth and coordinate that with boat control. Perfection is almost required—tough to pull off at 3+ miles per hour, in wind and waves. Suppose though you can do all of that perfectly. You can crash rock points effectively, and even cover very sharp edges, pretty well—as long as those steep breaks are fairly straight.

But, there’s simply nothing at all that you can do with sharp inside turns—often where the fish are under tough conditions. You really can’t hit them effectively trolling. Now, “can’t” is a big word. But where inside swings are fairly tight, and getting bit means triggering muskies at the base of the break—a muskie that’s backed in and parked perfectly at the base of the inside turn—it’s nearly impossible to get to that fish with a single trolling pass. Think about how things would work on a sharp edge: if your lure climbs up the edge prior to the inside turn area without fouling, once it blasts off on the other side, it’s likely 10 feet or more above the fish on a sharp-break. The majority of the time, that just won’t work—they aren’t going to move that far. Using multiple passes with lure depth adjustments and different angles, it becomes possible to get in the face of fish on inside turns, but the efficiency that is usually trolling’s advantage is completely lost.

The same efficiency problems exist when casting these areas. Especially in deeper water, sinking baits are a good tool, but letting them sink to get where they need to be is time consuming, and they often have to be fished slowly to keep them there. Deep divers can work too, but how much of their time is spent in the effective zone when targeting bottom-related fish? When there are sharp, twisting breaks, multiple casts in tight repetition are necessary to attempt to cover it. All things considered, the efficiency is lost here too.

Vertical is also perfect for small, precise spots of any kind. Smaller reefs, especially sharp edged ones, distinct holes and any deeper current breaks created by natural or wind-induced current are examples. Distinct holes can be a great fall target, especially on reservoirs, and are best fished vertically. Current breaks may be mid-channel hump, logs—whatever. Fish cribs are another fine example where fish may be tight, and here, trolling and casting become not only hard to do, but time-consuming and expensive. Though I have very little experience with it, standing timber is another place where a vertical presentation makes tons of sense.

When faced with situations like the one’s I’ve described, what I’ve found to ultimately be the most effective is precise boat control coupled with a combination of vertical and casting presentations. It pays to have help—two or three anglers are much more efficient that going solo. Basically, my usual method is to move the boat along the break, zig-zagging up and down the break as I move along it, making certain to cover the base of break, and occasionally creeping a little on to adjacent flats. Keep the idea of covering everything—the whole break, from lip to base—in mind all the time. At least one presentation should be vertical. Different casting presentations can be used to check the shallower zones, parallel edges, and for suspended fish.

By far the most important job here is boat control. Simple as that. The person in charge of the boat really has to be concentrating at all times, making certain that not only is there consideration for covering the different areas of a break for potential patterns, but also to control speed and movement to make certain no fish are passed by. It’s not easy when calm, and it’s even harder with gusty fall winds.

Anyone using a vertical presentation should be watching a graph at all times. It aids in keeping up with depth adjustments, and obviously you want to be watching for big marks. Truly, if there was ever an ultimate case for quality electronics for esox fishing, this is it. When precise boat control is made difficult by gusty winds, or if you feel two passes on a structure to be necessary to cover it thoroughly, plotter trails on a GPS unit are invaluable in making certain everything is covered. And, it’s simply a huge aide to have the large, color screen as on the unit I use, the Lowrance 111C, to really be able to best distinguish bottom-hugging fish. A split-screen with zoom on these units is frankly almost unfair when it comes to being able to see fish. (Of course you still have to make them bite…) It helps to distinguish forage, and bigger fish show up even better. While filming the episode of The Next Bite Television I mentioned earlier, I had just started filming a “tip” about vertical jigging when I glanced at my graph, saw a large mark, forgot all about the tip I was supposed to be doing, dropped Fuzzy down … one pump, drop …bang.

These days the door is opening wider, as there are quite a few new options coming in lures specifically designed for vertical use. It really is, and it almost seems odd to say it these days, something quite new in tactics for esoxchasers. And it’s got me thinking all over again. In sharing the above story with Bill Shumway at a sport show over the wintermonths, he mentioned that he had been successful on the Fuzzy Duzzit as a “comeback” presentation on a big fish. He’d raised it, and returned again with other presentations, only raising the fish again. Since the fish was located on a break, he thought of his bait, tried the fish again, and caught it. How many times have you heard about coming back on a raised fish with a vertical jigging approach? Hmmmmm. Like Pearson says: thinking is just being thoughtful.

Jigging Fall Muskies By Rob Kimm (Second half of Article)

Up Down and Sideways Two Takes on Jigging Fall Muskies (Introduction by Rob Kimm)

The Next Bite – Esox Angler Magazine