If your musky fishing experience is fairly limited, there’s a good chance you’re making many of the common rookie mistakes. While there are many similarities in fishing for species like bass, walleye and panfish, hunting for big muskies is a completely different game. Musky guide Doug Wegner has seen many, many musky mistakes in action, and he shares the three most popular errors he sees musky anglers over and over and how to fix them.

3 BIG Mistakes MUSKY ANGLERS Make

The first big mistake that musky anglers make is rod length. In my opinion a lot of musky anglers use rods that are too short.

I personally like to use rods that range from eight and a half feet up to ten feet long. I like to use eight and a half foot rods for jerkbaits.

Nine foot rods are an overall great length and can be used for anything. Majority of my musky rods are in the nine foot to nine and a half foot length.  Once you get to those ten foot rods those become angler specific, but they are great for bucktails and other bladed baits.

By using longer rods you have more control of your bait. They are easier to cast and figure eight with and they give you more leverage and control when fighting fish.

The second mistake I see musky anglers make is poor hook maintenance. It is so important to have razor sharp hooks musky fishing and so often I see anglers using baits right out of the packaging without sharping their hooks. A sharp hook can mean the difference between a caught or lost fish.

As an angler you will want to sharpen your treble hooks often, and replace them if need be.

The last mistake I see way too often is lazy figure eight or a lazy L turn. I think that can be a huge mistake. The whole point of a figure eight is the change of direction of your bait in order to trigger a strike.

Now not ever fish that follows will bite on the figure eight, but by being disciplined and not getting lazy on the retrieve you will defiantly improve the number of musky you catch throughout the year.