Musky Insider Buyout - Cochran Lure Mods - PMTT Deets

 

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Musky Insider Buyout

So we’ve been keepin’ a bit of a secret and we’re finally lettin’ the cat out of the bag . . .

There’s been a bit of an ownership change at Musky Insider. For the first five years of its existence, Josh Borovsky and Nick Lindner co-owned Musky Insider. This past April, Josh bought out Nick’s half of the company and is now the sole owner.

Nick will still be helping out at times as a freelancer and ghost writer, but Josh has been officially running the show for a while now.

Here’s a few comments from each on the transition.

Josh:

“Nick has been a huge asset to this company in so many ways. In an almost magician-like way Nick seemed to single handedly create a massive following for Musky Insider very quickly out of thin air. He is a wizard in all things tech, web, and social media. His fun slangy way of writing the newsletter is also a rare talent that has been a real challenge to live up to the past few months."

“More importantly, Nick has been a great mentor for me. He taught me an old dog can learn new tricks and develop new skills."

 

"That was the first and maybe the biggest lesson that I learned and relearned from Nick multiple times. Sometimes, the fastest and/or only way to get where you’re going is to just start taking action putting one foot in front of the other and figure it out as you go. Even if you do it wrong, or make mistakes, those mistakes can lead you to the right path to accomplish your goal. I learned to check my perfectionism and anxiety at the door, because it can often prevent you from ever taking the first steps to accomplishing your goals."

"In the past few years, this lesson has inspired me to start teaching virtual musky courses, start a tackle company, and eventually launch our Musky Insider PRO membership program. I have Nick to thank for that inspiration and for that I will forever be grateful."

"It feels a bit like the Wizard of Oz right now without Nick . . . Just one guy behind the curtain pulling all the levers and putting on the show"

"But, I am finding my way by placing one foot in front of the other. I want to give a huge shout out to my friends and family, (especially Lisa the love of my life), for rolling up their sleeves and helping to keep things rolling full steam ahead." 

Nick:

“There was a gaping hole in the musky world when Josh Borovsky and I started this newsletter in 2019. The media landscape is *constantly* evolving, and musky fishing was ready for a shakeup of epic proportions."

“250+ newsletters later, I’m ready to leave this exciting project 100% in Josh’s capable hands."

“While I’m proud of the work we’ve done together the past 5 years, I think Josh will take this newsletter and its messaging to another level. I’ve already seen an up-tick in quality and intrigue over the past few months since Josh completely took the reins. His musky fishing knowledge is unmatched, and he understands the everyday musky angler as well as anyone in the industry."

“I’m looking forward to the next chapter in both of our careers, and I’ll still be involved here and there in the business as an occasional ghost writer. Happy musky chasing!”

A small shakeup, but our goals will remain the same going forward: We want to stay cutting edge in the musky media world, and our #1 goal will always be to put our readers and Insider PRO members first, teaching them how to catch more and bigger muskies.

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Lure Mods for Better Releases

Josh Borovsky and Kevin Cochran had an awesome Live Q&A session with our Musky Insider PRO members this week.

There were a ton of juicy deets revealed in this session including . . .

✅ The current status of water temps, fish locations, and effective patterns on their respective waters

✅ Fish behavior this time of year and how fish depth/location can often change over the course of a 24-hour period

✅ How to quickly determine whether you should be targeting shallow or deep water areas and how to know when it’s time to switch from one to the other based on conditions and weather trends

✅ What to expect for fish movements and locations in the coming weeks along with what baits to target them with. 

Kevin and Josh each have over 20 years of night fishing experience. So from there, they decided to do a deep dive on night fishing tactics. There was way too much included in this session to try to squeeze into the newsletter.

But, we did want to share one tidbit we thought was too important not to share with everyone. There’s no doubt that live view sonar is increasing catch rates for musky anglers. It remains to be seen whether any kind of regulation will come about regarding its use. So for now, there is an increased emphasis in the musky world on what we can do decrease the delayed mortality of the increased numbers of fish being caught.

Kevin has had this on his mind for a while, and has been playing around with different hook configurations on baits to reduce fish being deeply hooked.

He shared this mod he has been using on his Bondy Royal Orbas with good success. Matter of fact, the day after the Q&A, Kevin’s guest put this giant in the boat on the modified bait in the pic.

Here’s Kevin’s thoughts on the mod . . .

“Most of the bites on these baits are headshots, and sometimes they suck them all the way back to their gill arches. It’s usually that front bottom hook that is deeply hooked. So I tried removing that front hook from the bait and adding it to a one inch piece of wire. One end of the wire attaches to the line tie on the bait with a split ring and the other end attaches to your leader.”

“This configuration seems to give that front hook a chance to penetrate and hold somewhere toward the top and front of the their mouths and greatly reduces deeply hooked fish with this bait.”

If you’re an Insider PRO member and missed the Live Q&A, you can find the recording in our member portal.

If you’re not an Insider PRO member yet, and would like to be, make sure you get your name on the waitlist. We’re planning to give the first ten people on the waitlist an opportunity to sign-up sometime in the coming month. 

 

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Lake Minnetonka PMTT Deets

The third stop of the PMTT is in the books. Congrats to Clayton Spiess & Nick Amorose for overcoming adversity and bringin’ home the hardware🏆 (and the Happy Gilmore style check) at the Thorne Brothers late summer showdown on Lake Minnetonka.

They had motor problems on day one before the tournament even started, got a late start, and threw their whole pattern away because they didn’t have a motor that went over 5-8 miles per hour.

“It was either go home or try something different. We had a ton of spots we wanted to go to. We didn’t necessarily catch fish pre-fishing, but we had a lot of confidence in where we could probably get fish if we stayed on 'em, and they were a long ways from ease-out and we thought that instead of running and gunning like we wanted to do, we put lines in the water and we just keep them in the water as long as we can.”

Do they typically troll?

“We know how to… we don’t enjoy it.”

“We found one pretty much right away, the biggest one, and we had a pretty good feeling for the rest of the day.”

What did they hook up on? All the fish came on black and nickel 8/9 HunsyTail Bangers. 

“Our fish on Day 1 were enough to maintain 1st place! I still can't believe that happened! We almost went home without fishing and then found a pattern by chance.”

Second place went to the team of David Kramer & Robert Wood. These two didn’t even meet each other in person until Wednesday before the tourney. How’s that for some fast chemistry?

Tonka has been Rob’s main lake to fish for the last 15 years. 

“At first we were hitting spots where we could go shallow and go kinda deep at the same time, just throwing topwater, nothing really was going actually, and we kinda transitioned to deep pretty quick. We just got into a window, ended up moving them really fast and didn’t really get any follows. They were just killin’ it. Got three right away, got a whole bunch of follows, lost a couple fish.”

Like the winners, all three of their fish came on day one.

Gregg Thomas & Rick Hoover rounded out the top three and managed to boat fish on both days of the event.

“Everybody was talking about shallow, when we were fishing deep.”

“Rick caught them all, same bait, same everything, he just had the hot lure.”

They scored fishing deep weed edges while throwing green pumpkin colored tubes. Popping the tubes through the weeds and making contact was a key factor. 

Ethan Stout boated the biggest fish of the event with this 51.5” blonde bombshell. 👀

Here’a how the rest of the top ten looked at the event.

The final stop for the PMTT will be the Recon Boats World Championship on the Eagle River Chain, September 27th-29th.

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This Week's Mashup:

Mashup time!

#1 – We’re hopin’ everyone has had this walk into work!

#2 – Here’s some cool bucktail colors you don’t see every day. 👀 You can find these Pandemonium Tackle Marvin 88’s  at Taps and Tackle. 

#3 – Found this gem hangin’ at a shop in Bayfield, WI titled “Pink Muskie” by Sara Muender of Moondeer Design.

#4 – When fall is around the corner and you hope your spouse hasn’t looked at the calendar yet. #ouch

 

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QUICK HITTERS:

– Increase YOUR Summer CATCHES! w/ 54 or Bust (video)

– Summer Topwater Mayhem! w/ Musky Mastery (video)

– Musky Fishing Lake Sinclair w/ Angling Anarchy (video)

– 1st WI Chapter Muskies Inc. 47th Annual Tournament 9/20-9/22 (link)

– Baits BIG As Your Head Catch Lots Of MUSKY! w/ Today’s Angler (video)

– Northern Wisconsin Fishing -Dan Gropengiser on the Backlash Podcast (link)