May 23, 2026

Spring Musky Intel - Weird Study - New MN Plan

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Spring Musky Intel from Jeff Hanson 👀

We had a great Musky Insider PRO Live Q&A session with Madison guide Jeff Hanson last week, and he dropped a pile of early-season nuggets.

Jeff has personally caught 4,000-plus muskies, has been guiding since 1996 and full-time since 2008, and is the all-time leader in registered fish in Muskies Inc. history.

So when Jeff starts talking spring muskies, it’s probably worth listening.

At the time of the Q&A, Jeff’s Madison-area waters had been runnin’ colder than normal, with main lake temps in the low 50s and some back bays pushing the upper 50s.

That’s kept the bite a little behind schedule, but Jeff has still been getting fish by leaning into smaller panfish-profile baits that match what those muskies are eating.

Here's a few spring standouts from the Q&A:

7-inch Suicks

Jeff throws a lot of smaller weighted Suicks early, especially in colder water. He also upsizes hooks and adds a split ring to the nose to get better action.

Baby Squirkos

Jeff said Baby Squirkos have been one of his top early-season producers. The key is using lighter gear, not giant musky rods. He likes a 7’6” medium-heavy rod and a short straight-wire leader so the bait keeps its erratic action.

Small crankbaits

One of Jeff’s big spring confidence plays is small crankbaits like the Muskie Train Diesel and MX6. He’s caught multiple 50-inch fish on smaller crankbaits in May, which is a good reminder that spring muskies don’t always need a giant meal to make a mistake.

Jeff said he uses both the shallow and regular Diesel depending on the depth he’s fishing. The shallow version shines in and around weeds, while the regular Diesel gets the nod for deeper rocks, humps, breaks and open water.

Walk-the-dog Topwater

This one surprised some folks. Jeff said he’ll throw a One-Eyed Willy Jr. even in water temps down in the 40s. His key is slowing it down and making it splash. Not a summer-speed topwater deal. More like an annoying little surface bait that gets cold-water fish fired up.

Twisted Tubes

Jeff also likes the Red October Twisted tube early because it falls slower than a standard tube. His biggest tip was not to fish rubber too deep early. Even over deep water, he said a lot of those fish are riding high in the water column.

And yep, bucktails should be coming soon...

Jeff said his bucktail bite had been slower than normal because the water was still so cold, but once temps start creepin’ up, which finally appears to be happening, he expects bucktails to become a bigger player.

His preference is single blades over doubles early in the season, especially in May.

Jeff also shared a pile of outside-the-box nuggets and against-the-grain theories on:

✅ Bait tweaks and mods
✅ Water clarity impacts on trolling speeds
✅ When wood baits shine vs plastic baits
✅ Trolling set-ups and tactics
✅ Jointed baits vs straight models
✅ When contacting weeds is necessary and important

If you’re a Musky Insider PRO member and missed the live version, the recording is now available inside the PRO portal.

If you’re not a member yet, we’re about to close the doors.

[Sign-up Here]

Registration for Musky Insider PRO closes tomorrow, Thursday at 11:59 PM CST.

We’ve got Chase Gibson coming up next week for another Live Q&A, so now’s the time to get in before registration shuts down.

MN Musky Plan Deets

The Minnesota DNR has officially published its Long Range Plan for Muskellunge through 2040… and unlike a lot of government documents that end up collecting digital dust somewhere online... this one actually matters.

A LOT.

After digging through it, one thing became pretty clear:

The DNR is making a pretty major bet on stocking bigger fish, improving survival, and getting more bang for the buck out of every musky they stock.

And honestly?

There’s a lot to like in the new plan.

But there are also still some important gaps that musky anglers probably shouldn’t stop paying attention to.

Bigger Fish = Bigger Bet

The biggest shift in the plan revolves around stocking larger yearling muskies instead of relying as heavily on smaller fingerlings.

And this isn’t just a random theory someone cooked up in a meeting room somewhere...

It’s based on years of stocking data and research showing larger stocked fish survive at significantly higher rates.

The basic idea is pretty simple:

👉 Small fingerlings get eaten (especially in lakes with heavy pike populations)

👉 Bigger stocked muskies have a much better shot at surviving

The DNR says the survival bump may be significant enough that one stocked yearling can potentially provide survival benefits comparable to roughly five fingerlings in some situations.

That’s a pretty big deal.

Translation?

👉 Fewer but bigger fish stocked

👉 Better survival odds

👉 Better use of hatchery space, staff time, and stocking dollars

That’s the real business case behind the yearling push.

It’s about getting more actual recruits into the fishery for the 💰 being spent.

The long-term goal in the plan is to eventually provide yearlings more broadly across musky waters as production allows.

The potential long-term payoff?

✅ Better survival
✅ More consistent fisheries
✅ More fish reaching older age classes
✅ Better trophy potential

Big Waters Are Finally Getting Prioritized

One thing Musky Insider’s own Josh Borovsky has been beating the drum on for over a decade is the importance of prioritizing larger acreage fisheries capable of handling more pressure.

And it finally looks like that’s starting to happen.

The “Big 3” stocked fisheries:

Mille Lacs
Vermilion
Minnetonka

...appear to be getting additional emphasis moving forward.

Both Vermilion and Tonka have already gotten some extra stocking love in recent years, and it sounds like Mille Lacs may also be in line for a bump.

As Josh put it:

“Prioritizing the largest acreage lakes like Mille Lacs, Vermilion, and Minnetonka is something I’ve been campaigning for over 10 years. It’s been a long road, but it’s nice to see it finally happening.”

And from a pressure standpoint, this overall direction probably makes a lot of sense.

A giant system like Mille Lacs can absorb WAY more fishing pressure than a pile of smaller lakes put together.

Especially as electronics and technology continue making anglers more efficient than ever before.

But There Are Still Some Big Gaps.

While the new plan takes meaningful steps in the right direction...

There are still some pretty big questions surrounding Minnesota’s next tier of larger musky fisheries.

Lakes like:

Gull Chain (10,010 acres)
Island Lake Reservoir (8,000 acres)
Pokegama (6,710 acres)
Bemidji (6,596 acres)
Miltona (5,724 acres)

...still appear significantly understocked relative to their size and potential.

Several of these systems also have connected waters and escapement potential that could help expand viable musky water over time.

Borovsky’s take?

“I honestly think the DNR could be way more aggressive with all these lakes and never worry about overstocking. If any of them hit carrying capacity, the fish would simply move into connected systems and help expand viable musky water.

I know there’s only so many fish to go around and the biggest lakes are the most important. But that same philosophy should still apply to these second-tier larger lakes.

Right now we have 3,000-acre lakes regularly receiving more stocked muskies than lakes more than twice their size. Where do you think the better fishing is going to be?”

At minimum, there’s probably going to continue being debate surrounding whether some of these larger second-tier fisheries deserve substantially more fish than they currently receive.

Especially when many of these larger 6,000-10,000 acre waters are currently getting fewer muskies stocked in them than some 3,000-acre lakes.

Production Capacity Still Appears To Be The Bottleneck.

One thing that became pretty clear while discussing the new plan with DNR personnel...

Production capacity still appears to be one of the major limiting factors moving forward

The long-term direction clearly seems to be:

👉 More yearlings

👉 Better survival

👉 Stronger large-acreage fisheries

But significantly increasing stocking on additional lakes may depend heavily on the DNR’s ability to consistently increase production first.

The good news?

There do appear to be efforts underway to improve hatchery production and efficiency.

So overall, the direction of the plan feels encouraging.

But at the same time...

The musky management conversation in Minnesota is FAR from over.

Are Some ‘Skies Wired Not to Bite? 🤔

Could some muskies be genetically predisposed to being more easily caught while others aren’t? A recent study suggested that could be the case.

Posts and articles about the study have been making the rounds online claiming researchers spent 35 days “throwing their whole arsenal” at muskies and only caught 7 fish.

Here’s the exact quote from one of the articles from one of the researchers:

“After 35 days throwing our whole arsenal at them, every combination of time of day, lure, and casting style, we can verify muskies are indeed the fish of 10,000 casts.”

Naturally…that caught our attention. 😂

So we pulled up the actual study. And once we dug into the methods section, something jumped out immediately...

The total fishing effort reported in the paper was:

✅ 42 total angler-hours
✅ spread across 35 days
✅ resulting in 7 muskies caught

Now to be fair, the researchers were fishing very small research ponds, not giant lakes like Vermilion or LOTW. So 42 angler-hours in that setting isn’t directly comparable to fishing huge natural systems. In a confined environment like that, researchers were probably able to put lures in front of most of those fish repeatedly.

The behavioral concepts behind the study are also genuinely interesting. Researchers concluded larger muskies and certain behavioral traits appeared to make fish more vulnerable to capture.

But the experimental fishing effort itself still seems a LOT lighter and less timing-specific than many hardcore musky anglers would probably assume from the quote above.

Heck…many musky anglers fish 42 hours in a single weekend. 😳

And if most musky anglers only fished an hour or two per day, avoided major feeding windows, ignored moon events, and never stayed out after dark… they probably wouldn’t catch many fish either.

Many of us have kicked around the idea that some individual fish may naturally feed better during certain windows. Some seem more active at night. Others during low light periods, specific weather conditions, moon windows, or when prey becomes most vulnerable during a 24-hour cycle.

So if certain fish are genetically predisposed to feed at different TIMES… or if prey activity naturally creates stronger feeding windows… and anglers aren’t targeting those periods… are those fish truly “harder to catch”? Or were they just never targeted during the windows when they were most likely to eat? 🤔

It’s also important to note these weren’t giant adult muskies. The fish used in the experiment were juvenile muskies around 12 inches long.

So another big question becomes… How well do the behavioral traits of small hatchery-raised juveniles translate to mature adult muskies in larger systems?

Suddenly, there are a LOT more questions worth asking…

✅ What happens under TRUE heavy fishing pressure?

✅ Would catch rates stay low if fish were pressured around the clock?

✅ Would certain fish repeatedly get caught?

✅ Would muskies slowly become conditioned to avoid anglers and lures over time?

✅ Would results change dramatically with bait types, live bait, night fishing, moon windows, FFS, weather shifts, etc.?

Honestly, we’d LOVE to see a follow-up study where a few hardcore musky sticks pressure a confined population around the clock for weeks while researchers track recaptures and behavioral changes over time. Something tells us WAY more than seven fish would hit the net.

And maybe the most interesting possibility of all...

Maybe the study evaluated the anglers almost as much as it evaluated the fish.

Read the full study here: link

This Week's Mashup:

Mashup time!

#1 – Looking for a snack-sized spring swimbait? Ezoko’s got the Biwaa Glidebeast dialed in and ready to work. Just the right size, glide, and enough attitude to flip the switch on a following fish.

#2 – Kyle Friedges summed this one up perfectly: “When she bites out of nowhere.” One second it’s just another turn on the eight… next second it’s chaos… yes please.

#3 – For all the skate rats and musky junkies out there, Kingfisher dropped a deck with a killer musky design that’s wall worthy. Whether you’re planning to shred it or just post it up in the shop, this thing’s got serious Northwoods drip.

#4 – That first turn magic strikes again. Uncle Ronnie shows us a tuned-up musky absolutely freight training one boatside.

QUICK HITTERS:

– RIVER MONSTERS of South Central Wisconsin | Musky Mayhem with Rowan Stamm (video) w/ Beyond the 8

– SPRING MUSKY FISHING IN NORTH AMERICA!! - Post-Spawn Muskie Feeding Frenzy (video) w/ Angling Anarchy

– Three Days South - Film | Insane Spring Musky! (video) w/ Ben Stone Fishing

– October Musky Fishing!! We Hooked a GIANT!! (video) w/ Todays Angler

– Musky Fishing for 2 Days in 2 Places You'd NEVER Think to Look!! (fly fishing) (video) w/ Hardman Fishing Adventures

This Week's Monster Muskies:

Cedric, just 15 years old, stands tall with his dad after sticking an absolute 55 ¾” monster while fishing with Brad Sinopoli. Big fish mission, sunset sliding in, and then chaos… that’s the kinda memory that sticks forever. 🌅

David McGarvey sticks a bank-beatin’ 51” from the Allegheny just walkin’, chuckin’, and puttin’ in work from shore. Proof you don’t always need a boat to tango with giants. 👊

“I saw bait balls on imaging in between two points in 18 fow, so I stopped and fired a green pumpkin and white Red October with a willow blade. Counted it down to three, two cranks later and BOOM.”

Bob Domenz dialed the program in quick on this sporty Lake Kinkaid musky.

Jeremiah Phillis proves it once again… Muskies do, in fact, make us smile. Hard not to grin when a beach brawler like this hits the net.

Wanna be featured in Musky Insider? Send in your recent trophy musky photos by replying to this email. You might just see your pic in next week's newsletter. 🤙

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