![]() ![]() ![]() I’m not aware of any commercially produced feathered treble hooks in 3/0 to 6/0 sizes sold as accessories, but they’re easy to make. ![]() The Lunker Punker includes a tail treble hook garnished with yellow hackle feathers. Black Dog Lunker PunkerĪlthough the hooks needed to be beefed up to 5/s, Olguin’s Punker had a seemingly overlooked accoutrement that’s become a new standard strike inducement on surface lures and jerkbaits. The first time I fished the Punker, I knew it would get eaten by muskies, the lure having already become a hot commodity for giant largemouths and striped bass in the western U.S. The allure of walking-the-dog magic seemed to start all over again. Then, a few seasons back, Grant Olguin of Black Dog Baits sent me a few Lunker Punkers-a wooden, trout-shaped walk-the-dog lure that carved the water with some of the sweetest surface music I’d ever seen. ![]() Within a year, it seemed, the early magic of the Jackpot had already faded, countless anglers having caught on to the magic of the maddening surface dance. On a particular evening, with a rising blood moon as a backdrop and a palpable midsummer buzz in the air, we encountered a muskie population that angrily gashed and attacked our baits for almost two hours-culminating in back-to-back 48- and 51-inchers. I don’t recall the year when Poe’s unleashed its Giant Jackpot on the muskie world, but the bait created a stir among topwater enthusiasts, who quickly discovered the allure of walk-the-dog retrieves for big green fish. For a friend and I, it happened somewhere around the early 1990s, having recently acquired a couple of new, highly touted surface baits. Or, sometimes, you find yourself on the front edge of an emerging trend and experience one of those rare miniature versions of a muskie rampage. Either way, the dilemma never changes: Is it better to fish a proven lure or something different, perhaps something that hasn’t left your box since 1982? The odds go sideways when 10 boats chop up a cabbage bed, 20 baits all vying for the same handful of muskies. After all, you’re choosing to fling a potential chomp of food out into an abyss that on the optimistic side might harbor a single muskie for every five acres of water. Or, depending on how you look at things, a desperate measure. You might regard muskie fishing, as I do, as a minor act of rebellion. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |