“Wisconsin Muskie Fishing with Brian Long”

Part 4: Fishing the Flowages

Editor’s Note: Brian Long from Glidden, Wisconsin, owns and operates Brian Long’s Muskie Guiding and has been guiding for muskies for 40 years.

Question: What is a flowage?

Long: Up here in Wisconsin, we call a large reservoir a flowage. Most of the flowages were created back in the 1900s by power companies when they dammed-up major flowages. In these flowages, there are reservoirs of trees that were never cut. Therefore, the fish relate more to the wood than they do to the weeds. The depths of the flowages are subject to the demands of the power companies. Sometimes, these flowages may be 10-feet higher or 10-feet lower, which results in not having a sustained weed growth. So, we have to fish wood to catch the muskies.

I can’t use Giant Killers like I do when I row-troll or fish the weeds. Instead I’ll pull out a Musky Killer or a Musky Marabou, and I’ll fish it high in the water column. The best places in the flowages to fish these lures are stump fields that are on the edges of deep water or close to the original river channels or the original creek channels that are now underwater after they’ve been flooded. Often the big muskies will come out of that deep water from the river channels and creek channels and move out on these stump flats to feed.

Question: What colors do you like when you’re fishing the flowages?

Long: I like the bright colors. One of my favorite colors is a copper-bladed Musky Marabou because, besides muskies, there are a lot of smallmouth bass to catch in these flowages. I also like red blades and black blades. When we’re fishing these areas, we’re catching smallmouths as well as muskies, and even though we’re fishing for muskies, we’ll often catch smallmouth that may be 20-inches long and weigh 7 or 8 pounds. A 5-pounder is fairly common.

Now, when we’re fishing the flowages for muskies, we’re also catching walleyes up to 30 inches and they can weigh 10 pounds. Once walleyes get to be really big, they don’t tend to school-up as much as they do when they’re smaller, and they seem to be more loners. So, you sometimes can catch walleyes out roaming by themselves. Now, we’ll also catch some northern pike also on these same lures. One of the advantages of muskie fishing the flowages is that you’re usually going to catch some other fish too.

Question: What’s the biggest smallmouth you’ve taken when you’ve fished the flowages?

Long: A friend of mine fishing the Musky Marabou caught a 7- or 8-pound smallmouth when he was doing a figure eight trying to catch a muskie.

To learn more about muskie fishing, contact Brian Long at 715-264-4974, or email him at brianlong@centurytel.net.