In the past two years, I've boated 10 muskies, most of them were upwards of 40″ and my biggest fish, 46″. With minor exception, each and every one of them were caught on traditional bass tackle, with the vast majority caught on a Booyah 3/8 oz. bleeding firetiger spinnerbait equipped with a 2/0 Gamakatsu trailer hook. Over this same period, I've caught ONE musky on a traditional musky lure (a Grandma). ONE musky. Trolling.
Every time I go out, I bring a whole lot of tackle with me. I've got a lot of musky gear, I'd have a hard time explaining the investment to my wife if I didn't, right? 
And I throw everything, all the time, we all get to that point on both good days and bad when the silliest lure in the bag seems to make sense, right? But in the end, I come back to some bass lure that I've got no business throwing at a toothie, and things happen. Again and again.
The problem is, bass lures are designed to catch bass. So I don't even think twice about putting a trailer hook on anything I can, and upsizing or swapping out wimpy hooks, even at the expense of lure behavior. Everything else in my arsenal is specific to musky fishing – heavy rods, 60+ lb. PowerPro, 12 inch quality leaders, etc., etc. I don't care about how it looks or feels, or even how it casts, I want to make sure that if I actually get a musky on, it's going to be in the net, not a story for a forum, like this one…
Fished all morning in our favorite haunt, casting basically everything everywhere, deep and shallow, fast and slow, over and over again, not so much as a follow. Typical for the sunny, windy day which was exactly what the weatherman did NOT predict. Started working our way into the launch when I suggested hitting a last patch of weeds to end the day. Cast a small bass jerkbait with upsized VMC hooks on it into about 4 feet of water with sporadic weeds, felt a small tug. Did not hit the fish, which wound up being a good thing, lifted what appeared to be an oversized smallie to the surface only to see a huge body roll around behind. Uh oh.
My buddy had the net in the water some time between the second and third run of this 40″+ beast as it ran around the boat. Usually I instinctively ease up on the drag and let it run, tire itself out a little bit then gently start bringing it in. But I saw the fish right below me as it made its first run, one or maybe two hooks out of one treble was parked on the outside of its jaw, waggling all over the place, and the headshakes were just incredible. We made the decision to just net it immediately, I know, bad decision, but it is what it is. The second run was under the boat, I muscled the fish back out to the net but on the third run, BOINK, it was off and gone.
The only other piece of information of value here is that I was using a traditional lightweight bass rod, thinking that it would be "fun" to land a musky with it. It wasn't. My bass rods stay home from now, I definitely found it harder to play this fish under these conditions with a lightweight rod. I'd rather have less fun and a fish in the net, thank you.
Playing Monday morning quarterback, and rethinking what I could have done differently, excluding the use of a heavier rod, I could have most definitely let the fish run. I usually do that, but I had the luxury of seeing the lure dangling and thought that my best chance of netting it was keeping it close. But given the bad hookset, if I did let it run, I probably would have lost it away from the boat and never gotten a chance to see it. I also could have hit the fish, hard, once, in which case I would have definitely ripped the lure out and maybe got a look at it while it was swimming away. I could have used a traditional musky lure, but then it might not have hit in the first place. Maybe with that heavier rod, I could have had just a little more leverage to bring him in, maybe. In the end, I lost the fish, not sure exactly what I could have done differently. Silly me, I am sure to go right back and do the same thing again, with a heavier rod next time of course. Maybe I'll hit him this time, maybe I'll let him run.
So, what would you have done differently?
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