Editor’s Note: The objective here isn’t to get anglers from traditional muskie areas to look South during winter, so much as to consider these tactics during late fall before ice-up.

Throughout much of the South, the muskie has a low profile as a gamefish. Other than the avid anglers who fish a few well-stocked and well-publicized Southern muskie reservoirs like Kentucky’s Cave Run and Green River lakes, and the hardy crew that frequents the muskie-rich rivers and streams of West Virginia, there are precious few pursuers of The Mighty Esox down in Dixie. It’s not because these fish aren’t available. Muskies occur from Tennessee eastward to Virginia. Most folks living in this belt would rather fish for bass or crappie.

Because of the size, depth, and clarity of many Southern muskie lakes, trolling often is the most viable way to fish them; this presentation method lets you cover more water in a single day than you could over months of lure chunking. But be forewarned, catching a muskie on most lakes Down South takes patience. A fishing buddy from Nashville describes muskie trolling as “eight hours of boredom, occasionally interrupted by five minutes of pandemonium.” He was being generous—those 8 boring hours can easily stretch into 16, 32, 48. If you stopped to tally the hours it takes to troll up a muskie in some Southern muskie lakes, you’d quit this nonsense and take up a sport with more payoff potential, like unicorn hunting. But who’s counting? Stick to it long enough and eventually you’ll strike gold. I once trolled four solid days without a strike, only to catch three muskies in 15 minutes on the fifth day.

Veteran multispecies guide Fred McClintock got me hooked on muskie trolling over 20 years ago when he relocated from Pennsylvania to Dale Hollow Lake, the 27,000-acre Tennessee-Kentucky border impoundment, best known for its trophy smallmouth bass but also harboring some big toothy critters. Fred and I have logged too many hours chasing after muskies, but it’s been time well spent. Along the way we’ve caught some big fish, lost some even bigger, and pieced together some surprisingly productive patterns for winter muskies. Fellow Southerners may want to give our tactics a try on a muskie lake near them (check with your state’s fishery department or do some research online to find out where these bad boys hang out). Who knows, Yankees might even use these patterns to catch some big fish on their home waters in the weeks before freeze-up.

Muskie Location & Winter Habits in Southern Reservoirs

The muskie bite on a southern highland reservoir typically gets cranking when the water temperature drops to around 55°F, usually by late November or the first of December. It generally lasts through February, unless the lake gets hit with late-winter downpours, which causes it to rise into marina parking lots and turn the color of chocolate YooHoo. You may freeze your buns off out there on the water (I’ve trolled in 9°F weather), but a Southern reservoir never gets too cold for muskies. McClintock and I have caught ’em in 38°F water when the backs of the creeks were completely iced over.