Among muskie anglers the use of cliché rises almost to an art form—my favorite: “We can’t throw lures too big for a muskie to eat.” That one’s near perfection, for it builds on the mystique of muskies as something larger than life, beyond mere fish (they get so big we poor humans aren’t physically up to the task), while simultaneously whitewashing our failure to catch the things (Muskies? On these puny little things? Please . . .)

If the speaker is a real artist, he follows up with a nugget from fisheries research, like: “Muskies are capable of eating forage that’s more than 10 percent of their body mass. Do the math on a 50-pounder—that’s a 5-pound sucker, Bro.”

What makes that favorite of mine a gem is that it’s wrapped tightly around a grain of absolute truth. Big fish are capable of eating prey far larger than any lure in the tackle box. For most of the modern era of muskie fishing, lures from 6 to 8 inches long were the norm. If you really wanted to get after the big ones, you threw a 10-inch Suick or Believer, or a big bucktail like an Eagle Tail.

Over the years there have been practical limitations to fishing larger lures. Muskie gear of not that long ago—short, stiff rods and Dacron line—made even standard lures tough to throw. Cast a 14-inch bait that weighs a pound with a 6-foot rod? Might as well try to fly.

If you did manage to flop a big lure out there, the lure itself was problematic. The few giant lures available generally were large-bodied and wooden. The mass of the body impeded hooking, as fish could sink their teeth into the wood. So, the physical characteristics of big baits combined with the equipment of the day made catching fish on such lures far less than an even-money proposition. With short, stiff rods, head-shaking fish often threw big baits farther than the angler did. But the fish certainly did bite the big lures, even in the old days.

Big Rubber Spurs a Trend

A trend to longer rods capable of tossing big baits, as well as the advent of no-stretch braids and materials like soft plastics, first allowed muskie anglers to experiment with giant baits.

It was developments in a relatively new genre of muskie lures—soft plastics—that spurred experimentation with bigger baits. The Muskie Innovations Magnum Bull Dawg was a “big” step forward. Although it measures almost 13 inches and has a large-diameter body, the soft-plastic body compresses when muskies clamp down on it, making it a lure that hooks fish well despite its overall size. Furthermore, since half of the Magnum Dawg’s length is sinuous tail, the lure appears larger in the water than it is.

If the Magnum Bull Dawg and, later, the Super Magnum Dawg started the big bait trend, the Double Cowgirl turned it into a full-blown revolution. Produced by guide and lure maker Brad Hoppe, of Parkers Prairie, Minnesota, this Musky Mayhem Tackle lure in 2006 produced an astonishing run of big fish on waters receiving heavy fishing pressure in Minnesota and Ontario.

The design of the Double Cowgirl expands on a double-bladed, bulging-bucktail design that’s decades old but with greater blade size—a pair of #10 Indiana blades replacing more standard #6 or #8 Colorados. Meanwhile, Hoppe’s fiancée Carrie Grove, who built the first Cowgirls in 2003, chose Flashabou as body material.

Flashabou is a supple, highly reflective material. In the water, it comes alive, each strand billowing, swirling behind the churning double blades to create the appearance of surprising bulk. Cranked at moderate speed, a Cowgirl looks to have the diameter of a softball. Yet when a fish hits, there’s little to grab onto but hooks. On the cast the material collapses, allowing the lure to be rifled out, even into the wind.

Key to both lures, I believe, is the illusion of mass in place of physical bulk. Whether it’s the Bull Dawg’s swirling tail, or the Double Cowgirl’s large blades and billowing body, both appear larger in the water than they are.

Other bait styles—spinnerbaits in particular—use the illusion of mass as part of their appeal, but seldom on this scale. Meanwhile, the illusion does little to hinder performance in other areas, including castability (they’re big baits, but not so large that casting them is impractical). Hooking percentages are comparable to smaller baits of other styles.

The Cowgirl phenomenon led to experiments with alternative skirt materials like marabou and silicone, as well as subtly different blade configurations. Bait Rigs Tackle has adapted the double blade configuration to a spinnerbait frame, the new Esox Cobra Viper, allowing anglers to fish big-bladed baits through rushes and weeds, crawl them over rocks, or slow roll them down steep breaklines.

Crankbaits also have followed the trend. Giant versions of popular crankbaits like the Musky Mania Jake, Drifter Tackle Believer, and the Grandma have been available for some time, though their size limits them to trolling duty for most anglers.

Why Do They Work?

It’s tempting to explain the success of bigger lures by suggesting that they best imitate the bigger forage that big fish prefer. Mature muskies forage on a variety of fish species, from ciscoes *******ers to carp, in the 16- to 24-inch range (and larger) when they’re available.

Is there a bioenergetic advantage to selecting bigger forage? There’s scant evidence that muskies selectively forego opportunities to forage on what’s abundant, regardless of size, to seek out larger individual prey items. Even on systems with perch and panfish forage bases and few if any large ciscoes or suckers, outsized lures still catch muskies, and sometimes lots of them. It’s far more likely that large prey falls into the same category as everything else muskies eat, from turtles to seagulls to the occasional pop can—targets of opportunity for a versatile and (at times) none-too-choosey predator.

From a practical standpoint, the reason for the recent success with big lures is that they represent a key aspect of presentation that has been largely ignored. We have long exploited other presentation options, from the triggering ability of speed, sound (topwaters especially), contact with cover, and erratic action, but lure size is another key aspect of lure choice. Anglers chasing giant bass in California fish with huge swimbaits. Yet muskie lures, despite infinite variety in other fine details, mostly stayed within the 6- to 10-inch size range—scant variation for a fish that reaches mature sizes from 30 to 60 inches.

When for Big Lures

We still don’t know exactly when and where big lures are the best choice. Generally, they’ve proven to be surprisingly versatile and seem to be particularly well-suited to fish at opposite ends of the activity scale.

The bigger vibration patterns and increased water displacement of big lures, especially large inline spinners like the Double Cowgirl and similar double-bladed baits, make them attractive to active muskies, sometimes from incredible distances.

Pike & Muskie Guide contributor Jack Burns told me of an experiment last season with big lures on a mid-summer trip to the Canadian Shield. Burns and his partners kept at least one Double Cowgirl in the water at all times for an entire day, while the other two anglers (both exceptional fishermen) fished traditional baits.

“By the end of the day, we had 7 muskies in the boat,” Burns says. “All of them—every single one—hit the Cowgirl. Didn’t make any difference if the lure was getting first water from the front of the boat or seeing used water in the back. The fish were aggressive and the commotion from those big blades got their attention and they hunted them down. It was like fishing with a vacuum cleaner—it overwhelmed anything else in the water at the same time.”

At the other end of the spectrum, the mass and vibration of big lures has proven to be at times a triggering tool for muskies turned off by cold fronts, or jaded by standard lures because of intense fishing pressure. Popping a Magnum Bull Dawg through a deep weededge has accounted for many post-frontal muskies. Slow-rolling, double-bladed inline spinners or spinnerbaits like the Esox Viper have also proven effective. These lures are surprisingly resistant to fouling in sparse to moderate weeds, too, as the double blades push weeds out of the way.

Between these extremes are a range of applications; we’re only beginning to explore. Fishing at night? Bigger lures are a natural to help fish find and strike. Fishing in darker water? Same thinking applies. And, if you can find a population of large fish in areas where other anglers aren’t fishing, big lures should apply.

Into the Future

The recent run of success with larger lures probably is in part a matter of how new and appealing they are. But in waters where big lures have dominated in recent years, anglers are seeing more following fish, instead of fish striking at a distance. In other words, fish are becoming conditioned to these bigger lures.

It seems unlikely, however, that bigger options are a passing fancy, like the short-term productivity of a hot color. Big baits aren’t just a novelty. They fit a niche in a range of presentation variables that includes speed, action, depth—and now, a broader range of size—than ever before.

It’s likely the productivity of larger lures will continue headlong for several seasons, at least on some waters. After that, they’re destined to become standard issue options that, like all the other proven presentations out there, work in the right place at the right time.

*Rob Kimm is a frequent contributor to In-Fisherman magazine and also serves as editor of Esox Angler magazine.