Confidence is King

The most important tool in any musky fishing arsenal is not lure, line, rod, reel, or fully equipped boat.  The most important aspect of musky fishing is one that many anglers lack, even those who think they are absolutely prepared.  What I refer to is confidence, and its absence will leave you feeling as hollow as the plastic crankbaits in your tackle box.

Confidence is a curious thing.  It is hard earned, but it can crumble and blow away in the blink of an eye.  All successful musky anglers are confident in their abilities, but those with confidence will encounter mixed reactions from others.  To some, confidence is an attractive and admirable trait.  However, others confuse confidence with cockiness.  Confidence is nothing more than a person believing their skills, knowledge, and ability.  Cockiness is confidence combined with rudeness, and while some anglers do fall into this category it is unfair to lump the confident in with the cocky.  Confidence leads to success and there is nothing wrong with enjoying both.  Those who dog confidence are probably just speaking out of frustration.

So confidence is a good thing, but what exactly is it.  Many anglers talk of confidence as a necessity of success, but few if any have defined what it is, what it does, or how to recognize it in one’s self.  Confidence is a mental function of any successful foraging organism.  A tiger, for instance, is a highly evolved mammal that learns at an early age that if it continues to pursue its quarry it will eventually eat.  This anticipation of success is hard won for the individual, and combined with the pains of hunger, will keep the animal in constant pursuit.  Unlike the relatively large brained tiger, the musky has a brain the size of a chewed piece of gum.  Similar to the tiger though, the musky also has the expectation of success.  Tigers and muskies both have confidence, and so musky anglers must have it as well.  However, confidence is hard earned and easily lost for those who fish muskies.

44" St. Croix Musky

All too often in this era of modern musky fishing, anglers are encouraged to take a strictly scientific approach to the pursuit of this prized gamefish and leave hunches aside.  While the biological understanding of muskies, their forage, and their environments is absolutely crucial to musky fishing success; the musky hunter should be a balance of both science and philosophy.  We must understand the predatory nature of the musky, but we must understand our own predatory natures as well.

For only a fraction of our existence on this planet, the human race has relied more on its intellectual faculties than its instinct, but nonetheless we still possess effective instincts that sharpen when used regularly.  Those who interact with wild environments on a regular basis are much more in tune with nature than those who do not.  There are patterns in nature that no amount of knowledge will help us recognize, because we only recognize them instinctively on a subconscious level.

Once a musky angler experiences success on a regular (not necessarily frequent) basis, the angler sometimes gets good feelings about where and how they are fishing; that feeling that things are right and that something good is about to happen.  Of course, these good feelings are often replaced by those bad feelings, that hollow pointless feeling that things just aren’t going like they should.  These feelings are instincts, and confidence levels depend on them.  Listen to your instincts, if they are telling you good things stick with what you are doing.  If they are telling you bad things, change what you’re doing until you start to feel better.  If you don’t feel good about what you are doing, you wont have confidence, and without confidence success is unlikely.  Is this because our instincts are truer than many would like to admit, or that confidence is a mental state necessary for success?  I think it is probably at least a little of both.

Confidence is a combination of intuition and knowledge of both present conditions and past success, and if you have it, you think your presentation is going to get cracked at any moment.  If you don’t have confidence, you get that sinking empty feeling that I mentioned before; the discouraged mindset that there are no muskies being made aware of your presentations.  Regardless of the accuracy of these inclinations, once your confidence is gone, you’re done.  Without confidence there is no anticipation, without anticipation there is no concentration, readiness, or true effort.  Confidence puts an edge on the angler’s skills, and while it is possible to catch muskies without confidence, lacking it will hamper the angler’s ability to locate fish, trigger strikes, and convert strikes into boated muskies.  Confidence keeps a predator on the prowl and on its A-game.  Without confidence, the tiger would never wake from its slumber, the musky would starve, and the musky angler would give up and fish for bass.

All musky anglers, from beginners to seasoned veterans, have problems with confidence.  Let’s face it, only the musky can mess with an angler’s mind with such precision and devastation.  Confidence can evaporate like water in the desert, but there are two sure ways to bring the rain.  I use lures that I am confident in and I fish waters that I am confident in.

Confidence lures are my most important tangible piece of musky equipment.  When I am fishing a new body of water I turn to confidence lures to find and pattern fish.  When I am working on a big fish, it is confidence lures that I turn to.  In fact it is rare that I am not fishing a confidence lure, because there are no situations my confidence lures won’t cover.  I have been fishing muskies for 17 years, and in that time I have gathered a good amount of confidence lures.  Eventually, everyone will find the lures they like the best.

Every experienced musky angler has a unique combination of confidence lures.  To find mine, one only has to check the Muskies Inc. lunge log.  For deep applications, I like a heavily weighted Bobbie.  For working the surface I like a jackpot or a humper depending on structure, how much water I have to cover, and how fast I have to do it.  In extremely cold water, much of the time I love a live sucker.  For small lure finesse I like a husky jerk or x-rap.  For almost everything else, I like a Manta Hang 10; cold water, warm water, lakes, rivers, all types of structure, you name it.  I have always loved the gliders, and I worked my way through them until I found the Manta.

I know when I have a confidence lure because I love to work it, I love to watch it in the water, and I never doubt it for a second.  Less is more when it comes to finding confidence lures, especially when it comes to beginning musky anglers.  What I mean by this, is that a person starting out in musky fishing should not waste a lot of money buying a lot of musky lures at first and they also shouldn’t waste a lot of time constantly switching from one lure to the next when on the water.  The beginner should buy one or two members from each category of lures, either something that was recommended to them or simply something that just struck their fancy at the store.  On the water, they should pick the lure from that selection that bests suits the given conditions and fish it for at least a few hours if not all day.  Give the lure a chance to work.  Lures seldom work instantly, and if they do it is more chance than anything else.  Work the lure all day, get used to it, become proficient with it.  It may become a confidence lure, or it may not.  Time on the water (sometimes a lot) is the only thing that produces confidence lures.  I wish there was a shorter route, but there isn’t.

The most important tangible resource a musky angler has is obviously muskies.  If you can’t find muskies, you can’t catch muskies.  I am a huge advocate of continually exploring new water in search of great fisheries and new confidence waters.  Admittedly, sometimes things get a little rough.  When I am down and out and need a boost, I head to one of my confidence waters, waters that often provide steady success for me.  My confidence waters have good populations of muskies which makes finding active muskies easier.  The muskies in them also have predictable locations, which makes finding them much easier.

My confidence waters don’t always have the largest muskies, although some do.  However, when things are getting tough, a slump busting 38” musky is a beautiful sight.  I love catching big muskies, and I catch a some every season, but every musky can’t be a monster.  My average musky these days is about 40” and that includes a lot of fish in the thirties.  I have days when I catch 5 or 6 of them, and those are some of my favorite days.

Confidence water is helpful for musky fishermen of every experience level, often though for different reasons.  For the beginner, confidence waters help build skills and allow the learning angler to become proficient with various techniques in a much more timely fashion.  The experienced angler can use confidence waters for a pick me up or just to experience a dense population of muskies.

The densest populations of muskies are most often found in small lakes and rivers, and in these smaller environments, muskies are much easier to find.  An angler can also have confidence areas on much larger bodies of water, areas that frequently hold good numbers of muskies or are at least seasonably predictable.

The most successful musky anglers are calm, collected, and confident.  They persevere through tough times and don’t ever get desperate.  Successful musky anglers do their thing and let the muskies fall into place.  There are no buyable cures for lack of musky angling success.  Technical knowledge, biological knowledge, and equipment are crucial; but the latest equipment and the technical jargon that inevitably goes with it will only get you so far.  The best approach to chasing muskies starts with a simple positive attitude.  A positive attitude costs no money, and combined with success, will bud into true confidence.  Equipment will always be of great importance, but even in your proshop clothes you’re naked without confidence.