I am interested in doing some muskie fishing on Cave Run Lake in Kentucky this spring. I have caught one keeper muskie on a bass bait but I have never targeted muskies. What are the 3-4 "must have" muskie baits for a beginner?

must have lures

bucktail spinners, large spinner baits.. any sort of large plug such as lil earnie or suicks, wild eye shad swimbaits.

in my opinion a good 3/4 oz heavy dudty spinnerbait works good as anything else and is alot more versatile then the other lures cause you can toss it right in the weds

from my experience, and from what I've heard from Bass anglers that fish Cave Run ... a large chartreuse spinnerbait catches 'em (Bass boys are always complaining about Muskie taking their chartreuse spinnerbaits away from them )

If you want to know the latest "what's catchin 'em" on Cave Run ... check out this website :
http://kentuckyanglingforum.yuku.com/

The guy that runs the site is a muskie angler, lives on the river portion of the lake ... and the site is full of muskie anglers. Site owner's screen name is Trimmer308 (his name is Chris). Check out the Cave Run Lake forum for the latest info.
There's also some tackle stores at the lake, and I'm sure they'd have info on what's been productive (and they might even still have some on their shelves )

... cp

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Thanks for the info. Muskie baits are super expensive and this is not something I plan on doing a lot so I don't want to sink a lot of money into baits. A friend and I are wanting to give it a try. I guess I will have to wait and see how it goes.

best bet would be just to get you a few large spinbaits like 3/4 ounce double bladed then. i have tons of musky baits and usually end up throwing spinnerbaits... might want to pick up a bucktail spinner or 2 (size 8 blade) you can get them fairly cheap on ebay if its not weedy maybe a few 6 inch or so deep shad rap type lures... that shouldnt run you to much and you should do ok.. you can even invest in a few spoons also

Some good advice is to go to Musky Hunter Magazine website and learn about proper Catch and Release. When using big baits with big heavy duty hooks they can get mangled in the mouth of the fish. If you don't have the tools necessary to deal with that then the fish could die. They are a fragile fish for some reason and don't do well with being handled and kept out of water for a long time(for a musky 1 min is a long time out of the water). Also, be sure to beef up your equipment and line choice. You don't want a fish to snap your 20 lb braid and swim off with a mouth entangled with heavy duty trebles. These are not light wire hooks that rust out like on a bass lure. It can be a real problem for the fish and possibly kill it.

i havent muskie fished so i dontknow

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a bad day fishing is better than a good day at school

slabkids reply was not entirely true. though we do not target muskies, we manage to hook several and land a few every year while we are bass fishing. just this week I hooked three with one of them being in the 40 inch range and the other around 30, and one smaller. they really like the 5 inch senkos in the green pumkin color, either with black or gold fleck. right now we are just twitching them along bottom in one of our local rivers. last year my son slabkid hooked up with a monster and got it right to our feet , but when i reached down to grab it for a photo the old boy decided that was enough and made one final run, breaking off my boys line. this spring there was a 52 inch, 37 pounder caught in the same hole where my boy lost the monster last summer.

You need a Brunner Runner, google them. Also the 10" Kickin minnow will do some damage this time of year (Fall).

i have found that if you cast a lot and i mean a lot when you have a good feeling where some might be keep casting finally you will either make them either mad or curious enough to come smash your bait cast a lot remember cast a lot they did not get their name for no reason the fish of a thousand casts but where your gonna be fishing you will find thats a great place we are blessed here in W.V and Kentucky to have a lot of musky compared to most other places around if you ever get the chance try green river in ky and burnsville in W.V if you get the chance along with ky lake they are some of the best musky waters i have a ton of musky baits and always do good on inline spinners and over sized double and triple bladed chartreuse spinners like bass spinner baits just a lot bigger also if your gonna be fishing from a boat every few times when you get the bait back near the boat take you bait around in a figure 8 a few times in different directions a lot of times that triggers a strike a lot of the time they will follow it back to your boats edge staying deep then when you go into the figure 8 thing wham i heard of doing that and didn't then i noticed 1 time when i was getting the bait out of the water a nice musky came up from deep and then turned so i started doing it and have actually hooked quite a few right at the edge of the boat so yeah its not a silly rumor its true and when a 40 inch musky blasts your bait at boats edge its usually a really intense fight

i sure hope this helps you because i really was frustrated with it for a long long time because i had no one to ask because most around here fish with live bait for them

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is that a bite...YEAH FISH DONT HAVE HANDS