Advice for fishing Mayfield

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Permalink Reply by Todd Reis on April 13, 2012 at 6:15pm

Hey Kevin,

Welcome to the crazy world of musky fishing. Me and my wife are heading down there tomorrow. 1st trip for her in awhile.

1st thing. Bring something you can use to wipe up with. After you see some of the toads in this lake you will need to. Ha! This lake is loaded with muskies. Right now is a little early but the fish are catchable. You can go small if you want to. Work your spinner slow. Work stick baits slow.  Look for flats. Some timber and warm water coves. You're going to have to spend some time on this lake to learn it. I'm not going to tell you where to go look you gotta figure it out yourself. 

I like big baits..all year.. again work them slow and you can get some interesting responses from these tigers. If you need leaders or any extra baits stop at Fish Country. Figure 8's or loops at the boat. I do big loops/circles. Just keep your bait moving. I've gone as far as dipping my rod down past my reel with big wide circles. These fish do not turn on a dime so make your presentation wide.

These tigers are agressive. Like the northerns. Unlike the true muskies where they shoot off like a shot. They tend to hang out by the boat for awhile. So just be ready and observe at all times. Spinners and minnow baits tend to work pretty well out there. Like I said though its early for Mayfield but give it a try. You never really know. I will post what we do tommorrow. Gotta get my gear together.  See ya, Todd

Permalink Reply by Mark Wells on April 15, 2012 at 10:30pm

Kevin,

Mayfield is one of my favorites and was one of the first lakes in WA to be stocked w/tiger muskies. Unfortunately it warms very slowly in the spring simply because it's fed from water at the bottom of Mossyrock Dam and it's warm surface water exits over the top of Mayfield Dam. Most power generation now days takes place on the weekends so falling water levels and dropping surface temps are the norm untill later in the summer.

I have fished it as early as March when we had a real warm spell a few years ago and of course, anything can happen at any time on any lake but Mayfield usually comes into it's own in June and gets better as summer progresses and into Aug and early Sep.

Twitch baits, jigs, gliders and stop/go retrieve crankbaits are good choices for early season Mayfield musky fishing.

If you get to Puyallup much, I'd recommend attending one or more of our monthly(open to the public)general meetings - Cascade Musky Association.

Also, CMA is fishing Mayfield as a club twice this year. We are a fun, info sharing and non competitive group that likes to have fun. You will learn much spending a day or two with our group.

http://www.cascademusky.com/

Mark

Permalink Reply by Kevin Weeks on April 16, 2012 at 9:15am

Thank you guys for all the info. Im pretty excited to be giving it a try. I think I will probably wait til the water heats up a little bit. I think my plan of attack is to hit that shallow area near the park where they rent paddle boats and such. Friends have said they see a lot of musky just cruisin along in early summer.