Guided Mark I. here for a full-day trip targeting muskies on the fly. We got underway at 5:30 am. We were the third boat in the parking lot. By the time we finished up at around 2 pm, the lot was pretty much full.
We had decent conditions today. Water temperatures started at 66 degrees and were up to 73 when we got off of the lake. We were a day or two away from the new moon. We had some wind and cloud cover as well. Despite the 1.30" of rain received on Sunday, the lake was clear and in great shape. Mark never raised a musky today. He had some great new articulated flies that he tried out. We worked flats, some points/shelves and some deeper water too with nothing doing. Guys were moving around a lot today. The fish may have been suspended out over deep water. I know muskies do a lot of that in the summer. That doesn't make for good fly-fishing opportunities unless someone's chasing them around with a livescope, which isn't my thing.
I've had Mark fishing out here steadily since 2016 or so - usually once to three times a year. I caught my big (50"er) here in 2013 if memory serves me correctly. It was around that time frame. We had maybe 5 good years of musky fishing from around 2016 to 2021 or 2022. Perhaps we just got lucky! I know we did the first time I had Mark out.
By no means do I expect to not get skunked musky fishing - especially on the fly. It's going to be the norm in most natural fisheries. Muskies are hard to catch regardless. But we had gone now for around 4 or 5 years and not seen much of anything here, including fishing with gear. It may well just be us. You can't expect much with muskies when going out a couple times a year. I'll be getting some DEC info in the next few days - stay tuned!