Muddy water and high water seem to go together, the result of water pushing into shoreline areas composed of soil rather than rock. Muddy conditions generally make fishing tough, but the fish don't leave the lake. They continue to feed, but it's harder for them to find your lure. And once weather conditions improve, the water usually begins to clear in a few days.
ALGAE BLOOMS
I've saved the worst condition for last. Almost every year on Lake of the Woods an algae bloom sets in, except in the areas around Whitefish and Clearwater bays. Some years it starts early and stays late, while other years it hardly shows up at all. Blue-green, the most troublesome, is more closely related to bacteria than to plants, and botanists refers to them as "cyanobacteria." When they die their cells rupture and release various toxins.
These algae aren't bad when they're alive. They apparently produce oxygen during the day, and fish are happy living in or among it. Blue-greens also have the ability to change their buoyancy to move up and down in the water column to find optimum light and nutrient conditions, so they can be here today and gone tomorrow.
When blooms are heavy, use brighter lures. Noisy lures also are an option. During the first stages of a bloom, the fishing often is good. Blooms also reduce fishing pressure as folks avoid bloom areas. As the algae starts to die, though, on calm days they float on the surface and smells nasty. Time to look for clearer water.
On a lake the size of Lake of the Woods, some areas don't get as heavy a bloom as other sections. Areas that are less fertile often don't have blooms at all. At times one or more smaller bays may also, for unknown reasons, remain cleaner than surrounding areas. Once you find these areas, look and fish and look and fish, with the emphasis on looking more than fishing until you find something that looks cleaner than surrounding areas.
Consider the wind at this time, too. If the wind's blowing at a good clip, algae mixes into the water column and numbers of fishable spots develop. Pick your favorite areas and fish as normal. Around smaller islands the wind pushes algae around to the calm side, leaving the windy side cleaner. On large land masses (bigger islands and the main land) the wind clears the lee side of areas. Fish quickly and find cleaner water in each case.
Finally,water temperature is the water condition that we probably note most. Yet after years of looking at temperature factors, about the only thing I can say for sure is that it gets warmer in the spring and colder in the fall. If we want to catch muskies consistently, we have to be after them as much as possible, trying to figure out where they go during different conditions.
