The percentages at play in fishing are at work in muskie fishing, all the more than they seem at play in most other forms of fishing. Even in a great season, we catch fewer fish than some other anglers might catch in a single outing. Still, anglers who understand the muskellunge, know the waters, have a clue about the changing seasons and, most importantly after those factors are in check, can choose and execute proper presentation approaches, given the ever-changing conditions at hand, are bound to catch more fish -- and larger fish -- than the rest of the crowd.

Eventually, that is, but much sooner than the rest of the less-informed crowd on an even playing field, given many seasons in the saddle. The angler on his first outing, who knows only a little about this sport and this fish and catches a 38-pounder, has a purgatory of percentages to pay the rest of this life and a good part of the next, should he choose to continue fishing.

The percentages that are real muskie fishing are as constant as the sun, the moon, and the sky. If you're lucky, you may do better over the course of an outing or even over the course of a season or two, but in muskie fishing, it's the long haul that counts. Everything averages out, based on how much you really know and how much you fish. Along the way, events may tempt you to think otherwise. Last season ended in November with the biggest fish of my life, and started up this June, ten casts in, with a 50-incher and the camera running. I am not looking forward to the rest of this year.

All this percentage business does not mean great anglers approach the same on-the-water scenarios in the same way. One need only watch a professional golf tournament, with all the various characters involved, watch a NASCAR event, sit through a major league baseball game, or view a professional poker championship, to see all the ways one can achieve the most difficult objectives at hand.

I know some of the great muskie anglers of this age. Dick Pearson isn't Joe Bucher isn't Doug Johnson isn't Mark Windels will never be Jack Burns, or all those other top anglers like Jim Saric and Pete Maina. He doesn't want to be, doesn't have to be. For any of them, it's the same frustrating fish but with different lures at different times and places and different approaches, based on their own vast, individual experience.

All of them must, however, deal with the very thing that challenges us the most, after we know what we're doing. It's the only thing we can do little about: The weather. If the umpire will not deal with us as we see it fairly, the mature among us learn to deal with the umpire. We may whine, we may even whimper, but we deal with the umpire. The great umpire is the weather. We must learn to deal with the umpire.

The angler's world is one of worrying, quite rightly, about the weather. Weather events or conditions produce spells of terrible fishing but also trigger the opposite. Most fall seasons contain a lot of the former and not much of the latter, so it's important to have an idea which fall weather progressions produce active fish and a chance for great muskie fishing.

Overall, late September through November produces some of the best fishing of the year for large muskies. Farther south, the time transition would begin in October and include peak fishing right through December.

Across much of the muskie belt, then, the late September scene sets the tone for at least one period of peak fishing, usually the first week or two in October. Eventually, it gets cold, water temperature takes a dive, and fish settle into feeding patterns that help them stock up to survive the winter starvation period.

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