Mark Windel’s Muskie Harasser was integral to a system of fishing for muskies as he imagined it—a grand, visionary departure from the tradition of sitting on a spot or two and casting until a muskie showed up. Fundamental to the system was covering lots of water. Fishing the most possible “fresh” water in a day put him in contact with more muskies, and more contact meant more strikes, more follows, more fish caught on figure 8s. It was all about more, more, more, faster, faster. Couldn’t be simpler. And couldn’t be more effective.

The system required aggressive boat control, rapid-fire casting, and a burning retrieve. In the early days, Windels didn’t use an electric trolling motor. He moved his boat along by backtrolling with his outboard and steering the tiller handle with his legs. To power a Harasser along at those speeds hour after hour, he needed a low gear-ratio power reel with a big spool to pick up line. The Abu Garcia Ambassadeur 7000 was the best tool for the job. He filled the reel with 36-pound Gudebrod Dacron, the superline of the day, and put it on a custom-made Thorne Bros. casting rod 7 feet long. The rod had a very short butt, which he dug into his stomach so he didn’t need to switch hands to cast and reel.

In-Fisherman Editor In Chief Doug Stange fished extensively with Windels and it was he who chronicled his system in the early days of In-Fisherman magazine. The Windels system changed my life. I’ve caught a ton of muskies and spent the better part of a lifetime going after this magnificent fish—because of In-Fisherman and Windels.

Which brings us to this fairly common, but I think quite tired critique of his system in more recent times: Fishing fast and hard—covering only a narrow slice of the water column, focusing on the horizontal rather than probing the vertical—produces peanut muskies. If you want to catch a monster, you have to slow down. You have to poke and probe, especially the deeper edges.

Nonsense. Fishing hundreds of acres instead of a couple dozen in a day puts you into numbers of shallow muskies that often are aggressive. You also are catching a representative sample of the muskie population, which is bound to include a size range from peanut to monster. Typically there are more peanuts in any population, so you’re bound to catch many of them. But the monsters also happen along, providing that you continue to cover more new water than the next guy.

An opposing approach, often aligned with legendary muskie guide Doug Johnson, is slow and methodical. Fish fewer spots, fewer acres, but fish them thoroughly, especially if those areas contain the kind of heavy weedgrowth where giant fish often hold. Obviously, that works too. Different strokes, for sure. But guess what? Johnson, top anglers like Tony Sworsky, and other friends of Johnson’s fished with Windels back in the early days and further helped to perfect the system.

In other words, they developed their own variations. Johnson is a Harasser man and a burner of small bucks when the situation demands. Slow and methodical when necessary, high and fast when the conditions are right. When he fishes bucktails he is simply the “Johnson version” of the Windels system.

But everyone who fished with Windels, everyone who was there with this group of pioneers, agrees: No one covered water faster than Mark Windels, the master.

The French Blade Phenomenon

Down the road a few years, the small French-bladed Blue Fox Musky Buck went up against larger bucktails—including the Harasser—as an easy-to-burn bucktail that anyone could handle. Even as the industry trend went toward larger “big fish” bucks like the Eagle Tail, the lightweight Musky Buck held its own as a fish producer. Because it was so easy to fish and so easy to burn, you might say that the Musky Buck brought the speed-buck system to a larger muskie crowd.

Other things were happening. About a dozen years ago, my friend Al Jacobson expanded his lure-making operation beyond jigs and flies. He asked me to give him my specs for the ideal in-line bucktail. We decided that three factors—retrieve speed, castability, and hooking ability—were vital. The Jacobson Frenchie was born, sporting a #7 French blade and two 3/0 round-bend treble hooks, sparsely hair-tied on the wire, not on the hook.

At first it was just a few friends who used the Frenchie. Then—because the Frenchies were so easy to burn and were such good hookers—they, too, caught on. Again, an article in In-Fisherman in the late 1990s spurred this trend.

Frenchies have been particularly popular with tournament anglers, but the system flat works for big fish, too. Jacobsen continues to sell Frenchies direct. “We have sheets we send to folks who inquire. They prepay and we build them from their pick of blades, weight, hair color, and so on,” he says. “The Frenchies are pretty much custom-built.”

More Speed Bucks

At about the same time, Bruce Shumway created his Funky Chicken for use on Wisconsin lakes near his home in Hayward. Shumway’s bucktail has the same #7 French blade, but with marabou and hackle feathers instead of deer hair. Like the Frenchie, the body material is tied on the wire so the hook bite isn’t compromised with thread, feathers, and glue. This is a critical aspect for great hooking—and it’s important in castability, too. The marabou flattens like the hair on a rodent just out of the water, so it casts like a bullet. But in the water, behind a spinning blade, the marabou has bulk and gives the appearance of breathing.

Shumway makes a range of in-lines, including the original double-bladed Flashers, Giant Flashers, and a downsized Flasher called the Little Giant that qualifies as the speed buck of what might be called the bruiser group. The Little Giant Flasher has two #7 Colorado blades, a half flashabou, and a half-marabou body. “We call that one the Screamer because we can pull it faster,” he says. Then he laughs: “Believe it or not, two #7 Colorado blades are now considered downsizing.” The Screamer was my most productive speed bucktail during the 2007 season.

Variations on a Theme

But it doesn’t end with Harassers, French blades, and Screamers. It has long been assumed that a speed system requires an in-line bucktail that’s compact, easy to cast, easy to burn. Muskie spinnerbaits, by comparison, have mostly been associated with lifting and dropping, slow-rolling and grinding through the base of weedbeds, and fluttering into weed pockets. But during the last decade, at least two spinnerbaits have earned a place among the traditional speed bucks.

The first one is the Ruff Tackle Rad Dog, a spinnerbait built on a compact heavy-wire frame and sporting a silicone rubber skirt combined with hackle feathers and Mylar. This combination of elements doesn’t hang up in the wind. The Rad Dogs cast just as well as compact in-lines.

CJ’s spinnerbaits remind me of Rad Dogs (compact heavy wire) but they’re tied sparely with short hair. Combined with a single #7 Colorado blade, Rad Dogs and CJ’s are both easy to burn.

Make no mistake, muskie spinnerbaits like CJ’s and the Rad Dog add a measure of versatility to the overall system. These baits are nearly weedless. By maneuvering your rod tip, you can steer them through reeds and drag them over rocks and obstacles that would snag an inline.

For every lure I’ve mentioned, there are many more that are perfectly suited for the system. Lures like Fudally’s Musky Candy and Musky Candy Spin have produced muskies for anglers for years. Buchertail Minis, Dorazio Baby Marabous, many Mepps models, the Rizzo Wiz, Shumway’s Little Chicken (caught my first muskie of ’07 on one), the Lil’ Eagle Tail, Windels Harasser Jr.—and on and on.

We have entered the era of Giant Flashers and Double Cowgirls—big lures by every standard. Today, I suppose even standard Flashers and Musky Mayhem’s double Showgirls, each sporting two #8 Colorado blades, might qualify as speed bucks for the young and athletic.

Whichever lures (tools) you use, the Windels system of covering water quickly, making rapid-fire casts and burning retrieves while covering more water than everyone else, can still put you in contact with more muskies than any other system. Apply the system and make more frequent muskie contact on good trophy water—and, well, the math has already been done.

*Jack Burns is a veteran muskie fisherman who has written extensively for Esox Angler and In-Fisherman.

Contacts: Jacobson’s Frenchies, 763/784-7660; Ruff Tackle Rad Dog, 320/2563-3261; Shumway’s, shumwaysmusky.com; Windels Tackle, 218/586-2226.