Howard Wagner with a muskie lured by his river trolling method.

Medium-sized rivers, typical venues for the muskie caster, also provide situations tailor-made for trolling. When the conditions and settings are right, trolling offers an useful approach for triggering river-dwelling muskies.

For about 20 years, I've fished with muskie expert Howard Wagner in a variety of circumstances. What continues to impress me is how he catches big fish using fairly basic tackle and tactics.

Here's a guy who owns a muskie shop, but when he shows up to fish out of my boat he brings a half-dozen lures in a box. Not an actual tackle box, but he hangs the lures around the perimeter of a cardboard box.

The same is true of his river muskie speed-trolling routine. It's a blue-collar, roll-up-your sleeves and start covering the water kind of thing.

The direction, either upriver or downriver, isn't usually a big factor. This tactic is most effective when water levels are normal or on the low side, so current isn't particularly strong.

Wagner has taken fish on both the upriver troll and downriver troll, though the latter has been more effective. But not so much as to warrant pulling lines and running back up the river for another pass. It's much better simply to troll back up the river and to keep the lures wet.

Speed is a significant component of Wagner's system. During the fall, when water temperatures are cool, 4 mph is a good speed to start with.

His favorites lures include a bent-down-lip version of Brian Boyer's Legend shallow runner, in an 8-inch size. Various models of the Wiley also see a lot of action. He also uses a selection of custom baits that mimic the original Creek Chub Pikie Minnow. They run in size from 7 to 9 inches long. That's not a big lure for muskie fishing, but it's larger than the typical jerkbait, crankbait, spinnerbait most river muskies might see.

Wagner frequently fishes rivers alone, so he runs a rod out each side of the boat. Lines are kept on the short side. A typical setup would have a deeper-running lure out about 30 feet and a shallower runner out 15 feet. He targets the deeper runner for depths of 5 to 7 feet, the shallow one for 3 to 5 feet.

In the clear to greenish-hued water conditions in which this system is best, bottom-hugging muskies will be able to see the lure and are willing to move up to hit.

Wagner's basic trolling pass incorporates plenty of S-turns, so lures speed up and slow down. It also provides lots of belly roll. He says that as you learn a piece of water and determine spot-on-a-spot places like sunken logs, the tip of a rock bar, a channel edge, subsequent trolling passes should utilize this information.

When he's fishing a dammed river section, which often has a more defined channel, he will zigzag back and forth over the lip, finding that muskies will hold off the deep edge of the structure and often will hit when the lure slides back over the deeper water as the boat moves from shallow to deep.

"I'll run up one side of the channel on the way upriver, then turn around and hit the other lip on the way back down," he said. "I can't say just how deep those fish are holding, but I do know they'll move up and crush a lure running a foot or two shallower than the upper edge of the breakline."

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle.