These are good "action" lakes, with fish up to 25 pounds or so, but few really big trophies. Dick Thearin, who operates Northland Lodge on Lost Land, said the muskie action is good all season long.

Lost Land is a little clearer than Teal, so its weeds grow to a greater depth. In summer, it becomes one vast weedbed. Start the season with small bucktails and twitchbaits. On bright days, try bright colors, and switch to neutral colors on overcast days. Topwaters can be great over deep weeds on bright, sunny days. When fishing big weedflats, concentrate on places where cabbage and coontail meet, and other transitions like edges and dropoffs.

Teal's darker water means you should fish shallower, and there is more structure here in the form of rocky bars and humps. Try the weedy bays in spring and offshore humps in summer. Teal is especially good in late summer and early fall when muskies move into shallower coontail patches.

Contacts: Northland Lodge, (715) 462-3379, www.northlandlodge.net; Happy Hooker Bait & Tackle, (715) 462-3984, www.haywardlakes.com/happyhooker.

Lake Wingra
Madison's Lake Wingra has a muskie problem -- there are just too darned many of them! If you know a youngster or a friend who just wants to catch a muskie, this is the lake to take him or her.

At only 345 acres, Wingra is the baby of the Madison Chain. It is also fairly shallow, with a maximum depth of 21 feet. By early summer, Wingra becomes choked with weeds, but you can fish over the weedtops and in open pockets within the weeds.

Department of Natural Resources fisheries biologist Kurt Welke said the lake has at least four adult muskies per acre, which is about four times what a good Esox lake should have.

"We'd like to see fish with a little more heft for their length," said Welke, who has reduced stocking numbers to try to get the population back down to a more manageable two per acre.

Trolling is legal here, and one strange but effective technique is to speed-troll a bucktail or shallow-running crankbait right in the prop wash. Conventional casting of spinnerbaits, topwaters and bucktails also produces. I have yet to fish the lake without at least seeing a fish.

The city of Madison operates a landing in Wingra Park on the north shore. A city ordinance limits boats to slow no-wake speeds, and no motors are permitted on weekends, so you won't have a lot of interference from pleasure boaters, despite the urban setting.

Contact: D&S Bait, Tackle & Archery, (608) 241-4225, or www.dsbait.com.

DEEP LAKES
It's harder to find a strictly deep lake in Wisconsin because most deep lakes have at least some shallow structure. Most deep muskie lakes, however, have clear water, limited vegetation, sharp dropoffs, a definite summer thermocline and a good population of ciscoes. Almost all are natural lakes, and most are located in the northwoods. They tend to harbor fewer but larger muskies, which hang out over deep structure or suspend in the middle of the lake where they can pick off a meal of ciscoes whenever they feel like it.

Such a lake is not as easy to fish as a shallow lake where you can cast to visible weeds or stumps and have a hope of seeing a fish. On deep lakes, you rely on maps, electronics and plenty of luck to locate fish. Catching them is another matter. Jigging heavy blade baits is one trick that works. Trolling deep-diving crankbaits, where legal, is another. Row-trolling for suspended fish is a third.

Middle & Upper Eau Claire Lakes
Although he fished all over our state, legendary outdoor writer Gordon MacQuarrie built a cabin on Middle Eau Claire Lake in Bayfield County. MacQuarrie probably did more duck hunting here than muskie fishing, but he no doubt knew of the 70-pounder caught by Robert Malo here in 1954. That fish would have been recognized as the official world record, but it was not weighed on a certified scale. Today's muskie hunters are not as careless!

Each lake covers just less than 1,000 acres. Upper Eau Claire's clear water and sheer dropoffs make it a challenge to fish. Most anglers ignore the deep-water muskies and simply work the weedflats in the big bay at the southwest end or the hump that comes up out of 20 feet just north of the large peninsula that juts out from the west shore.

Middle Eau Claire's more gradual dropoffs are easier to fish, and you can always fall back on the mid-lake hump that you can find even without electronics. The southeast bay has good weeds and holds some muskies most of the season.