LAKE VERMILION— Muskie guides working on Lake Vermilion are used to seeing plenty of big fish during the course of a summer, but even they are having a hard time not gushing over the phenomenal bite that came on beginning in late June.

“The past five days have been amazing,” said Matt Snyder, a Lake Vermilion guide who says he’s never seen anything like it. “As long as I’ve been doing this, I have never seen so many big fish caught in such a short time frame.”

In just five days the last week of June, Snyder said fellow guides he talked to had tallied four muskies over 55 inches, including a 55-3/4-incher landed and released last Wednesday by guide Mike Brown.

Guides have been landing plenty of other big muskie, but landing fish in the 55-inch range or larger is normally a rare event. For Snyder, the 55-1/2 inch muskie his client Micheal Velasquez hauled in June 27 was the biggest muskie he’s ever had in the boat.

While big muskie roam the entire lake, Snyder said there’s an unusual concentration of them in a relatively small area right now, where baitfish seem to be gathered to feed on emerging mayflies. Muskie are voracious eaters at times and when their favored prey is found in abundance, they’ll be there and can shift into a kind of feeding frenzy, which anglers are currently exploiting to land some world class fish. And it’s not just a few big ones keeping lines taut. “We’ve been hooking multiple fish every day lately,” said Snyder.

The cool and wet conditions may be contributing to the success, since they’ve kept water temperatures in the mid-60s. That’s warm enough for muskies to be active, but not warm enough to disperse them to their usual summer haunts on structure like reefs, weed edges, and shorelines.

Mike Brown, who is now in his fourth year guiding on Vermilion, said the lunar cycle is also likely contributing to the bite. “The moon makes a big difference,” he said.

Brown said he hooked his monster muskie with a ten-inch “Mattlock” crankbait he was pulling through the red zone just after dark. As for the string of big fish landed in recent days, Brown agrees: “It’s been pretty impressive.”

So exactly where are these guides pulling in the giant muskies? To no one’s surprise, they were tight-lipped on that question. Snyder said it pays to go with a guide who’s on the lake everyday— and that’s probably most critical when it comes to catching top predators like muskie, which always exist in relatively low numbers. The best action is also found during low light conditions, often before dawn or in the late evening twilight, said Snyder. That’s why most of the recent muskie photos that have made the rounds on Facebook are taken in the dark.

As for how long the muskie frenzy will last, Snyder said he expects it could be another week or two. By then the mayfly hatch will likely have ebbed and warmer water temperatures will disperse the muskies to their normal summer locations.