Well this is my first attempt at trapping marten and fisher. I moved to the UP back in April. Our season is just over a week long. I set out 12 sets on Sunday. I set up 3 areas all of which are spread about 7-10 miles apart from each other. Sets were made in big pine forests and pine/willow swamps. Today was the third day checking and still no sign of activity. Are marten and fisher similar to mink and otter were it takes them a week or two to cover there area?

Have waited 21 days before connecting

Need to set on sign

It's been a good year for getting just the right amount of snow every so often to keep a good eye on fresh sign in my area. Fisher seem to come through in waves. I'll go three or four days and see no fresh activity and then they seem to be everywhere at once. I haven't seen a fresh fisher track in four or five days now. They're due.

I am blessed with an incredible fisher population. As in, one area I went today I walked a mile through the bush, amd literally never was out of sight of fisher tracks. And even still, I went two nights with nothing, then boom last night they moved hard and out of three traps got two, and fresh tracks everywhere. Setting on sign is good, but it still might take a few days for it to return. Now, consider that I waited three days with a crazy high population, and assuming your puopulation is low, I have no surprise at all that you haven't seen anything yet. One good cold night and assuming there are fisher at all, I'd not be surprised if you have several.

Are you using a good skunky call lure? Did you see ample tracks when you were setting?

I always rub the bait (beaver chunk) up and down the trees near the set. Really load the bark up with beaver fat. Increase the bait surface area and really get the scent to carry on the wind. I do whatever I can to make it easy for them to find the bait.

My experience has been that if you are in good habitat and set on sign you should connect with marten within a week. Being that fisher rome a much larger territory I would expect a two week or so interval in a fisher catch. In my area good habitat for both species involves coniferous stands with a closed canopy and lots of coarse woody debris ground cover.

I didn’t really look hard for sign. Mainly focused on areas that looked like natural travel ways, and areas where I knew there were lots of squirrels and rabbits in large pine forests and swamps. I’m using beaver as bait with a mix of either a skunky call lure, back breaker, and cavens tree climber. I just wished the season was longer. We’re only allowed either 2 marten or 1 marten and 1 fisher.

I'd move !!

I had this dirt hole set in an old pasture/apple orchard. You can see the fur in the pic. I don't know if it was a pull out or a fisher beat me to my trap and robbed me. I didn't spend enough time analyzing it. Fisher will frequent open spots more often than we sometimes think.

Youre due any time!

I am also in the UP and the last couple years I connected right away. This year I haven't yet. I know I am on sign because I had pictures of a female(can tell by head size) and she hasn't been back yet. I also have traps at my cousins property where he had them on camera and I have a bobcat cubby with a full beaver carcass there with the foothold trap out front blocked down and the fisher jumped over the trap and went in. Hoping it will be there today. Just be patient. Last year I put a beaver carcass out before season and a fisher was coming to it almost every day and a few days before season it left. I caught it the first weekend. I use boxes and leaning tree sets with beaver for bait and fisher lure and Alaskan sable oil up high on a limb to get the smell out.

Cut one fisher track today, the first fresh one I've seen in the better part of a week. The hard part in targeting these guys in my area is the unpredictable way they come through the area. This guy crossed this field last night, the last time it came through was just inside the tree line by my truck. That was two weeks ago. There's just not enough skunk to draw them that far.

Back before I was a has-been and actually went to the U.P. to trap, we usually never had to go longer than a couple days without a catch. It was mostly a Marten line we ran, but there were a FEW roaming Fisher making the occasional track. One year (2003?) my partner and I each caught a Fisher. We trapped in Luce County, and the total Fisher harvest that season was 4....we'd gotten half of them. I have no idea what the population is like nowadays, but a retired Game Warden pal of mine and 3 friends just got back from there and between the 4 of them they snagged 6 Marten and 3 Fisher. They. like us when we trapped 10+ years ago, only trapped about 5 days.