One of my favorite tactics is countdown bucktailing and it works in almost any depth of water. Granted if your fishing over 17+ feet you may have to start buying heavier bucktails or weighting them down. Anyway say your sitting in on a weed bed that is about 17 feet deep to the bottom but the cabage grows about 4 feet so your fishing in about 13 over the top of the weeds. Toss the bucktail out and start counting 1-1000 2-1000 and so forth start reeling at about about 2-1000 with a slower retrive and if you don't pick up any weeds then move up to 3-1000 and so on and so forth until you start picking up weeds rememeber the number you picked weeds up at and go one less. Run the bucktail right accross the top of the weeds pumping the rod tip every so often but don't make it a pattern. If there's one following that rod pump maybe a triggering factor that will get you bit. This is what I almost always start out with everytime I go muskie huntin. It's also a good way to cover alot of water relativly quickly. And don't forget the figure 8 at the end of the cast. It may just get you one or two more strikes or fish a season maybe more. For some really good articles on Muskie huntin check out: www.fishontario.com/articles
There are 13 articles on this page and I did find some more at one time but I can't remeber what the web addresses were.