How to catch a huge muskie

I'll start this out with a clarification. This is not your typical muskie fishing story or a tutorial on how to catch a muskie. It is, however, the story of how I caught my river monster and lived to tell the story.

Wisconsin - yup Wisconsin
My son and I recently accompanied my Dad on a trip to Wisconsin to visit my Uncle Harry who lives out in the country in Burnett County. You might classify the area where he lives as "the boonies." By design, it was a "guy's" trip packed full of fishing, gun shooting, cursing, meat eating, horse flies and wood ticks. My son Nathan (15 years old) said he was going to "leave a boy and return a man." As you could imagine, I was not shocked when my wife and daughter expressed absolutely no interest in going on this trip. But let me get back to the muskie story.

What is a muskie
If you don't know what a muskie is then you are probably from the western part of the country. Click here to do a search for muskie. To put it simply, a muskie is a large fresh water fish similar to a northern pike. It is often referred to as "the fish of ten thousand casts" because they are elusive and hard to catch. When fishing for muskie, you typically use a heavy duty casting rod with braided line, steel leaders and giant lures (from 7 to 12 inches long). We brought none of that gear on Father's Day as we prepared for our trip down the Namekagon River. What I did bring, however, was a boat load of luck.


My fish story
It was near the end of our trip and a family friend, Don, offered to take my son and I down the Namekagon River for a nice float and, maybe, a little fishing. We brought a couple of light spinning rods (walleye jigging rods actually) hoping to catch some small fish (bass, etc..) It was the day after a big rain and the river was high, brown, and running fast. We were casting bright lures mostly at some choice locations along the shore with nothing hitting at all (i.e. nothing biting). Don figured that the fishing conditions that day were not optimal due to the recent rain storm.

One of the poles we grabbed only had about 30 to 40ft of 8-10lb mono-filament line on it. So I opted to use that pole and gave the other one (with plenty of line) to my son to use. Each time I would cast, it would stop and jerk back when it hit the green tape at the end of the spool. It must have been good tape, because it never came loose.

After having no luck with Rapalas and Johnson silver minnows, I tied on a medium sized jig and put a little rubber fish on it. On one cast, I landed it right at a hole 30ft or so away near some grass next to the bank. I started bringing it back and thought I'd hooked an underwater branch or something. Then I saw a big tail flip around and realized I had a fish on. We quickly realized that it must be a muskie. I was thinking that, at any moment, the muskie would cut the line with his teeth or run, and line would snap. Surprised that I still had him hooked, I very slowly tried to ease him towards the boat while floating downstream. I told my son to grab my little video camera and start filming. 

My 25lb Muskie

Within a few minutes, we had him within 10 feet of the boat. Then he ran deep and to the other side of the boat. We opted not to use the net that we had in the boat thinking that it wouldn't work. Instead, Don was going to try and grab him. At this point, we were getting really close to some rapids and realized that we needed to make this happen soon or lose him. Two times Don tried to grab him, once cutting his finger a little. Both times the fish shook loose and ran, but we could tell that he was tiring. On the third try Don grabbed his head and tail and got him in the boat flopping all over.

All in all, it took about 20 minutes to land him. He was hooked (jig showing) on the back outside corner of his mouth. Had he been hooked anywhere else, I would not be telling you this story.

We got him contained and were able to take a couple of pictures, before easing him back into the river. He was a very nice fish and we estimated him to be around 45" long and 25lbs. We got him back in the water and watched him swim away upstream. After that, my son leans over to me and says "Hey Dad, could you tie one of those jigs onto my line".

As a funny footnote, when we returned to the house that afternoon, my Dad and Uncle didn't believe our fish story. I showed them the picture and my Dad still didn't believe it. He thought I had PhotoShopped the muskie into a picture of me and was playing a joke on them. It wasn't until I showed them the video that they knew we were not full of crap. We had a great laugh at the whole thing. The rest of the day, and the trip, was spent telling and retelling the story to anyone who would listen. My Dad would say to the waitress at the restaurant "Show em the picture of the muskie on your phone."