Thread: large muskie

caught this on a local lake. est. around 49 lb close to 4 ft.

This is a very respectable muskie anywhere, but I think you overestimate the weight by maybe 10 pounds provided it is a 48" fish, and it looks like it might very well be. All in all a real trophy fish especially for the more southern waters muskies are found in.

BTW in Minnesota the general statewide length for even keeping a muskie for a trophy mount is 48", and Muskies, Inc., even discourages that much, advising CPR instead. Most dyed in the wool muskie hunters up here carry a photo album with them of their best catches. Some of them are truly huge fish. Except in some very specific waters all shorter muskies must be released here in Minnesota.

They get much larger. The REALLY big queens get to be fearless and show themselves on patrol to panfishermen quite regularly even in some pretty shallow waters. They also cruise the fishing docks. You should see the tourists when a really big queen goes on parade. The wifey clutches her little dog real close, and she should because the big queens are quite capable of taking adult muskrats much less some little lap yapper. One of the real sights to see in northern fishing is when a truly large queenie comes up shallow enough to be seen and then swims the length of a fishing dock or just takes up an ambush station under one edge.

Muskies also have a very soft spot for the taste of ducklings. When the hens bring their ducklings to the water, the muskies definitely patrol the shallows they can reach for those little balls of fat. Most hens on muskie waters around here do not raise a fraction of their broods to fledging and it is not the big bass who take most of the ducklings either. The big queens will even take the hens themselves. I was present when that exact thing happened.

Not only do they steal hooked panfish, they will take the little plastics directly. I have also witnessed that quite frequently both on open water and through the ice. Mostly then we get cut off but once in a while we will even beat a full sized muskie on the ultralight. Pound for pound, even though they get huge, they do not generally fight all that hard.

Some of us have taken to calling them toothcarps, although I personally think that is an insult to the real carp. Normally we don't say that too loud around here, because there is a very well placed and well financed muskie lobby up here. My attitude is not what you might call politically correct in this area, but it is held by quite a number of us. IMO our DNR dollars could have been better spent on other species once muskies were reestablished and protected in their original waters, and even I will concede that much was necessary. Of course that is generally heresy here in Minnesota.

In our fishing they are a fact of life, but I am not a fan of the big pansies. They raid my fishing on a regular basis all year around and cost me a significant amount of terminal tackle in the process. I got a whole lot of muskie stories and very few of them are complimentary. I will definitely pose for a picture with any good sized one I land, but then I would also pose with a coyote taken while hunting pheasants, too.

FWIW every one I land (and there are a couple at least every year) goes back and carefully with as little damage as possible, too. That is the law. I don't have to like it, and I don't, but I do obey it, even if not everyone else does. They are enough trouble as it is without having to go to court for being stupid about somebody else's fait accompli.