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Posts: 8775
| Let's hear about the biggest fish you've ever encountered...
Where was it? (no need to be specific)
How big would you say it was?
Did you catch it?
Seen it since? |
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Posts: 484
Location: St. Louis, MO., Marco Is., FL, Nestor Falls, ON | I have two HUGE muskie stories. The first was 25 years ago in Sabaskong Bay. My friend and I were fishing a double reef and motoring around it. I looked to the deep water side of the boat and saw the biggest muskie I had ever seen just swimming alongside the boat. It was looking at us. I asked my friend how big he thought that muskie was. He hadn't seen it yet. He looked over and almost feel off his seat. "Holy sh-t!", he cried. "That muskie's 6 feet long." I told him no, but it was an honest 60" muskie. Then last year, during a very North windy stretch of days, I had another 60" muskie come out from a fallen tree and follow to the boat. My fishing partner all most had a heart attack. This was in a chute between two islands that ran North and South. It was less than 300 yards from the first spot I had seen the big muskie 25 years before. We caught 5 muskies in that short stretch of the chute in less than an hour, but not the monster. There is a reason they live long enought to get that size. If the wind is blowing strongly from the North for a couple of days and you see me fishing a chute in Sabaskong....please just forget you ever saw me. |
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Posts: 313
Location: On your favorite spot | Biggest fish I've ever encountered I'd have to guess was Mid 50's.
After 2 days of hard fishing toward evening I shot a cast up on a sharp sand break. Not 2 turns into the retrieve she hammered it, came up out of the water porpusing like a dolphin, mouth open, head shaking, just huge. She shot off the sand break in front of the boat out toward deeper water, couldn't budge her the whole time. A few headshakes later and she was gone.
I was crushed. I had never had a go with a fish anywhere close to that size.
I got to see her again the next evening. She probably would have hit if I hadn't hooked her the day before. Saw the little white mark in the corner of her mouth as she followed my bucktail in hot, no doubt that was the same fish. A real submarine.
I know where I fish I'll have the chance at other fish like her and even bigger ones but I will never forget her as long as I live.
The thing that really sucked was that I was by myself so nobody to share the memory with.
Edited by Marc J 4/27/2007 2:12 PM
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Posts: 153
Location: Storm Lake, IA | The biggest fish I have every seen was also on LOTW, but the NW angle. We were fishing an island complex and had seen prolly 7-8 follows with in the last hour we were fishing. We had been concentrating mainly on wind blow rock points, but couldn't buy a bite so we hit a couple small inside pockets, and with the first cast here she comes rushing out right when I was going into my fig. 8 in probably 2 ft of water. That is the first fish in a long time that froze me up. I caught a 49 the day before on a fig. 8 and this fish dwarft it. Can't put in exact number, but I would put it in the mid to upper 50's. Crazy thing is we returned to that spot at sunset and didn't get it to move, but there was a family of loons getting harassed by what we think was the same fish, but she wasn't interested anything we were throwing. |
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Posts: 2894
Location: Yahara River Chain | Where was it? (no need to be specific) Lake Holcombe
How big would you say it was? 35 pounds
Did you catch it? No
Seen it since? No
I was fishing this point, a guy motors in front of me and pulled up fishing for bait fish on top of said point. I am mumbling some curse words to myself and then this huge boil erupts behind my white tally wacker. I keep it coming and mumbling a little louder "come on back doll". But she never does. I couldn't believe the guy on the point didn't hear that fish take a swipe at the wacker. he just kept fishing and never looked my way. Kept going back that weekend, but she never showed again.  |
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Posts: 13688
Location: minocqua, wi. | coleman's
very
no
couple of nightmares |
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Posts: 3862
| A beeatch that was way past 50", and about 14" across at the shoulders. Weight?? Late fall, I brought her up, a lazy follow, she dropped back and I brought her back with another bait. A boatside beast, who just gave me a wink and drifted down and away again. |
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Posts: 550
Location: So. Illinois | Cass Lake on the west shore by the Mississippi inlet
Estimated at 54 by the guide I was with - had me shaking
No
No |
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| On LOTW a few years ago, I took a cast past a boulder next to deep water off an island that has somewhat changed my life.
Just a few casts earlier I lost a 38 inch fish and told my brother that the next fish that bit was getting his lips ripped off. As my lure clears the boulder, I feel a strike and rear back with all I have. My rod got to vertical, but no more. For a brief second of time, I actually thought I had hung up on rocks. I then felt two head shakes, said "Got him", and started reeling.
After about 5 cranks of the handle, the fish just popped free. I actually made my brother feel the hooks on my bait. They couldn't have been sharper. He said he saw the tail of a nice fish, but I don't recall seeing it. We were fishing the Muskies Inc. Chapter Challunge at the time, and we ended up winning it, but I don't think about that much. I can honestly tell you that even though this happened about 3 or 4 years ago, it is a very rare occasion that a week passes and I do not think about that fish.
If I ever find a Genie's Lamp, you can bet my first wish will be to go back to that exact moment in time and land that fish. I'd wish for the Billion Dollars and Supermodel Wife shortly thereafter. |
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Posts: 331
Location: Stevens Point, Wisconsin | I had a couple follows from mid to upper 50-inch fish on LOTW’s. The first fish was raised while casting a top raider over a large reef complex. She followed about a foot below and behind the bait and she was very white. I have since referred to her as mobey. As the top raider reached the outer edge of the reef complex she turned 180 degrees and returned to the saddle in the middle of the complex. When she turned the amount of water she pushed and the noise it made still make me shake my head. Never did raise her again but it still is one of my great memories of musky fishing.
The second pig I raised was casting across an underwater spine just outside of a saddle. She followed in behind my buck tail deep and cruised right under the boat. The size of her head was mind-boggling and again a mid to upper 50’s. Never did raise her again but a couple years later I was talked with 2 other people that raised the same fish on the same spot that very year. Bill Sandy and Chuck Nelson also confirmed she was in the 55-57 inch range.
Boy is there a pattern here on LOTW’s…Saddles, rock, reef, wind = Big fish on LOTW’s.
8 more weeks baby!
Ed
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| Netted a 55.5 in Mn, not half an hour later, my buddy Jerry had one on that dwarfed it. Way bigger fish I have to say both length and girth. One jump and head shake it was gone. Got a great look at her. No idea how big but stupid big is my best guess. Did not catch it, did not see it again. |
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Posts: 929
Location: Rhinelander. | Just dang huge and had good witnesses that saw it, Still dream about it and it was 4 years ago. did not get it,lake chataqua and I dranl afterwards. Doubt I will ever see a fish this big again, too dang old and not enough time left.
Pfeiff |
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| On August 29th, 1992, I was fishing Eagle Lake's West Arm. I was fishing one of my favorite rock piles. We'd had a number of big fish moving earlier in the day. It seemed as though the blue mohawk of sky was being overrun by two converging storms. It looked really cool, and what was odd, was that the waves were coming from different directions!
So I start running the edge of the rock pile. About 4 casts into it, I have this HUGE fish come up behind my bait. She is tight, and I keep thinking she's gonna eat. I took her into 9 figure 8's...he belly would drag her out of the figure 8, and she'd have to rush back in to get into it with the bait again...all of the sudden, she rolled up on it and nipped at it! I had her...she was beak hooked!
She sat there thrashing back and forth, while I just held on! She thrashed her head back and forth, to no avail! She decided to take a tailwalk...there was 48" of fish sticking out of the water, as she propelled herself at Mach III away from, the boat with what was leftover under the surface of the water.
She was still attached when she hit the water...down she went. She headed straight for the top of the rockbar...it couldn't have been a foot deep there. Her back was out of the water as she raced over the other side of the rockpile, and down she went...on the other side! PING went my line, and the biggest fish EVER!
My buddy reeled in his bucktail....he had forgotten to reel it in. When his bait crested the surface, and he lifted his bait out of the water, a 48-50" fish "jumped in the boat" trying to eat his lure...slid down the gunnel, about 6 feet, and slipped back into the black depths...if he'd have just done a figure 8...LOL! Anyway, the large fish I'd encountered just seconds before seemed to easily be a foot longer than his suicidal fish!
I've caught fish to 54 1/2" on two occasions! This fish I lost on that fateful day was incredibly huge. I don't even venture a guess any longer, because that is all it would be...a guess!
Donnie 
Edited by Donnie3737 4/29/2007 9:19 AM
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Posts: 331
Location: Stevens Point, Wisconsin | Wow Donnie, cool!
I got a visual!
Ed
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Posts: 23
| Thanks Guys - now there's some fodder for a rookie to get in his head; I think I'll reread these stories before nap time tonight, cool! This musky mystique makes an old man feel like a boy, can't wait to have my own stories. Don |
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Posts: 171
| LOTW
"oh my god it's huge" big
no
no
Last hour or so of the trip, we raised it from a weedy area off a rock point. My wife was dragging about 6' of weeds back to the boat & it followed. She didn't see it right away, wasn't expecting to with all the weeds, but it hung there looking at her until she shrieked "oh my god it's huge". Later she commented that perhaps shrieking at it might not have been the best tactic. I just laughed & agreed, perhaps not.
ErieBoy75 |
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