Doug, I think I'm as surprised as you are that John Detloff is once again on the prowl looking to talk to any new muskie anglers who are willing to listen, and we can safely assume that he just regurgitated the same old spiel about how great King Lou was, and how that giant muskie was subdued within sight of his dock.

One thing you can count on him talking about in Madison was a push for his book; Three Record Muskies in His Day, the Life and Times of Louie Spray.

Well, I learned a few things while researching old Louie; and if you removed “record” from the title, that would certainly make it closer to the truth because it was well known around 1940s Hayward that he would rather buy a muskie from someone else, than spend any real time fishing for one.  

I'm almost at a loss for words that Detloff could say straightfaced to someone as is informed as you that there was no factual information offered, I bet that raised an eyebrow... IMHO that is so incredibly insulting to our intelligence when just a glance at this picture of a claimed 59.25 x 32.5 is all that's needed to know better.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to him, and allowing us a voice here.

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Johnnie, that sound pretty right because it's what I also heard from several different sources when I was researching Spray’s fish, a very consistent theme of Louie getting his last record (1949) from a Native American, and another from Pettit. 

Without listening to the taped interview with Paul Pettit I sat in on, I remember his comment about not being paid by Louie for getting him that fish, which coincides with what he told Larry during a more recent interview. In my opinion it's almost irrelevant where Louie got those fish from anyway, because they have all been scientifically proven to weight about half of what was claimed.  

I just spoke with Larry, and during our conversation we talked about how most of Sprays fish are claimed to weigh about twice what they actually were, if you look through Detloff’s book (3 Muskies in His Day), he has this muskie listed as 41 1/2 lbs in the caption. (Photo courtesy of Larry Ramsell)

I literally have over 2 good sized boxes of this kind of almost useless information and pictures still, and someday I might piece together an insightful account of how Louie was able to pull the wool over almost everyone's eyes that fateful day back in 1949.

Louie Spray was actually a very clever man, and although I know some of you could care less, I also know that some of you seem to find our muskie history as fascinating as I do.

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While I was digging around I found this picture of the claimed 63 ½” x 31 ¼” near 70 lb claim and don't remember ever seeing this posted before, it's a low-quality scan from a 1949 newspaper (Rice lake?).  

The image gives a little better perspective on the size of the fish because Louie is not leaning back and pushing the fish out with an extreme low camera angle like the common one.  I'm guessing “someone else” probably has this actual picture, but good luck getting a peek at it. 

This article does a good job of explaining camera angles and fish.

http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/muskie/memo.pdf

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