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Missouri Wayne |
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| The "fish of a thousand casts" only took Brennan Banks 80 casts or so to land. And boy, was it a whopper. Banks, 17, was fishing Monday in a chilly rain at Fellows Lake north of Springfield when a huge muskie latched on to his multi-lure Alabama rig. "I've had several follows before and one big one explode on the surface before, but this was my first big one, except for a 12-incher I caught," the young Nixa angler recalled. "I was casting in 20 to 25 feet of water but he hit only 10 or 15 feet down. When he hit, he came at the lure and knocked 4 to 5 feet of slack in the line before I could set the hook on him. I knew he was big — he was just rolling around down there." Banks was fishing from a 12-foot-long kayak, but said he never worried the fish might roll his boat. "Actually, as I pulled back my kayak pulled closer to him and it only took 30 seconds to get him up to the boat," he said. "You hear about people getting buck fever when they see a deer, but I was shaking a lot more than that!" With no net to land a fish that big, Banks slipped a hand into the fish's gills and pulled it up for a couple of photos by fishing buddy Sawyer Collins, also 17. His fingers made contact with the muskie's needle-sharp teeth, and Banks came away with a few puncture marks from the encounter. Thoughts of a record crossed his mind as he released the fish an watched it dive deep. He hopes to use photos of the fish to determine its length and estimated weight. "I thought maybe we should weigh him, but the marina was closed and I had no net, no stringer and no safe way to keep him alive until we could get the Conservation guys out to weigh it," he said. "I estimate it weighed close to 30 pounds — the state record is 41 pounds — and was probably close to 50 inches long." Missouri's record muskie was caught in 1981 at Lake of the Ozarks and weighed 41 pounds, 2 ounces. State conservation officials introduced muskies to Fellows Lake in 1996, and the predatory fish have thrived there. A 51-inch muskie was caught on Fellows Lake back in 2012, which was longer than the state record fish but not as heavy. Banks used a 5-inch Zoom Swimming Super Fluke on his Alabama rig tied to 25-pound test line to hook the fish. The young angler, who hopes to become a professional fisherman, said he knows there are even bigger ones lurking in the lake. "There are definitely bigger ones out there," he said. "I've seen several close to the size of the one I caught. They don't have any natural predators out there, so they can get big." Attachments ----------------  Fellows Muskie.jpg (61KB - 411 downloads) | |||
| Cody |
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| muskyhunter47 |
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| missourimuskyhunter |
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Posts: 1316 Location: Lebanon,Mo | |||
| Veithr3293 |
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