That's a Big Fish!

The first time I remember hearing about a Tiger Muskie was on "Outdoors with Doug Miller" when I was around 16 or 17 years old. Ever since, I've had dreams of catching one of these monster fish and this past Saturday proved to be the day! At a get-together on Thursday some of us were swapping fishing stories when somebody whips out a cell phone to show us all some pictures of a Muskie he'd recently caught over at Newton Reservoir. After seeing the pictures, my friend Nelson and I made plans to head over and try our luck. These fish are notoriously hard to find and catch (their nickname is the "fish of 1,000 casts") so we honestly weren't expecting much, but wanted to at least give it a try.

Saturday came and it was time to see what we could catch. We tried a few spots without luck and eventually ended up on the opposite end of the lake. I was fishing with a large spoon Sarah's grandpa had given me in Minnesota for catching Northern Pike and after about an hour of chucking this huge piece of metal out and reeling it back in, I was starting to have doubts...when suddenly, "WHAM!" something hit my lure and I had a fish on. It didn't fight hard in the beginning and I thought maybe I'd caught a medium sized bass. I brought it in close to the boat and as the fish came up out of the murky water, we got our first glimpse of what was actually on the other end of the line. At about the same time the fish saw us and took off...now the fight was on!

It tried going under the boat and then took off for the other end of the lake, ripping line off my reel as it swam away. I only had 8 lbs. test line on and I was horrified at the prospect of this monster snapping it as it fought. After what seemed like forever, we finally got it into the net and onto the boat. It was as long as the bottom of the boat was wide! After a series of high fives and a few lines that might make a sailor blush we figured we'd better calm ourselves down before we fell out of the boat!

We were both in shock at the site of what we'd caught, in fact my hands were shaking. We weighed it, measured it, snapped a few pictures and then put him back in the water to fight another day. I immediately sent off some pictures with my phone to a few people and then called my father-in-law and long time fishing buddy to tell him the good news. 35 inches long, 8.5 pounds. By far the biggest fish i'd ever caught and now we can't wait to go try again!