<\/a><\/p>\n

About a dozen years ago I got a call from a local photographer friend named Jules.\u00a0 It seems his office was working on a new muskie book, and they needed a good sized muskie to take pictures of.\u00a0 \u201cSure, I can catch you one.\u00a0 When do you need it by?\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking I\u2019ll have a month or at least a week to produce.\u00a0 \u201cWe have a shoot on Friday\u201d.\u00a0 This was on a Wednesday.\u00a0 \u201cUh, OK\u2026I\u2019ll see what I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday morning, Jules dropped off a huge cooler for me to use as a livewell, along with some permits that would allow me to transport the fish.\u00a0 The livewell took up most of the floor in my jon boat.<\/p>\n

I left work early that day, maybe around 2:00, and I pointed my truck towards a favorite lake.\u00a0 At this point in time, this lake had a high and very catchable population of muskies, although they did run on the small side, lots of 30 \u2013 40 inchers.\u00a0 In those days it was rare for me to get blanked in a session out there.\u00a0 I was quite confident I could catch a muskie there on any given day, the question was could I catch one big enough to suit their needs, they needed a fish 45 inches or bigger.<\/p>\n

I had the boat floating by about 3:00, it then took about\u00a0five minutes to get the coffin-sized livewell filled.\u00a0 I buzzed over to a favorite shoreline and started casting one of my home made coyote bucktails.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t take long before I had a fish on\u2014and then it was off just as fast.\u00a0 No worries, I saw that it was in the low 30 inch class. \u00a0A good sign though, “At least the fish are active”, I thought.\u00a0 After another ten minutes of casting I briefly messed around some docks checking for bass, but quickly realized that I\u2019m not going to get my muskie that way.\u00a0 By now I was at a prominent rocky point.\u00a0 \u00a0I picked my muskie rod back up and started casting my bucktail to the edge of the shallow weeds, then worked out farther to where the point dropped into deeper water.\u00a0 I started thinking about a weedbed on the other end of the lake, and was contemplating a move when I got a jolting strike.\u00a0 I reared back and buried the hooks into the big fish.\u00a0 I knew right away this was the one I needed, so I took it a little easier than usual. \u00a0After a minute or so of head shaking and some short fast runs, the fish was tired out.\u00a0 \u00a0I waited until the fish stopped thrashing and quickly lifted it into the boat, one hand around the peduncle [the area in front of the tail], the other on a gill cover [I don\u2019t net muskies, and I\u2019ve hand landed HUNDREDS of muskies this way].\u00a0 I swung the fish into the open cooler, quickly popped out the barbless hook, and then shut the lid and sat on it.\u00a0 Victory was mine!\u00a0 I was pretty excited, and was shaking a little [a lot] when I pulled up the trolling motor, started the outboard, and raced back to the access.\u00a0 I had the boat back on the trailer in record time\u00a0and headed towards Jules\u2019s office.\u00a0 A quick time check showed it was now 4:05.\u00a0 I stopped at a convenience store and called Jules from a payphone [if you don\u2019t remember, payphones were these things that you could use to call somebody when you weren\u2019t at home or work.\u00a0 They would be found in many public areas, any one could use them, and it cost a quarter to place a call.\u00a0 You would actually have to know the persons number, and dial it manually, but they actually worked pretty well].<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got a fish, and I\u2019m on my way!\u201d\u00a0 He was pretty excited and assured me they would have the big tank ready when I got there.\u00a0 Thirty minutes later we were moving my fish into a BIG aquarium, and there was much congratulations and queries about the catch.\u00a0 We were leaning on my boat, and I showed him the lure I caught the fish on.\u00a0 He then noticed a bass rod with a jig and craw tied on\u2014\u201cWTF Chris, were you bass fishing too?\u201d\u00a0 I sheepishly explained that yeah, there were some good docks that often give up a big largemouth, and yeah, had I skipped that I may have had the boat back to the dock in 50 minutes instead of 60.\u00a0 Good laughs were had all around, and he promised to buy me a beer.<\/p>\n

That fish was prominently featured in the muskie book, and I recognized it in a few ads and magazine articles in the next couple of years after that.\u00a0\u00a0 When the photo shoot was done, the muskie was returned to the lake, probably very confused but relieved to be back home.<\/p>\n

Jules gave me a copy of the old-timey picture at the top, featuring my fish.\u00a0\u00a0This picture headed up a chapter on the history of muskie fishing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About a dozen years ago I got a call from a local photographer friend named Jules.\u00a0 It seems his office was working on a new muskie book, and they needed a good sized muskie to take pictures of.\u00a0 \u201cSure, I can catch you one.\u00a0 When do you need it by?\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking I\u2019ll have a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":551,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[29,28],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":549,"href":"https:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions\/549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}