Fat 47 inch Muskie caught casting in Anchor Bay

QUOTE(IBrkUglyStiks @ Jun 29 2009, 08:33 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Caught this beauty on June 28th, while drifting in Anchor Bay. It was cloudy in the morning with winds coming out of the southwest so we launched the boat at Selfridge and were planning on setting up a couple of drifts in different depths of water. We drove straight out from the launch untill we got in line with Mac and Rays and found a little bit of deeper water like 9 feet or so. I thought because of the previous week with the record high temps, that the muskie would be a little deeper and further from the shoreline. Since the wind was out of the southwest our plan was to start deeper and drift diagonally shallower towards the mouth of the salt river. My buddy had a follow on a black bucktail and we saw a muskie cruising within the first half an hour of fishing. We had 4 people on the boat, me and my buddy were going for muskie and my dad and my stepbrothers cousin alan were going for smallmouth. Alan caugt one smallmouth and had numerous follows. Due to the wind it was kinda hard to fish for bass and i was being lazy on the trolling motor and letting the wind due all the work. This is my first year casting for muskie, let alone even fishing for them. I own about 6 or 7 decent lures, one for every situation. I have a 7' medium heavy power plus rod from bass pro shops with a abu garcia bcx 6600 reel which i plan on upgrading. My reel is filled to the rim with the new round fireline 65lb braid which I think had alot to do with keeping this fish on the line because he hit probably 1/4 of the way in on a long cast, mono would of strecthed tremendously. I was throwing a number 5 white and red vibrax with added weight, reeling it near the surface because of the cloudy conditions. It wasn't untill about 45 minites to an hour of our first drift when we were in about 7.5 or 8 feet of water that i hooked in to this beauty. I had no follows all day and then all of a sudden.....bam, thats how it seems to happen. Thank god i bought some 11 inch pliers the week before for fathers day, and thank god my buddy Mike (bassproat19) was on the boat with me because we dont have a muskie net yet, but hes been handling muskies since he was a tot with his grandpa aboard fish tale charters as the first mate. Hes like the human net. The bucktail was completly in the muskies mouth with my 80lb mono leader sticking out and my buddy mike went right in with the left hand under the gill plate and got it. Sorry for the super long description but im super proud of this fish and I just wanted to share the whole experience with everyone. I even have a little video of me reeling the sucker in, no audio but it was mostly swear words so no big deal hahahah. Heres the link to the video if your intrested....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uieei861Ew8 I didnt know i was getting filmed untill after i released it, which by the way was released successfully after about 3 minites of holding it in the water it finally swam off. I've caugt two other muskies this year but nothing worth posting. Me and my buddy have been out in huge waves and rain many times and I feel like we both deserve a fish like this. We measured it in the water and the tape measure we had was only 35 inches so we measured from the tail to the gills and that was 35 inches and then from there to the tip of the mouth was another 12, just curious does anybody think it looks bigger or smaller cause it was hard to measure in the water.

one of the BIG headed ones! CONGRATS!!

QUOTE(schram @ Jun 29 2009, 08:43 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>QUOTE(IBrkUglyStiks @ Jun 29 2009, 08:33 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Caught this beauty on June 28th, while drifting in Anchor Bay. It was cloudy in the morning with winds coming out of the southwest so we launched the boat at Selfridge and were planning on setting up a couple of drifts in different depths of water. We drove straight out from the launch untill we got in line with Mac and Rays and found a little bit of deeper water like 9 feet or so. I thought because of the previous week with the record high temps, that the muskie would be a little deeper and further from the shoreline. Since the wind was out of the southwest our plan was to start deeper and drift diagonally shallower towards the mouth of the salt river. My buddy had a follow on a black bucktail and we saw a muskie cruising within the first half an hour of fishing. We had 4 people on the boat, me and my buddy were going for muskie and my dad and my stepbrothers cousin alan were going for smallmouth. Alan caugt one smallmouth and had numerous follows. Due to the wind it was kinda hard to fish for bass and i was being lazy on the trolling motor and letting the wind due all the work. This is my first year casting for muskie, let alone even fishing for them. I own about 6 or 7 decent lures, one for every situation. I have a 7' medium heavy power plus rod from bass pro shops with a abu garcia bcx 6600 reel which i plan on upgrading. My reel is filled to the rim with the new round fireline 65lb braid which I think had alot to do with keeping this fish on the line because he hit probably 1/4 of the way in on a long cast, mono would of strecthed tremendously. I was throwing a number 5 white and red vibrax with added weight, reeling it near the surface because of the cloudy conditions. It wasn't untill about 45 minites to an hour of our first drift when we were in about 7.5 or 8 feet of water that i hooked in to this beauty. I had no follows all day and then all of a sudden.....bam, thats how it seems to happen. Thank god i bought some 11 inch pliers the week before for fathers day, and thank god my buddy Mike (bassproat19) was on the boat with me because we dont have a muskie net yet, but hes been handling muskies since he was a tot with his grandpa aboard fish tale charters as the first mate. Hes like the human net. The bucktail was completly in the muskies mouth with my 80lb mono leader sticking out and my buddy mike went right in with the left hand under the gill plate and got it. Sorry for the super long description but im super proud of this fish and I just wanted to share the whole experience with everyone. I even have a little video of me reeling the sucker in, no audio but it was mostly swear words so no big deal hahahah. Heres the link to the video if your intrested....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uieei861Ew8 I didnt know i was getting filmed untill after i released it, which by the way was released successfully after about 3 minites of holding it in the water it finally swam off. I've caugt two other muskies this year but nothing worth posting. Me and my buddy have been out in huge waves and rain many times and I feel like we both deserve a fish like this. We measured it in the water and the tape measure we had was only 35 inches so we measured from the tail to the gills and that was 35 inches and then from there to the tip of the mouth was another 12, just curious does anybody think it looks bigger or smaller cause it was hard to measure in the water.

one of the BIG headed ones! CONGRATS!!


I know the thing had a huge head, my buddy thinks this fish weighed close to 25 lbs, what do you think, i know its kinda hard to say from the pictures.

QUOTE(bassproat19 @ Jun 29 2009, 11:27 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Yea it was a proud day for all on the boat ill tell you that, we also had a 25 in musk landed after a figure 8 as the bucktail was on the way out of the water.....aggresive lil fish. I would have had that fish sooner but the hooks were all in the right side of the fishes gills I have never gone at a muskie with my left hand it was real unatural, if there were audio on the video you would here me swearing because I coulnd't grab it were i wanted. But hey congrats dude now i get one tommorow!

yeah buddy, you know what i was thinking it was kinda good that you landed it with your left hand because then you could operate the pliers with your right. mint job dude. i hope i can return the favor real soon. good luck tommarow hope you get one. bring the net and pliers. ill talk to you tommarow