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an interesting story I found that relates to our March meeting. It is by Juris Ozols, Guide....

As hope faded, I made a particularly long cast in some ten feet of water with a perch Swim Whiz. The lure banged off rocks on the bottom halfway back and stopped dead. I shouted "I've got a muskie!" And I did!. A last day / last hour muskie.

That muskie went through all the motions a good muskie is trained to do - splashes, jumps, drag-taking runs, all that. By this time I had upgraded to a real Muskie Outfit - St. Croix rod, Ambassadeur 6500 Synchro reel, and it was fun to battle the muskie with quality equipment. I finally got the fish to boatside.

But then it gets much less pretty. The rear set of treble hooks on the Swim Whiz had the muskie hooked outside the mouth in the gill area. With the muskie in the water, we couldn't tell how securely. I didn't want to lose it. One of my friends handled the net, and took a swipe at the fish from the front with predictable consequences. The net caught on the two front trebles and the fish thrashed, resulting in an immediate and classic net / lure / hooks / line / fish mess, with no hope of recovery.

My friend grabbed the hoop of the net with both hands and threw the whole operation into the boat. Lifting the muskie out of the water impaled it on the third set of hooks, driving them firmly into the gills.

After measuring the fish I tried to remove the hooks with needlenose pliers, but failed. The thrashing fish, the shaking hands after three years without a muskie.... I found it impossible. I tried to cut the hooks with the small clipper at the base of the pliers. Also hopeless. My friend had steady hands (it wasn't his fish) and he took the pliers from me and forcibly ripped the hooks out. Blood everywhere.

As I put the muskie back in the water, it slipped out of my hands, went belly up, and floated away. The excitement vanished. Concern, and, in fact, dread struck me. As much as I had wanted to catch and bring in the fish, I wanted it to live even more. What do you do with a dead 36" muskie? Certainly not mount it. Eat it? Impossible. Donate it to somebody to eat? Just as bad. What do you do?

We paddled over to it, I grabbed the tail, turned it right side up, and started swishing it back and forth in the water. And somehow the fish revived. It made a lunge, broke free, and dove away. However, although it didn't die in my hands, I'm sure it didn't survive.

I've thought about it many times since. It was in my power to save that muskie. In the water, at boatside, the fish had only minimal damage. Water release techniques frequently documented in Muskie magazine would have easily done the trick, with a much happier ending. But I believe I learned more from this muskie than from the previous muskies and all the reading I had done.

Let me make some observations on lessons learned from these, my first four muskies.

FIRST
This is important.
As far as I'm now concerned a muskie is caught when it's at boatside on the end of the line. At that point getting rid of it is your sole purpose in life (so you can get through with the catching and go back to fishing). Getting it in a net, hauling it into the boat, all that, are plagues to be avoided. If it looks like it's going to break loose by itself, encourage it. You've just saved yourself a dirty job.

SECOND
Avoid panic at all costs when a muskie is on the line. The worst outcome - it gets away - is really okay compared to the alternatives, isn't it? Don't do anything that could kill the muskie. Easier said than done, maybe, but come at it that way and the mental attitude will help.

THIRD
I tinkered with the following thought after my first four muskies: At that point in my muskie career I couldn't conceive of the circumstances under which I would ever intentionally kill and keep a muskie.

FOURTH
Don't ever fish without wire cutters in the boat. Don't ever fish with an unloaded camera in the boat. Maybe don't even fish with a net in the boat, to avoid the temptation. However, I strongly recommend fishing with muskie skeptics, disbelievers, and "walleyes only" fishermen in the boat. There will come a day when they will be sorry and you will be filled with joy!