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This was forwarded to me today at work. This is the article that will be in the next Musky hunter. They have a nice pic on there website as well.

Another St. Lawrence Monster Boated
For the die-hards who fish into December on the St. Lawrence River, their dream is for one strike from a monster fish. Russell Marion of Kendall Park, New Jersey, lived that dream on December 12, 2011.

Fishing with his friend, Sal Rotolo of Gananoque, Ontario, on the famous Forty Acre Shoal, Marion caught a musky that measured 55 1/2 inches long with a 29-inch girth. “I didn’t believe how hard this was to reel in. I’ve brought in stuff [that weighed] in the 40s. But this thing was a monster,” Marion told Musky Hunter.

Sal Rotolo and Russell Marion with the latter's giant musky.
Marion, 72, joined Rotolo that day because the marina where he keeps his own boat had closed the week before. They started fishing about 10 a.m., braving air temperatures in the low to mid 30s, and whitecaps. The water temperature on the St. Lawrence that day was 41 degrees.

Marion was trolling a 17-inch perch-pattern Ukko Wobbler about 80 feet back on a flat line. He estimated it was running about 18 feet deep over 35 to 40 feet of water. “I wanted to use something different from most of the guys. They say big muskies like long and skinny baits because they’re easy to swallow, and the Ukko is long and skinny,” Marion said.

Darkness was falling when the giant fish struck at about 4:30 p.m. “When I first picked up the rod I thought I was hooked on the bottom on a rock or the shoal, but the boat was still moving at 3 miles per hour and it was coming with me. Then it jumped,” Marion recalled. “It was all I could do to reel that thing in. I got it to the boat and Sal netted it with the Big Kahuna. We cut the line, then cut all the hooks, and then got the hooks out of the fish. “As I was fighting it Sal got on the radio and said ‘Big fish!’ and two other boats came over and witnessed it.”

One of the other boats contained Dale MacNair and Julie Cashaback. MacNair’s name should be familiar because he caught a 57-inch musky with a 33-inch girth while fishing with Rotolo in 2008.

Marion said his musky was measured on a bump board and “Dale checked the circumference. We then put it on the side of Sal’s boat and he’s holding it in the pictures. I couldn’t lift it. I’ve got the fish by the tail, but by the fourth picture I was back in the boat’s cabin grabbing for nitros (nitroglycerin).”

Marion, a retired plastic surgeon, has suffered five heart attacks and has undergone several heart procedures.

Marion continued: “As soon as the pictures were taken we put it in the water and it went straight down and out of there. We were very happy to see it go. All of us stayed put to make sure it didn’t surface around us, and I can guarantee that fish is still swimming out there.”

Then it was time for celebration. “That was enough for the day,” Marion said. “We went in and I took all the people in the boats around us out for dinner, on me.”