In Minnesota, a Big Fish in a Big Lake

By GREG BREINING
Published: October 27, 2006

IN fishing for muskellunge — or muskies, as real fishermen prefer to call them — “big” is the operative word.

For one, there’s the lake, Mille Lacs in north-central Minnesota, a windswept basin 20 miles across and the fourth largest lake in a state with more than 10,000 of them.
For another, there’s the tackle — bait-casting reels the size of tomato cans, mounted on nine-foot rods stiff enough to unhorse an armored knight and spooled with line of up to 200-pound test.
And most of all, there’s the muskie itself — more than four feet long, a torpedo of a fish with baleful eyes and an underslung jaw of needle teeth, known for following a lure to the boat only to sink again into the depths like a wraith.
More to the point, there’s the size of the baits. As my guide, Paul Hartman, coaxed our boat over a rocky reef, I was casting a Bull Dawg. I’ve fished for muskies before, flinging plugs the size of hammer handles and bucktail spinners as big as wind chimes. But I’ve never heaved anything quite like a Dawg. A weighted soft-plastic lure with a curly tail, it looks like a small dragon. Stretched out, a big Dawg measures 22 inches, and it weighs a full pound.
Muskies are so elusive they are called the fish of 10,000 casts. I wasn’t sure I’d survive the first 9,999. Or even the first 99. The Dawg was way too heavy to simply whip back and cast forward.
Instead, I had to extend the rod behind me with the bait dangling just over the water. Then, tucking my right arm tight against my body (to avoid a dislocation), I contracted my stomach, twisted my torso and pulled down on the rod handle with my left hand. The rod flexed, vaulting the Dawg skyward, as if from a catapult.
If my timing was right, I heard the whir of gears, then a “kerploosh” 120 feet away. If my timing was wrong, the line snarled in a huge backlash, and the momentum of the flying Dawg nearly ripped the rod from my hands.
“We go through about a half-dozen rods a year,” said Mr. Hartman, who lives in Blaine, just north of Minneapolis. A strapping man, he wore a thick sweater and oiled cotton bibs against the wind and spray. “They just collapse. Even saltwater stuff isn’t made to take abuse like that.”
Mille Lacs is not pretty. Rather, it is a featureless pond of giant proportions — more than 200 square miles. Its low shores are dotted with trailers, small cabins and fishing resorts, where often the idea of family entertainment is a TV in the bar. But beneath the water, Mille Lacs is a miracle of nature. Broad mud flats bring forth clouds of mayflies (on which the rest of the food chain depends). Deep weed beds shelter forage fish. Rocky reefs provide spawning habitat. In Minnesota, where the walleye is the state fish, Mille Lacs is perhaps the best walleye lake of all.
But in 1984 the state’s Department of Natural Resources began stocking Mille Lacs with large-growing muskies from Wisconsin and Leech Lake in northern Minnesota (the fish can be found in eastern North America, from Georgia to Manitoba).
Since then, owing to abundant forage and a strong catch-and-release ethic, Mille Lacs has become known as the go-to lake for trophy muskies, said Rick Bruesewitz, the department’s fisheries supervisor for the area. A new state record (currently 54 pounds, 56 inches) may swim in Mille Lacs, Mr. Bruesewitz said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if it did.”
Mr. Hartman, on the other hand, is sure of it. He believes he has seen such a fish. He has caught a 54-incher that came close. He even believes Mille Lacs holds a new world record (an astounding 67 pounds 8 ounces or a frightening 69 pounds 11 ounces, depending on which record-keeping organization you believe; both were caught in Wisconsin). “Oh, I’m positive,” he said. “We’ve seen a few fish. ...”
We were surrounded by sparkling waves, but nary another angler. “What’s incredible,” Mr. Hartman said, “is that we’re on some of the best muskie water in the world, on a beautiful day in October, and we’ve yet to see another muskie boat.”
Indeed, it’s the season of the die-hard angler. As the water cools, silvery footlong tullibees begin moving toward the reefs. In a few more weeks they will spawn. It is these lust-driven fish we are trying to mimic with our Bull Dawgs. Muskies follow the tullibees to the rocks.
“These are fish you don’t see in the summer, for the most part,” Mr. Hartman said. He will fish until early December. “It can be the best miserable fishing you’ve ever had,” he said. Long periods of futile, backbreaking casting are punctuated by sudden flashes of action — like the day Mr. Hartman caught muskies of 41, 46 and 48 pounds in quick succession, all on Bull Dawgs. “It’s like they’re on fire,” he said.
So we diligently cast and retrieved, cast and retrieved. Mr. Hartman showed me how to animate the Bull Dawg with footlong jerks of the rod. When it reaches the boat, he said, swim it alongside for a yard or more, to give a trailing muskie a chance to show itself.
Mr. Hartman, 36, is a part-time electrician and full-time muskie fancier. He is a guide, organizes muskie tournaments and fishes whenever he can, not only on Mille Lacs, but throughout Minnesota and across the border in Ontario.
ABOUT the illusions of muskie fishermen, he was good-humored and self-deprecating: “If you’re going to muskie fish, you’ve got to be the eternal optimist, but sometimes it’s borderline delusional.”
“A lot of the guys who are really rabid muskie anglers could just as easily be alcoholics.”
As he cast, he talked of “chiseling away the hours.” “Put a good lure in good water,” he said, “and good things usually happen.”
For two days, from midmorning till well after dark, we put good lures in good water. We cast and trolled. But mostly we cast, testing the limits of our muscles, joints and, perhaps, our intelligence.
We saw fish — several. Some, by Mr. Hartman’s reckoning, exceeded 50 inches. There are few thrills in fishing that quite match the sudden appearance of a muskie a foot behind your lure. We were working a weed bed in a protected bay, when Mr. Hartman shouted: “Look at this! Oh, my god, do you see that?” As in some piscine horror movie, a huge form materialized behind his Dawg. The fish barely waved a fin, but glided alongside the boat.
“I think it’s 55 or 56 inches,” Mr. Hartman said. If he was right, it was potentially a state record. He plunged his rod deep into the water and traced a giant figure eight to try to woo the muskie into striking. The fish rushed toward the lure. Then it stopped, and faded into the deep, green shadows.
We did catch fish — two, in fact. We were resting our arms and trolling our Bull Dawgs behind the boat, toward a medium-rare horizon. I felt a tug and winched aboard a northern pike a yard long. A 12-pound pike is nothing to sneer at, but I couldn’t help but feel let down. Such is the way muskie hunting corrupts the soul.
Minutes later, Mr. Hartman set the hook. His rod tip danced as the fish surged and whipped its head. Broad shoulders broke the surface. The muskie made a couple of short runs, but soon Mr. Hartman led it to the boat, slipped his bare fingers beneath its gill cover and hoisted it aboard. He measured it as an afterthought: 47 inches, but its girth was extravagant. Mr. Hartman guessed it weighed nearly 40 pounds. We took photos, and he slid it back into the water. “There it goes,” he said. “Real strong”
By the time we returned to the Myr Mar Marina on the north shore of the lake, the harvest moon glinted off the cold water. We had been fishing, mostly heaving Bull Dawgs, for 12 hours, with only a break for lunch. Exhausted, I lugged my gear to the car.
I said good night. “I think I may head out to the reef for another hour,” Mr. Hartman said, a bit sheepishly. “That spot owes me one. If you put in your time, you’re bound to catch a fish, right?”