Just got my copy of the May 10 issue of WA. Fishing & Hunting News.
Page after page of great muskie tips and good maps of Mayfield, Merwin and Tapps.
I drive truck (to earn money for lures) and I had to keep taking breaks today to read it all.
The best media/press coverage I have ever seen for our northwest ESOX.
And yes, Andy did a nice piece on the upcoming Muskies Inc. Chapter startup, too, page 42.
If I can't be IN the boat, I sure like reading about being IN the boat!!
>-----):<
F & H News... Giant Muskies!
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Forum Post Guidelines: This Forum is rated “Family Friendly”. Civil discussions are encouraged and welcomed. Name calling, negative, harassing, or threatening comments will be removed and may result in suspension or IP Ban without notice. Please refer to the Terms of Service and Forum Guidelines post for more information. Thank you
F & H News... Giant Muskies!
Tiger Muskies are sterile.
You can't keep them under 50 inches:
Let them do their job: Eating N.P.Minnows
You can't keep them under 50 inches:
Let them do their job: Eating N.P.Minnows
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Don Wittenberger
- Commander
- Posts: 596
- Joined: Fri May 04, 2007 2:22 pm
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RE:F & H News... Giant Muskies!
Yup, if you look closely at the photo credit on the table of contents page, you'll see that I provided F&HN with the photo they used on the cover. The way that came about is F&HN contacted WDFW to get some musky photos, but they didn't have any fishing photos. The warmwater fisheries people at WDFW know me, and called me. I told them, sure, they could give my name and phone number to F&HN, who then called me. I have a film scanner, so a lot of my photos are already scanned into my home computer, and I sent them some samples.
We (the editor and FH&N and me) had a dickens of a time with that cover photo. They figured out right away that Mike Nielsen's 31-pounder was the photo they wanted for the cover, but they wanted a higher-resolution scan. So I had to find the negative. That's a long story I won't go into, let's just say that negative has been traveling a little recently, and I had forgotten where I'd put it. Plus we were working against a deadline. I found it a couple hours before their deadline and rescanned it. The original scan was about 3 megabytes, and the biggest scan I can do with my equipment (a Nikon Coolscan II) is 29 megabytes. I had to do it on an older computer running Windows 98 because the Coolscan II isn't supported by XP, the operating system on my newest computer. And I don't have broadband, and I do have AOL, and there were a ton of problems trying to transmit the larger scan to F&HN as an e-mail attachment. The first half-dozen attempts failed, and they didn't actually get it until the next morning after their deadline had passed. How they coped with that at the printing plant, well, you'll have to ask them because I don't know.
Here's the story behind Mike Nielsen and his big fish. FH&N says the fish was caught Sept. 25, 2004 but that's not accurate. Mike and his wife live near Lake Merwin and often go kayaking on the lake, and we didn't know each other when I encountered him at the Cresap Bay boat landing in Sept. of 2004. Mike has plenty of salmon fishing experience but had never fished for tiger muskies. I took him out in my boat for several days in Sept. 2004, but he didn't catch a tiger musky that season. However, we became friends, and continued fishing together in 2005 and 2006.
In 2005, I started fishing Merwin the day after Labor Day, and Mike was with me that day. I drove down from Seattle in the afternoon and we got about 2 hours of fishing in before dark on Monday, Sept. 5 2005. Mike caught his first tiger musky that evening, a rambuctious fish in the 14 to 16 lb. range. The next day, Sept. 6, he hooked and lost a big fish that we didn't get a look at but which he swears was several pounds bigger than his 31-pounder. The fish took the lure in deep water and stayed deep, so we never got a real good look at it, although I did get a broadside view of its body flashing in the water as it turned sideways just after taking the lure. That fish fought quite a while and eventually wrapped the line around a log or stump on the bottom. Mike couldn't get it off, so he handed the rod to me, and I continued to play the fish for about another minute. I couldn't get it off the log, either, and it eventually broke the 30-lb. test line, taking the lure and leader with it. Having played the fish myself, I know how heavy it was, and it's my opinion also that fish was in the 32 to 34 lb. range.
The next day, Tuesday, Sept. 6 2005, as I recall in midafternoon, Mike hooked the fish you see on the cover of FH&N. This fish hit a musky-sized spinnerbait in shallow water and was not well hooked. That lure has a treble trailer hook but only one hook was in its lip. More problematically, it immediately rushed straight at the side of the boat, broadside, and the collision would have knocked the lure loose for sure. Believe me I moved fast. I grabbed the net and jammed it in the water just as the fish hit the boat, and Mike dropped the rod and helped me haul it aboard. The fish was still extremely green and flopping hard, and began to fall tail-first out of the net, so I grabbed the tail with my free hand and pushed it back into the net. This was while the net was still hanging over the water, so if the fish had gotten out of the net at that point, it would have gotten away. After we got it aboard, I weighed the fish and net on my tackle box scale, at about 35-36 lbs. I subtracted 3 lbs. for the net and figured Mike had probably just caught a new state record of about 32 1/2 lbs., although I knew it was going to be awfully close. What I didn't know at the time, but know now, is my scale weighs about a pound too high at weights above 30 lbs. (I tested it last summer using four one-gallon jugs full of water.)
We put the in the 60-inch livewell of my musky boat and took it to the Speelyai Hatchery, where the hatchery manager weighed it on a noncertified scale. The fish was put in a large plastic tub, and the scale with the tub on it (but without the fish) was zeroed first. That scale gave us a weight of 31.15 lbs. The state record is 31.25 lbs. To get a certified weight, we would have had to kill the fish and take it into Woodland over 25 miles away. I told Mike he'd need a reading of at least 1/4 pound higher, 1/2 pound would be better, to get the record and that I didn't think there was much chance a certified weighing would make up the difference. Among other things, a fish begins to lose weight as soon as it's taken out of the water and by the time we got it to town it would actually weigh a little less than it did while still alive at the hatchery. Add to this the fact that Mike and I both fish for fun, we're not in this for records or notoriety, and the decision he made to release the fish was a no-brainer. He didn't even think about it, he just carried it from the scale down to the water and released it. We stayed with the fish until it revived and swam off. I liked the way it looked the last time we saw it, and I feel 98% confident the fish survived all the handling and the brief time it was out of the water for the weighing.
The FH&N article makes reference to our party tying into three 30-lb. class fish last season. That also is inaccurate. Mike hooked and lost a probable state record in early Sept. of 2005, caught and released his 31-pounder the next day, and caught and released a near-30 lb. fish on July 31, 2006. I went down to Merwin at the end of July, and Tony Welch (who wrote the article about Merwin Lake that appeared in Musky Hunter Magazine last year) came up from Portland to join us, for three days of fishing on July 31 - Aug. 2. Mike caught his third big musky on the first day of the trip. In fact, it was a first cast fish. Not his first cast of the day, but we had moved to a new area and his first cast in that area was taken by a big fish. When I weighed it (without the net) on the same tackle box scale I had used on his 31-pounder the year before, the needle bounced around somewhat, it settled once at 30 lbs., and several times at 29 lbs. We also measured its length and girth, and there's a formula you can use to calculate a musky's weight from those dimensions which is quite accurate. The standard formula is length X girth squared divided by 800 (i.e., length X girth X girth / 800), although it should be noted that John Detloff, musky writer, resort owner, and guide on Wisconsin's Chippewa Flowage, who tracks all muskies caught on the Flowage, has come up with a divisor of 754 based on verified weights of some 3,000 muskies caught from the Flowage over a several year span of time.
Depending on how you do the calculate, Mike's July 31, 2006 fish was somewhere around 28.75 to 29.5 lbs. We decided to call it a 28-lb. fish but it very likely was slightly over 29 lbs. I feel highly confident in stating that it was not over 30 lbs. However, that's very close to being in the 30-lb. class and I'll take a 29-pounder any day! That is a very big fi
We (the editor and FH&N and me) had a dickens of a time with that cover photo. They figured out right away that Mike Nielsen's 31-pounder was the photo they wanted for the cover, but they wanted a higher-resolution scan. So I had to find the negative. That's a long story I won't go into, let's just say that negative has been traveling a little recently, and I had forgotten where I'd put it. Plus we were working against a deadline. I found it a couple hours before their deadline and rescanned it. The original scan was about 3 megabytes, and the biggest scan I can do with my equipment (a Nikon Coolscan II) is 29 megabytes. I had to do it on an older computer running Windows 98 because the Coolscan II isn't supported by XP, the operating system on my newest computer. And I don't have broadband, and I do have AOL, and there were a ton of problems trying to transmit the larger scan to F&HN as an e-mail attachment. The first half-dozen attempts failed, and they didn't actually get it until the next morning after their deadline had passed. How they coped with that at the printing plant, well, you'll have to ask them because I don't know.
Here's the story behind Mike Nielsen and his big fish. FH&N says the fish was caught Sept. 25, 2004 but that's not accurate. Mike and his wife live near Lake Merwin and often go kayaking on the lake, and we didn't know each other when I encountered him at the Cresap Bay boat landing in Sept. of 2004. Mike has plenty of salmon fishing experience but had never fished for tiger muskies. I took him out in my boat for several days in Sept. 2004, but he didn't catch a tiger musky that season. However, we became friends, and continued fishing together in 2005 and 2006.
In 2005, I started fishing Merwin the day after Labor Day, and Mike was with me that day. I drove down from Seattle in the afternoon and we got about 2 hours of fishing in before dark on Monday, Sept. 5 2005. Mike caught his first tiger musky that evening, a rambuctious fish in the 14 to 16 lb. range. The next day, Sept. 6, he hooked and lost a big fish that we didn't get a look at but which he swears was several pounds bigger than his 31-pounder. The fish took the lure in deep water and stayed deep, so we never got a real good look at it, although I did get a broadside view of its body flashing in the water as it turned sideways just after taking the lure. That fish fought quite a while and eventually wrapped the line around a log or stump on the bottom. Mike couldn't get it off, so he handed the rod to me, and I continued to play the fish for about another minute. I couldn't get it off the log, either, and it eventually broke the 30-lb. test line, taking the lure and leader with it. Having played the fish myself, I know how heavy it was, and it's my opinion also that fish was in the 32 to 34 lb. range.
The next day, Tuesday, Sept. 6 2005, as I recall in midafternoon, Mike hooked the fish you see on the cover of FH&N. This fish hit a musky-sized spinnerbait in shallow water and was not well hooked. That lure has a treble trailer hook but only one hook was in its lip. More problematically, it immediately rushed straight at the side of the boat, broadside, and the collision would have knocked the lure loose for sure. Believe me I moved fast. I grabbed the net and jammed it in the water just as the fish hit the boat, and Mike dropped the rod and helped me haul it aboard. The fish was still extremely green and flopping hard, and began to fall tail-first out of the net, so I grabbed the tail with my free hand and pushed it back into the net. This was while the net was still hanging over the water, so if the fish had gotten out of the net at that point, it would have gotten away. After we got it aboard, I weighed the fish and net on my tackle box scale, at about 35-36 lbs. I subtracted 3 lbs. for the net and figured Mike had probably just caught a new state record of about 32 1/2 lbs., although I knew it was going to be awfully close. What I didn't know at the time, but know now, is my scale weighs about a pound too high at weights above 30 lbs. (I tested it last summer using four one-gallon jugs full of water.)
We put the in the 60-inch livewell of my musky boat and took it to the Speelyai Hatchery, where the hatchery manager weighed it on a noncertified scale. The fish was put in a large plastic tub, and the scale with the tub on it (but without the fish) was zeroed first. That scale gave us a weight of 31.15 lbs. The state record is 31.25 lbs. To get a certified weight, we would have had to kill the fish and take it into Woodland over 25 miles away. I told Mike he'd need a reading of at least 1/4 pound higher, 1/2 pound would be better, to get the record and that I didn't think there was much chance a certified weighing would make up the difference. Among other things, a fish begins to lose weight as soon as it's taken out of the water and by the time we got it to town it would actually weigh a little less than it did while still alive at the hatchery. Add to this the fact that Mike and I both fish for fun, we're not in this for records or notoriety, and the decision he made to release the fish was a no-brainer. He didn't even think about it, he just carried it from the scale down to the water and released it. We stayed with the fish until it revived and swam off. I liked the way it looked the last time we saw it, and I feel 98% confident the fish survived all the handling and the brief time it was out of the water for the weighing.
The FH&N article makes reference to our party tying into three 30-lb. class fish last season. That also is inaccurate. Mike hooked and lost a probable state record in early Sept. of 2005, caught and released his 31-pounder the next day, and caught and released a near-30 lb. fish on July 31, 2006. I went down to Merwin at the end of July, and Tony Welch (who wrote the article about Merwin Lake that appeared in Musky Hunter Magazine last year) came up from Portland to join us, for three days of fishing on July 31 - Aug. 2. Mike caught his third big musky on the first day of the trip. In fact, it was a first cast fish. Not his first cast of the day, but we had moved to a new area and his first cast in that area was taken by a big fish. When I weighed it (without the net) on the same tackle box scale I had used on his 31-pounder the year before, the needle bounced around somewhat, it settled once at 30 lbs., and several times at 29 lbs. We also measured its length and girth, and there's a formula you can use to calculate a musky's weight from those dimensions which is quite accurate. The standard formula is length X girth squared divided by 800 (i.e., length X girth X girth / 800), although it should be noted that John Detloff, musky writer, resort owner, and guide on Wisconsin's Chippewa Flowage, who tracks all muskies caught on the Flowage, has come up with a divisor of 754 based on verified weights of some 3,000 muskies caught from the Flowage over a several year span of time.
Depending on how you do the calculate, Mike's July 31, 2006 fish was somewhere around 28.75 to 29.5 lbs. We decided to call it a 28-lb. fish but it very likely was slightly over 29 lbs. I feel highly confident in stating that it was not over 30 lbs. However, that's very close to being in the 30-lb. class and I'll take a 29-pounder any day! That is a very big fi
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cole steffens
- Petty Officer
- Posts: 80
- Joined: Sat Apr 28, 2007 3:54 pm
- Location: 7 lakes
RE:F & H News... Giant Muskies!
never fished for tiger musky in my life but have had a subsciption to f&h news for years and boy is that a big fish on the cover of this months issue it really looks like this state is developing a good musky fishery hopefully one day ill get the chance to fish for these monsters myself
if we are good to are lakes and streams they will be good to us
RE:F & H News... Giant Muskies!
Hey guys,
I just picked up the May 10, 2007 issue of Washington Fishing & Hunting News...It is great!!! Lot's of information about WA. Muskies. I would definitely grab one before they are gone. Good Fishing ya'all...
I just picked up the May 10, 2007 issue of Washington Fishing & Hunting News...It is great!!! Lot's of information about WA. Muskies. I would definitely grab one before they are gone. Good Fishing ya'all...
>----):< A good gamefish is too valuable, to be caught only once.
NW TIGER PAC, Chapter 57 of Muskies, Inc.
NW TIGER PAC, Chapter 57 of Muskies, Inc.
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iPodrodder
- Commodore
- Posts: 902
- Joined: Tue May 01, 2007 5:46 pm
- Location: Sammamish (N.00.00)
RE:F & H News... Giant Muskies!
I wonder whether I could land one on trout gear? 
LOL.
LOL.
RE:F & H News... Giant Muskies!
Don
i blame you, it's all your fault! i met you out on the water the day that fish was caught. you showed us the pictures and life has never been the same! i now spend all my money buying gear and gas! i spend my winters in misery waiting for summer. oh how life would be different if not for that picture. :D
question: "To get a certified weight, we would have had to kill the fish" is that a rule to get certified or is it just that the fish wouldn't have survived the trip? if it's a rule to get certified, i guess i'll never have a record tiger musky. i'm not about to kill these fish just for the hell of it.
i blame you, it's all your fault! i met you out on the water the day that fish was caught. you showed us the pictures and life has never been the same! i now spend all my money buying gear and gas! i spend my winters in misery waiting for summer. oh how life would be different if not for that picture. :D
question: "To get a certified weight, we would have had to kill the fish" is that a rule to get certified or is it just that the fish wouldn't have survived the trip? if it's a rule to get certified, i guess i'll never have a record tiger musky. i'm not about to kill these fish just for the hell of it.
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Don Wittenberger
- Commander
- Posts: 596
- Joined: Fri May 04, 2007 2:22 pm
- Location: Shoreline
RE:F & H News... Giant Muskies!
Yeah, it does that to people. Muskies are worse than crack. I have no answer. There's no known cure.
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Don Wittenberger
- Commander
- Posts: 596
- Joined: Fri May 04, 2007 2:22 pm
- Location: Shoreline
RE:F & H News... Giant Muskies!
The hatchery doesn't have a certified scale, and it's half an hour to town. A 30 lb. muskie wouldn't last that long in my livewell. Personally, I hope the state record will be passe by this time next year; I've submitted a rule proposal to the F & W Commission to change the tiger muskie bag limit to catch and release only.