LAKE NEBAGAMON, Wis. — Jon Kopetzky says their fishing group was never expecting to catch a giant muskie on a nice June morning trolling along Wisconsin’s South Shore of Lake Superior, a spot where trout, salmon or maybe a chunky walleye would be more likely to show up.
But it was a 52.25-inch muskie that stole the show.
Kopetzky and his daughters, Olivia and Claire — all of Lake Nebagamon — were along on Scott and Holly Lundberg’s fishing boat, the Grace Ann, on June 9, trolling not far off shore between the Amnicon and Brule river mouths.
They were still setting up their gear when a very large and very powerful fish smacked a Katfish Kustomz stickbait being trolled on the surface behind a planer board.
“It was the first fish of the morning, about 8:30. … We were still setting out lines when it hit,” Jon Kopetzky said. “It pulled the planer board right down to the bottom of the lake before it finally released.”
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Olivia, 13, said she was closest to the rod when all the commotion started so she beat her 11-year-old sister, Claire, to grab it and start reeling.
“We had no idea what it was at first, not until we saw it next to the boat,” Olivia said.
“But we knew it was really big.”
The soon-to-be eighth grader at Northwestern Middle School said she wasn’t really scared at any point but was maybe a little excited. Her sister was just a bit jealous that Olivia got to the rod first.
“She was excited for me, but later she said ‘that should have been my fish,’” Olivia said with a laugh.
After being measured and photographed, the muskie was released and swam away, apparently no worse for wear.
The process of reeling it in was complicated, and not just because of the size of the fish.
“I took 25, maybe 30 minutes to get that fish in. … It got tangled up in the lines we were putting out. … We had to hand-pull the fish in the last few feet because it was so tangled up she couldn’t reel it in any more. And then it wouldn't fit in the net, so we had to hand-land it off the back of the boat,” Jon Kopetzky said. “The fish had straightened out two of the three hooks in its mouth. … There were probably a dozen reasons we should never have been able to get that fish in the boat, but I guess it was Olivia’s lucky day.”
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The group went on to catch seven keeper lake trout and seven coho salmon that morning. But it will be Olivia’s muskie that everyone talks about for a while. The muskie was 26 inches around the middle and was estimated to weigh about 45 pounds.
Muskies are fairly common throughout the St. Louis River Estuary in Duluth and Superior but they also occasionally swim out into Lake Superior to find their food, with some venturing as far as Chequamegon Bay, according to fisheries biologists who have used tracking devices to follow the fish.
“I do a lot of fishing but this is only the second muskie we’ve caught outside” the Superior Entry to the harbor, Jon Kopetzky said.
Any muskie over 50 inches is considered a world-class trophy, and a few have been caught in the estuary that big. But not many have been bigger.
Chris Edquist of Superior, an avid estuary muskie angler and guide, said any muskie over 48 inches in the St. Louis River system is considered big. The biggest he’s ever caught there was 55 inches.
“Every year there are several over 50” caught, but not as many as you would think,” Edqusit noted. “I have not heard of one over 52 inches caught this year.”
An avid muskie angler, Jon Kopetzky said he’s caught several nice fish, “but not even close to her fish… 45-inches is my biggest,” he said.
“We looked up the muskie tournament results in Wisconsin and Minnesota and there have only been a couple fish this big caught anywhere in either state anytime recently,” Jon Kopetzky noted.
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For her part, Olivia said she’s going to keep trying to top her own record.
“Fishing is one of my favorite things to do,” she said.
Muskies were first stocked in the St. Louis River estuary in 1983 by the Wisconsin DNR. Both Wisconsin and Minnesota DNRs stocked the species almost annually through 2005.
The Minnesota state catch-and-release muskie record is 58.25 inches caught on Lake Mille Lacs just last summer. The Wisconsin record was caught in 1949 at 63.5 inches long.
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