Near-record musky still causing a stir

It started out like any old fishing expedition for Mike Taschuk on a sunny day last fall—only it ended with a very big surprise.
Taschuk, a self-proclaimed “semi-retired” financial advisor from the Twin Cities, went out fishing in deep water for walleye on Red Gut Bay on Rainy Lake and ended up catching a 50-pound musky instead.

When it comes to surprises, they don’t get much bigger than that.
“I caught a bass on a nightcrawler jig and I was reeling it in,” Taschuk recalled.
“Every once in a while, you get a bite from a bigger fish [on the smaller fish] and that’s what happened, but [the musky] let the bass go about six feet from the surface,” he added.
“I could see the bass come up, but then all of a sudden this thing surfaced and grabbed [the bass] again and this time didn’t want to let it go.
“We fought for 15-20 minutes before my wife [Christine] somehow got part of it into the net, and I reached over the boat and we both lifted it into the boat,” he said.
Taschuk was fishing with 14-pound test line but said it was more than enough to hold onto the lunker.
“With the drag set the way I had it, and a pretty good rod-and-reel set-up, it wasn’t much of a problem,” he noted.
The couple, along with their grandson, Javon, snapped a few photos and took some “guesstimates” on the size and weight of the fish before releasing it back into the lake.
Taschuk figured the fish weighed in at about 50 pounds and measured roughly 58 inches in length.
“The debate was on measurements because we didn’t have any specific method besides some ‘guesstimation’ by using me holding the fish up and comparing to my height and my grandson’s height standing on a cooler,” Taschuk admitted.
“It’s just a little too iffy to declare it a record or close to one, there just wasn’t enough evidence to confirm it.
“This fish could’ve been longer than 58 [inches] even, but we won’t know,” he added. “That wasn’t really on my mind at the time. Usually you don’t land that type of fish, it’s literally almost impossible.
“We just couldn’t believe it,” he remarked.
According to www.musky.ca, the Ontario record musky weighed 65 pounds and measured 58 inches in length.
Ken O’Brien of Toronto caught the giant fish back on
Oct. 16, 1988 in Blackstone Harbour on Georgian Bay.
O’Brien was taking part in an annual musky fishing challenge between two teams of anglers, which meant no shortage of credible witnesses.
The fish was weighed and photographed—showing significantly more girth than Taschuk’s, but looking similar in length.
Taschuk, originally of International Falls, Mn., actually was contacted by a Wisconsin company to produce a replica of the fish after photos appeared in the Daily Journal.
“With the Internet, the photos circulated, and a fellow from Wisconsin that does musky replicas called me and indicated that it was relatively close to a North American record for catch-and-release,” Taschuk noted.
“He had the replica made and took it to the various musky conventions in the United States, and then when he was in Minneapolis, my son picked it up at about the middle of April.”
Taschuk then brought the mount with him this spring to hang up in his summer residence at Bear’s Pass—and it soon became a topic of discussion among neighbours.
“The word kind of spread when I got the mount and brought it up to the cabin here,” Taschuk said.
“There’s been a steady stream of people coming to look at it because of the size, obviously,” he added.