The 25th addition of Musky Mania is in the books! 38 anglers thrashed the waters of the Eagle River area this past weekend. Activities got underway Friday night at the Eagle Waters Resort with a tackle rummage sale and an interesting presentation by area guide "Yukon Jack" on how to fish the Eagle River Chain in the early season. Jim Laszewski was kind enough to provide a sign language interpretation of Yukon's talk for the hard of hearing. His performance earned him the nickname of Yukon Jr. for the weekend.

Fishing got underway bright and early Saturday morning for some. Not so early for others but it's a well know fact that sign language interpreters are generally not early risers. The passing of a cold front on Friday had the fish turned off Saturday morning and only 1 fish was registered at lunch time. The tough fishing conditions in the morning did not discourage the Musky Mania faithful though. As clouds started to roll in Saturday afternoon and evening, the fishing picked up a little and by the end of day one a total of 13 fish were boated. Two more fish were added to the board on Sunday, one of which was the eventual tournament winner! All totaled 15 fish were registered.

The casting contest was won by Perry Clough.

The ugliest bait contest was won by Dave Justmann for his Budweiser Drinking Trout Minnow (not available in stores).

Yours truly, Tom Kolb won the Musky Vision Sunglasses for doing the loudest complaining about not seeing any fish.

Congratulations to Musky Pete (MM founding father) for catching the biggest fish ever registered in a Mania!


Musky Mania 25, The Rest of the Story!

The winning fish for MM25 was a 43 ¾” fish as measured by my partner Jim Jessup and I with a floating ruler I had made with a stick-on tape purchased from Rollie and Helen’s Musky Pro Shop. When I first purchased the tape I checked it with a steel tape measure and found out that the 60” mark was really 60 ¾”. Gordie reminded me of this so I measured the 43 ¾” mark on the tape and found out it was REALLY 44 ¼”. So the winning fish was really 44 ¼” but it was too late to have it changed on the trophy. After you view the photos of the winning fish, I’m sure you’ll agree that this fish is much bigger than 43 ¾”.