Syracuse.com - St. Lawrence River muskie anglers strive for that one big fish this time of year

HuntingNY-News · December 2, 2011

Die-hard muskie fishermen are a determined lot. Muskie aren't call "The fish of 10,000 casts" for nothing. They'tr hard to catch, and clients on muskie charters often get skunked -- but they keep coming back.

Submitted photoCharter boat Capt. Rich Clarke, left, holds a 60-inch muskie along with Daniel Polniak Jr., who landed the fish. The fish was caught in the St. Lawrence River Sunday and released.

Gary Walts/The Post-Standardxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Gary Walts/The Post-Standardxxxxxxx

Gary Walts/The Post-Standardxxxxxx

Capt. Rich Clarke had been out trolling on the St. Lawrence River with two clients for seven straight hours Sunday when the giant hit.

It grabbed the lure about 80 feet from the boat.

“Line just went screaming across the water. It took out at least 150 feet on its first run,” Clarke said.

Daniel Polniak Jr., 27, of Ogdensburg, out on his first muskie charter, was handed the rod and given strict instructions. Don’t horse it. Keep the tension on the fish. No slack. Keep your rod up and use it as a shock absorber. His reel had 45-pound-test braided line.

He had no idea, though, that he was fighting a 5-foot fish.

“When it broke the surface and jumped, we then saw how huge it was,” Polniak said. “My legs started shaking.”

After a 20-minute battle, he got it alongside the boat. Clarke could see the fish was hooked on the outside of its mouth with his custom-painted, 8-inch Believer, a crankbait lure. Its colors resembled a smallmouth bass.

The muskie had all the makings of a great trophy and was possibly a record fish. Most anglers would have loved to land it and put it on the wall at their home or office.

Once the fish was netted and in the boat, the lure came off easily.

“That’s when I said to myself, ‘This fish isn’t hurt. I know it’s a real giant, but I shouldn’t hurt this fish. It deserves to live,’” Clarke said.

Patience required

Die-hard muskie fishermen are a determined lot. Muskie aren’t call “The fish of 10,000 casts” for nothing. They’re hard to catch, and clients on muskie charters often get skunked.

“You have to be persistent, patient, persistent — and persistent again. We have a slogan on my boat: ‘They will weaken, we will not,’” said Bob Walters, of Water Wolf Charters, who took a reporter and photographer out on the river recently with one of his clients, Ed Beers.

Beers, a longshoreman from New Jersey, caught a 59-incher last December while out with Walters. It had a 28-inch girth and was caught on a “Berger King rig,” which consisted of a Believer trailed by a wire leader with a whitefish spoon attached.

Many said Beers’ fish was the biggest muskie caught on the river in 50 years. Its fins got wrapped up in fishing line during the fight and it ended up dying before it could be put back in the water. Walters and his client decided to keep it.

The 56-pound fish hangs on the wall at the Thousand Island Bait Store in Alexandria Bay. Walters and Beers both had replicas made.

Beers’ fish was caught on a stormy day that made Walters think twice about going out. This time of year, anglers get swamped with rain or snow, high winds and big waves.

It’s an ideal time to fish for muskie.

“In the case of the St. Lawrence, we have a hatchery and that’s Lake Ontario,” Walters said. “When the temperatures change and the bait fish move into the river from the lake, the muskies start to migrate in.”

A muskie will eat other fish up to 36 inches long. It’s not uncommon, he said, to reel in a northern pike with teeth marks on its side from a muskie.

“That’s the second slogan on my boat: ‘Muskies — all other fish are bait,’” he said and smiled.

A picture of one of Walters’ clients, John Kobiela, is in the 2011-12 DEC freshwater fishing guide. He is shown hoisting a 55-inch muskie he caught Nov. 15, 2010.

Walters, a Skaneateles Falls resident, retired Syracuse firefighter and former owner of the Oswego Marina, has run a muskie charter boat on the river since 1999. He takes clients out from Oct. 1 to Dec. 15.

He touts his 31-foot boat with its heated cabin and state-of-the-art electronics as a muskie fishing machine. He concedes his job at times involves entertaining his clients as they watch and wait — and wait some more. He serves up marinated venison on a small grill and has a videotape attached to one of the down riggers, which allows clients to see (and get recordings) of fish as they strike the lure.

“I have many clients who get nothing and come back the next year signed up for even more days on the water,” he said, adding that many are on a quest.

Several years ago, there was a sizable number of muskie that turned up dead in the river because of VHS, a fish-killing disease. Walters and others believe it took out a lot of the weaker fish, leaving what he called the stronger “super breed” of muskie in the St. Lawrence.

“We want the world record here,” he said. “A 60-incher will be caught in the near future — it’s going to happen.”

About that 60-incher

A few days later, it did happen.

As Polniak got the muskie close to the boat, Clarke dipped his huge net over the side of the boat to haul it in.

“He had two hands on the net. I had one hand on it,” Polniak said. “There was a lot of adrenaline. We got it in the boat in a hurry.”

Clarke estimated the fish weighed more than 60 pounds. It had a 29½-inch girth.

The longstanding state record, rejected by the International Game Fish Association because of questions over a photograph and other reasons, is Arthur Lawton’s 69-pound, 15-ounce lunker caught back in 1949 on the St. Lawrence River. It was 64 inches.

The world record isn’t about length. It’s about weight.

The I.G.F.A., which rejected Lawton’s fish following an investigation in the 1990s, maintains that the world’s all-tackle record for muskie was caught by Cal Johnson, also in 1949, on Lake Court Oreilles in Haywood, Wis. That fish weighed 67 pounds, 8 ounces.

“You get something over 60 inches, you start thinking world record,” said Clarke, who has been a charter boat captain on the river for 31 years. His biggest muskie up until last Sunday was 59 inches, he said.

“This fish had been heavily feeding. It was crapping all over — it was fat,” he said.

With the clock ticking, several pictures were quickly snapped. The boat’s video camera ran out of power as Polniak was fighting the fish and was unavailable for the measurement process. A photo taken by Polniak’s fishing buddy, Jeordi McEwen, on his cellphone camera also failed to show the length measurement clearly. Clarke said he didn’t weigh the fish, fearful of it going belly up.

“The seconds felt like minutes. I know I’m going to be criticized for this, but my heart just wasn’t into keeping it,” he said. “Everything on it was thicker and bigger than normal. It was a giant. It has the potential to grow to world-record size. Somebody someday will be glad I put it back.”

Polniak wholeheartedly agreed.

“If I didn’t think it was going to live, it would be on my wall,” he said. “But I live on the river and when you take a fish that big, you take a piece of the river. I didn’t want to do that.”

Submitted photoxxxxxxxx

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog