I had not planned on posting this story but here goes.


I had 2 very cool clients (father/son) in the boat on Saturday and fishing was kinda slow......had a few follows from some smaller muskies and then the dad hits a 20-22 inch pike and as he is bringing it to the boat, the son looks down and sees this big musky following the pike along the side of the boat.......2 seconds later, the pike is closer to me in the front of the boat and I see this big/wide/long musky within an inch of this pike right beside the boat flaring its gills. So out of habit, I scream "figure-8, figure-8" so the guy fig-8's this hooked up pike and the musky goes around once then dropped out of sight.

Immediately after this happens, I finally had time to actually think about what the heck just transpired. Had I really just told my client to figure-8 an already hooked-up pike in hopes of catching a musky? Yep.

What would we have done if the musky latched on to this pike and we were able to scoop both into the net?? It is probably illegal since the pike was under the 24" limit and we were using it for bait.

What if the musky just sliced up the pike and killed it while he intentionally figure-8ed the sub-legal pike hoping the musky latched on? Bad ethics possibly?

It was just an instinctive reaction on my part to tell him to fig-8 the pike and if we would have landed both fish, the musky would very likely have been the largest musky we had ever boated on the river.

I think I am kinda glad the musky just swam off.