Story to Remember!

Moon Phase:

Fishing Time: 8:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Weather: sunny, clear, 90's

Now that I live in Ogden 5 days a week I figure its my best chance to focus my time on these elusive Tiger Muskies. I decided to give it a try from my float tube last night, but didn't get to Pineview til 8:00 p.m. I hit the Sportsmans Wharehouse in Ogden before I went because I wanted to buy some of those bucktail spinners that I hear everyone talk about for Musky! I picked a couple up along with a size J13 jointed Rapala in Perch pattern. When I got to the lake the sun was already going down so I went to the closest place possible which was right near the dam on the north side. It was a treacherous climb down the steep bank with my float tube but I made it none the less. As soon as I got on the water my phone rang and Cari was on the line. Cari can talk for hours and I didn't want to waste time because I only had 30 min. to an hour to fish. So I threw out this 6 inch chartreuse bucktail spinner and kick trolled while I talked to her. 3 minutes into our conversation I had a whopping hit and the fight was on! I yelled to Cari that I would call her back and threw my phone in my side compartment of my float tube. I started fighting this mystery fish and I thought to myself this is probably a small Musky or a good fighting little Bass. When I got the fish close to me I realized something different. The fish took off and headed strait to the bottom. I noticed my drag was to tight so I loosened it a bit and realized this was a very large fish! It took off a ton of line but I was able to play it right and get it back to the surface. I don't need to describe what it looked like when it hit the surface, you can see exactly what I saw from this picture! I was stunned!!! Now I thought, "What in the world am I going to do with this thing!"
I could tell that this sucker was really long, but
until I tried to pick him up I had no idea of the girth, and when my hand squeezed against his belly he thrashed so bad that I was soaked. The worst part was that my float tube was soaked, along with my phone and camera! My phone instantly went into fried mode and started vibrating constantly. I think that is the 14th phone I have gone through this year (No lie). I didn't care at the moment though, and my camera was fine. I tried for literally 5 minutes to try and get this thing onto my float tube, not wanting it to get away but at the same time not sure if I wanted it right next to me either. It's head was the size of my arm! There was a guy fishing about 100 yards from me on a pontoon and I finally called for help, desperate in what to do. He yelled back to me, "I was wondering when you were going to ask, that's a monster!" We both started paddling towards each other and I soon realized that my tube was slowly loosing air. This monster had thrashed so hard he punctured my tube! I handed my pole and my camera to this guy and then I was able to grab the fish with both hands and hold it up for a picture before I let it go. Without that guys help I would have surely lost the fish! He took the pics and I let him go, grabbed my camera and pole, yelled thanks and paddled my butt off towards the shoreline. Here are the pics of this monstrosity!

This was probably the craziest 30 min. of my life! I have never been more stressed, losing my phone and almost losing my camera which had 600 pictures from Alaska on it, and then paddling to make it to shore so I wouldn't sink to the bottom of Pineview Reservoir. But it was also the most exciting time trying to land this monster keep it on long enough to get pictures of it and get it back into the water to swim again. The only way to describe it is to go back to your wedding day and think about what a blurr it all seemed like after it was all over. This is what this 30 minutes was like for me! The bad thing about this is that I was so excited that I never took any measurements nor did I weigh it. But after doing a lot of thinking and not wanting to over shoot the actual size I figured this fish was around 40 inches long and weighed anywhere from 12 to 15 pounds! To help you judge, I measured from across the length of my float tube today and from edge to edge on each side it measured 42 inches. Now look at the pictures above and you be the judge. Either way this was a big freaking Tiger Musky!