Lake Vermilion anglers let giant muskie go

It's a Minnesota record that has stood for 52 years, but it's ripe to be broken -- and may have been shattered recently.

The state-record muskie is a 56-inch, 54-pound behemoth caught in 1957 in Lake Winnibigoshish.

Randy Porubcan and fishing partner Gene Crowder are convinced a monster muskie they caught on Lake Vermilion earlier this month would have broken the record had they kept it, weighed it and killed it, as required for a state-certified record catch.

Instead, they released a fish they say was at least 59 inches long with a 29-inch girth. A muskie that size would weigh 59 to 62 pounds, based on several well-known formulas.

"The crazy thing is it [breaking the state record] didn't cross my mind immediately," said Porubcan, 64, of Victoria, who reeled the fish in. "I wanted to get it back in the water. After I released it, Gene looked at me and said 'I think you just released the state record.'"

Both Porubcan and Crowder, 70, of Hastings are longtime muskie anglers and well-known in muskie circles. Others who know them, talked to them about the catch and have seen their photos believe this isn't just a tall tale.

"It's a monster fish -- there's no doubt in my mind it's as long as he said it is," said Ed Tausk, owner of Vermilion Dam Lodge, where Porubcan, Crowder and 18 other muskie anglers gathered for a yearly four-day fishing outing earlier this month.

"They didn't make a big deal out of it," Tausk said. "They were excited, but they released that fish to be caught another day, which says so much about these guys as sportsmen."

Said Porubcan: "I've been fishing for 30 years, and this is the biggest I've gotten." He caught (and released) a 56-inch muskie on Eagle Lake in Ontario a few years back, and he said the Lake Vermilion fish was bigger.

The pair, bucking a frigid 25 miles-per-hour wind and choppy waters, didn't even get a good photo. But they have a heck of tale:

They were trolling in Crowder's boat, using 14-inch "Jake" lures, when the muskie hit Crowder's lure. "I grabbed the rod from the holder, but we were in heavy wind and I needed to get the boat back into the channel, so I handed the rod to Randy."

"For the first seven or eight minutes, I couldn't move the fish," Porubcan said. "Then she surfaced."

Said Crowder: "It was huge. It took me three tries with the net; she wouldn't fit. And then I couldn't lift it in by myself."

They got it in, cut the barbs off the hooks and tried to quickly measure the fish.

"I didn't want to hold her vertical -- if you drop a fish like this, you're going to kill it," Porubcan said. "So I kind of cradled it. Gene has a 60-inch dowel [to measure fish] and he measured it at 59. But that's conservative. We didn't lay the fish down or pinch its tail. I'm sure we would have gained another inch."

"She had been out of the water too long already," he said. So they slid the fish back into the lake. Crowder said the pair didn't consider keeping the fish.

There's little doubt Vermilion and other Minnesota lakes, including Mille Lacs and Lake of the Woods, may hold a record-breaking muskie.

"Vermilion certainly appears to have potential fish that size," said Joe Geis, Department of Natural Resources area fisheries supervisor in Tower. During the DNR's 2005-06 muskie assessment -- the most recent sample -- more than 15 percent of the muskies netted were 50 inches or larger.

"The largest we sampled was 54.7 inches," he said. "But we're seeing only a small portion of the muskies out there."

Tausk said he doesn't need a state-record fish to come out of Vermilion to draw more anglers there.

"Everyone knows about the lake already. Guides are coming from Wisconsin and Illinois. I know of at least one 56-inch fish that was caught, and there was a 55-incher and at least two 54 [-inchers] caught."

Meanwhile, Porubcan said perhaps he and his buddy will get a second chance at catching that record fish.

"We know where she lives," he said.