Detroit Free Press, July 31, 2008
 

IT'S HUSKY MUSKIE TIME

First Place at the 2008 Big Dog Muskie Slam

RECORD COULD FALL WITH GROWTH SURGE
ERIC SHARP, FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER

The way things have been going on Lake St. Clair this summer, it could be the year we finally see a 45-pound muskellunge weighed on a certified scale. Or - dare we say it? - a fish that breaks the state record of 49 pounds, 12 ounces. Evidence of a super-muskie year was clear during a recent Michigan Ontario Muskie Club tournament when Mike Pittiglio found himself in third place on the last day with a fish over 50 inches long. Then another rod went off on Muskie Mania; Pittiglio grabbed it and landed a tournament-winning 55 1/4 -incher that weighed 41 1/2 pounds. The fish was carried to shore in a special carrying tank, then transferred to the Muskie Club's live tank before it was weighed and released.

It was the sixth fish over 54 inches from St. Clair that I've heard about so far this summer, and it also was heavy for this early in the season. The big fish hit a 10-inch bucktail with gold blades. Pittiglio said that bucktails have regained their popularity and have accounted for many big fish. "Bucktails are easier to run," he said. "You don't have to mess with tuning them, and if they get a little weed on them, it just blends in with the fur. They'll catch fish as long as the blades are spinning."

So far all of the truly large fish I've heard about have come from the Canadian side of the lake, which has the highest concentrations of big muskellunge from June through October. The water on the Canadian side also tends to be dingier, which helps trollers who are trying to provoke a strike before a fish gets a good look at the lure. But Pittiglio said that the fish begin to concentrate in Anchor Bay on the American side in November, looking for warmer water, "and even though the water is a lot clearer there, the fish are hungry and will hit about anything." "It's been a really great year for big fish," Pittiglio said. "We don't have the numbers we had five, six years ago, but we're still getting a lot - and they're bigger."

The Michigan pure muskellunge record is a 49-pound, 12-ounce fish caught in Thornapple Lake in Barry County in 2000. A 50-pound tiger muskie (a hybrid between a northern pike and a muskellunge) was caught in Lac Vieux Desert in the western Upper Peninsula in 1919. In the past 10 years the Department of Natural Resources has issued master angler awards for only 10 muskellunge that weighed 40 pounds or more on a certified scale. Three came from Elk Lake, two from the St. Marys River and one each from Burt, Torch, Mullett and Bellaire Lakes. The 10th fish was from Lake St. Clair. Noting that Pittiglio's 41 1/2 -pounder was unusually large for July, Mike Thomas, a research biologist at the DNR laboratory in Harrison Township, said: "Can you imagine the girth on that fish by October?" That's when muskies go on a feeding binge to prepare for the lean winter months ahead.

Contact Mike Pittiglio at 586-260-4068 or www.muskiemaniacharters.com.