Article published September 11, 2009
Here's to you, Dad, a 52-inch muskellunge
Bob Luda of Oak Harbor landed a 52-inch, 36-pound muskellunge during a recent fishing trip on Lake St. Clair.
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It's not every day that you catch a nearly 52-inch muskellunge weighing some 36 pounds - just ask Oak Harbor angler Bob Luda.
"I fish a lot, and I've never caught anything that big," said Luda. Until recently, that is. A recent muskie trolling trip on Lake St. Clair changed all that, big-time.
"I've got cancer," begins Luda, who hails from a onetime Oregon restaurant family. "I'm fighting the cancer pretty good - I think I'm going to be here for a while."
But his son, Steve, of Walled Lake, Mich., with whom Luda has shared many muskie trips in their own boat, decided a charter was in order sooner rather than later. He grew up fishing with his dad, who would rope him off to his waist when he was a boy so they could safely wade the Maumee River together. So yes, a charter muskie trip was in order, a family deal.
Nephews Robbie Humbarger of Hamilton, Ohio, and John Luda, Jr., of Toledo, joined the party, and they met up at skipper Don Miller's boat at St. Clair Shores.
Lake St. Clair, for the uninitiated, is a premier muskie fishing grounds and has a reputation for very good catch rates. Miller motored over to the Ontario side of the little lake north of Detroit-Windsor and they set lines. "You could see the downtown skyline," said Luda, who was given first turn."The fish hit in the first half hour," he said. The big one hammered a green-and-brown frog-patterned Believer plug, and even with a stout boat rod, "it was all I could do to hold that slimy rascal. If I had given him anything at all he would have been gone. What a fish!"
Luda said that the fight took about 25 minutes and that the action "just lit up the boat." Which is a good thing, inasmuch as it was the only fish that they landed on the trip. But muskiemen will tell you that one such fish can make a day, a season, maybe a lifetime.
Adam Eibling of Huron shows off a pacu, a relative of the South American piranha.
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After some smiles and photographs, Luda released the toothy monster.
So it's still out there, waiting. Son Steve is having a replica made to cherish the memory, said Bob's wife, Janet.
Miller told the crew it was the largest muskie he has seen caught this year. "He said he has had bigger fish on the boat, but personally has never caught one like this and he's been fishing for 40 years," added Luda.
"God willing, we're going to do it again in the spring. It was a fish of a lifetime, a gift of a lifetime from a loving son."
Which is as good as it gets.
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Adam Eibling of Huron needed an angling boost recently and he got it from an unusual catch - a 5.11-pound, 20 1/4-inch pacu, a toothy vegetarian cousin of the meat-eating piranha of the Amazon basin.
He caught it when he stopped off at the Sandusky River north of Fremont after work to wet a line. "I'd been having a bad few weeks of fishing," he lamented, explaining a need to feel a big fish on the line "and hear the drag of the reel."
So he kneaded a slice of wheat bread into a ball, minus the crust, molded it onto a hook, and with a sinker tight-lined it on the bottom. "This is what I do when I want to catch a big carp," Eibling said. Big carp fight like bulldogs and indeed do make a reel sing - salve to soothe a fish-starved angler's soul.
Presently Eibling instead was surprised with the pacu, which he had confirmed at the Ohio Division of Wildlife's fisheries research station at Sandusky. He deemed the catch unusual enough and big enough to have Port Clinton taxidermist Jim Wendt mount it.
An amusing twist to the tale occurred when Eibling talked the fishing staff at Wal-Mart in Port Clinton into weighing the pacu on their certified scales. He went outside the store to retrieve the fish, still live in a cooler full of water. On his way back inside, the greeter told him he could not return merchandise without a sticker. Whereupon Eibling flipped the lid and offered the greeter a chance to place a sticker on the toothy fish within.
In a related tale, angler Dave Nyquist landed a seven-inch piranha while fishing recently at Delta Reservoir No. 1, using a minnow for bait. It was another surprise, as Nyquist noted.
Both Nyquist's piranha and Eibling's pacu are exotic aquarium fish that doubtless have been dumped by pet owners who no longer want to be bothered. Doing so is irresponsible and unethical to say the least, and these are not the first such exotic catches to turn up in the region this summer.
Such tropical and nonnative fish don't belong; they could introduce diseases to the waters where they are dumped. Worse, some species of exotics possibly could reproduce and create an invasive pest outbreak, much like the unimaginable threat now posed by Asian bighead carp in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, on the doorstep to the Great Lakes.
Only an electrical barrier in the canal stands between an invasive onslaught and potential native fisheries devastation.
Tropical fish likely won't survive the first winter. If you own such a fish and don't want to keep it, kill it and fertilize the roses with it. That is being honest and responsible.
Don't dump your problem like litter on the public. All you are doing then is killing the fish by your own neglect while pretending to be humane, which is phoney.
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On the weekend - Huron Perch Challenge, tomorrow, up to 60 boats, tournament, details and registration online at fishhuronohio.com; Sunday, Ottawa County Championship, Camp Perry Shooting Club, call the club 419-635-2682.
Contact Steve Pollick at:
spollick@theblade.com
or 419-724-6068.
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