FIFTY MUSKY 167 



musky enthusiast, the following line of info gathered 

 from the experiences of fifty of the boys who landed 

 musky weighing from twenty to sixty-one pounds, 

 will make mighty good dope to paste on the inside 

 of your tackle box, and, incidentally save you from 

 packing a line of whopping big spoons and lures in 

 the outfit when you make your initial attempt at a 

 close-up view of this old barbarian in his home 

 waters. 



For many years the general method of coaxing 

 the musky to gaff has been trolling, with fairly stiff 

 and strong tackle, but the swan song of these fifty 

 big fins indicates that the light tackle and casting 

 are coming to the front as the real sporting game 

 for musky. Against twenty-two caught by trolling, 

 there looms up twenty-eight caught by casting, and 

 a majority of six is not at all bad for an end of the 

 game that is practically new. And of those landed 

 through casting, seventeen checked in on steel rods, 

 nine on bait casting split bamboo, while two had the 

 extreme honor of being fought to a finish with light 

 bamboo fly rods. 



Do you get the drift, Old Timer, of the fight these 

 musky made on the off end of a six-ounce fly rod? 

 It's a man's-sized job to land a musky on fairly 

 strong tackle, but to trim one in on a little old whippy 

 fly rod surely calls for clever work and skill against 

 the brute strength and cunning of the musky. Fifty 

 minutes of wonderful fight was the record of one of 



