Surprise big muskies: FOTW comes while jigging for walleye on the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage

Scott Budzinski caught two surprise muskies while fishing for walleye with an 1/8th-ounce Invasion Jig and minnow on 10-pound line Nov. 8 on the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage in northern Wisconsin. The biggest one was 52 inches long (pictured above).

“[It] was my second musky catch-and-release of the day,” Budzinski emailed. “Thirty minutes before this one hit, I released a 42-inch musky.”

The first muskie came on a jig-and-minnow, too.

Yes, if you’re counting, it is the fourth muskie in a row for FOTW.

That 52-incher deserves a full-length view.

Provided

FOTW, the celebration of big fish and their stories (the stories matter, as this one shows) around Chicago fishing, runs Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times. The online posting here at chicago.suntimes.com/outdoors goes up at varied days of the week, depending on what is going on the wide world of the outdoors.

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