A Maine fishermen discovered Saturday that fighting a 27-pound muskie is not nearly as challenging as landing such a hefty fish through an 8-inch hole in the ice.
The accompanying footage shows Wade Kelly, a participant in the Long Lake Ice Fishing Derby at Glazier Lake, plunging his entire left arm into the frigid water in an attempt to carefully lift his catch through the narrow opening.
The muskie was so big that its head needed to be positioned perfectly to fit through the hole, and so heavy that the line might have broken had Kelly attempted to reel the fish onto the ice.
“His head was crossways to the hole [and it wouldn’t fit through],” Kelly told the Bangor Daily News. “That’s why my hand went down in the hole.”
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Kelly, a guide with Tylor Kelly Camps, knew that muskies possess incredibly sharp teeth. So on his third attempt he successfully gripped the fish by its gill plate and performed a perfect extraction, to the great surprise of his wife.
“Oh my gosh, Wade, that is a monster!” Sue Underhill Kelly says in the footage.
She later told For the Win Outdoors: “He knew it was big but didn’t say anything to me, so I was astonished to see a muskie of that size come up in his hand.”
The 47-inch muskie weighed 26 pounds, 9 ounces, and earned Kelly first place in the muskie category of the two-day derby. Kelly’s fish beat the second-place muskie by nearly three pounds.
–Images showing Wade Kelly with his muskie are courtesy of Sue Underhill Kelly (top) and Steve St. Jarre
