HAYWARD, Wis. _ At 3 o'clock on a rainy afternoon recently, the Moccasin Bar here was crowded with patrons hoisting cold ones.
The Moccasin has been a Hayward beer joint since 1900, when Hamm's Brewing ponied up cold cash to buy the prime downtown storefront location at the intersection of Hwys. 63 and 27.
Not until 1935 did the famous, and infamous, Louie Spray become owner, rebranding the saloon as Spray's Bar & Grill.
For reasons that will become evident as this tale unwinds, Harry P. "Bud" Grant, the retired Vikings coach who was born and bred in Superior, Wis., was 8 years old when Spray's namesake roadhouse debuted.
Grant, now 92, was at the time too young to be a muskie fisherman. But Spray regularly hunted these giant fish, and amid controversy that would drag on for decades, in 1949 he claimed to have legally landed a 69-pound, 11-ounce behemoth in the Chippewa Flowage that in some circles is still recognized as the "world's largest muskie."
A onetime bootlegger, Spray wasn't the easiest person to believe when the topic was big fish. That didn't make him unique in Hayward, whose reputation for tall tales and dime-store skulduggery was forged beginning in the 1920s, when Chicago mobster Al Capone bought 400 acres on nearby Pike Lake to escape the watchful eye of Eliot Ness and his Untouchables.
Beginning in his early teens, Grant routinely trekked from his home in Superior to lakes across northwest Wisconsin in search of fish that eventually would include muskies. These mini-adventures continued during Grant's time at the University of Minnesota, and afterward, when in summer he would hire out his right arm to pitch town ball for Spooner, or perhaps Rice Lake, Hayward or Gordon, inveterately winning before settling in, postgame, to cast Bass-Orenos or Lazy Ikes on local lakes.
Sid Hartman, then a young sportswriter for the Minneapolis Tribune, accompanied Grant on some of the trips.
"One of my favorite lakes was Middle Eau Claire, where a man named Hank Baroo owned Sportsman's Resort," Grant said. "He let me do odd jobs in exchange for occasional use of a row boat, so I could go fishing."
Baroo, Grant recalls, had been a bootlegger who had "done time in Waupon (State Prison, as it was called at the time)." Sometimes, Grant said, Baroo filled his bar's Lord Calvert bottles with homemade hooch before peddling the inebriant to unsuspecting customers at premium prices.
"But he was a good guy," Grant said. "We got along."
It was on Middle Eau Claire Lake that Grant was fishing one summer day when he hooked a muskie that when it surfaced was nearly the length of his borrowed boat.
"It was bigger than any muskie I have ever seen, before or since," Grant said.
For a long while, Grant fought the fish and nearly boated it before it dived deep, twisted its snout and broke Grant's braided line.
