For Joshua Stratmann, fighting the massive tiger muskie he hooked recently on New York’s Otisco Lake was merely the first challenge. A far more difficult task was hauling the nearly 4-foot fish through an 8-inch hole in the ice.
“I had to reach into the hole and grab the fish by its gills,” Stratmann, 40, told Syracuse.com. “It took three tries. The first two, it fell back into the hole. The third time I got it halfway out, bear-hugged it and fell over backward on the ice laughing. It was wild.”
Stratmann’s tiger muskie, caught using a tip-up indicator rig and a five-inch shiner as bait, measured 45-3/4 inches and weighed 24.7 pounds.
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It was shy of the world-record ice-fishing tip-up-caught tiger muskie by nearly three pounds, according to Syracuse.com.
But for Stratmann, of Greece, it was still the catch of a lifetime. He was fishing Jan. 24 with friend Scott Lombardi, and his tip raised, indicating a strike, about 90 minutes after he had set up his gear.
The fight lasted 25 minutes.
Stratmann weighed and measured the fish at a nearby tackle shop, then delivered the catch to a taxidermist for a trophy mount.
Syracuse.com reports that a slightly heavier tiger muskie was caught at Otisco Lake on Jan. 17.
–Image courtesy of Joshua Stratmann
