---

The 43rd Annual Frank Schneider Jr. Memorial Muskie Tournament was held on 21 area waters over the weekend of Sept. 10, 11 & 12. This event always makes me happy twice, first is the opportunity to do some real serious musky fishing with a chance of winning a new boat, motor and trailer for landing a musky 40" long or greater. The second happens when it is over on Sunday because I'm pretty much wiped out. If you've never participated in the three day event you might not have a full grasp of the endurance test that it is and if you've never went musky fishing at all you really have no idea.

I crunched some numbers and the reason for an exhaustive state of being became quite obvious. Now bear in mind that the results of my "unscientific analysis" are just that, my unscientific analysis. However, when I sat and pondered just what went into the weekend I've arrived at some quite startling conclusions, your results may vary (token disclaimer).

Let's begin this journey with placing a number on how long I actually fished. There are a total of 28 tournament hours to potentially fish. When you subtract time for moving from spot to spot, changing baits, having a bite to eat, maybe changing lakes, etc. etc... I deduced that I fished for 24 hours. For the sake of simplicity let's assume that I made one cast per minute. This assumption may be a bit high or low but it's in the ballpark. Speaking of ballpark, GO TWINS! Now for me an average cast is about 100' in length depending on the bait being thrown and other factors. When you multiply 24 hours x 60 casts per hour x 100' per cast you arrive at a total of 144,000' of line retrieved. Now that is an impressive total until you divide it by 5,280 which is the number of feet in a mile and it puts this in a perspective that we can better get a grasp of. In the course of 24 hours of fishing I threw and retrieved my bait just a touch over 27 ¼ miles! Let's not forget to factor in that it was quite rough on the lakes all three days, double bladed bucktails, jerkbaits and bulldogs are no easy task to use and it rained all afternoon Friday. No wonder I'm tired.

Now when you take this roughly estimated distance of 27 ¼ miles and factor in the 507 contestants participating the results are indeed scary. Granted not everyone puts in the same amount of time fishing during the tournament but humor me on this one. 507 x 27 ¼ gives us an astonishing total of 13,815 ¾ miles of casting anticipation. Consider the fact that the earth's circumference at the equator is 24,900 miles and you'll see that by all reasonable estimations, with the probability that 13,815 is a bit strong, musky anglers darn near threw half way around the world!

With all this distance fished you'd think that there were tons of fish caught. Well this year was some pretty tough conditions and the catching reflected this. A lower than average total of 77 muskies 40" or greater were landed by 64 anglers. 54 anglers landed a single musky, nine people caught two and the winner of the tournament, Kirk Wilberg from Bagley MN, landed three from Lake Bemidji. Kirk had the weekend of his life in landing a 54", 53" and a 45 ½". He also beat some high odds when you figure how many miles an angler had to retrieve a bait using the "unscientific" results we've arrived at.

When you divide the 13,815 miles of casting by the 77 fish caught it brings us to an average of 179.4 miles of retrieved lure per fish. Multiplying 179.4 x the 5280 feet per mile and then dividing that by the average distance of 100' per cast brings us to an average of 9473 casts per 40" or greater musky landed. I'm actually surprised to see from these results that the mighty musky really is the "fish of 10,000 casts". There were obviously more than 77 muskies caught because the under 40"ers are not recorded. If I had to guess I'd say that this year there were quite a few more under 40"ers caught as over 40", but we'll never know how many. Even if you figure in an estimated number of 100 fish under 40" caught this still places the casts-per-fish ratio at 4,121. Making one cast per minute you'll have to invest over 68 ½ hours of constant casting to land a musky of any size.

These numbers reflect the results of musky anglers who, for the most part, know what they're doing. Sure there were some that have limited experience on the hunt for a musky but for the vast majority of the combatants this is not their first rodeo. And the waters fished are some of the best musky waters in possibly the best musky state to fish in.

So by now the ultimate question should be forming in your mind which is, "Why on earth would a sane person do such a thing?" First off, who ever said that serious musky anglers had all their wits about them anyway? You want proof of this? Just ask any of them if there is anything that they'd rather be doing on a September weekend than throwing in the neighborhood of 1400 casts to a fish that it takes three times that many before it decides to eat your offering. Did I hear someone just whisper something to the effect of "toys in the attic?"

Actually what I believe drives this type of extreme angler is the possibility of having a weekend like Kirk Wilberg had. One where it seems everything turns to gold for you and the big fish just can't refuse your bait. It's the anticipation of coming up to a spot where on a recent outing a huge fish followed your lure to the boat only to give you the cold shoulder and disappear to the depths. It's the second chance you desire with the big one that was hooked and lost. It's wanting to be there when the fish go on a feeding frenzy and on every spot you fish you're having follows, getting strikes or landing fish.

It's as a very insightful man from a bygone era once put it. I don't know if he ever caught or even fished for muskies but he knew what propels them to endure what it takes to be successful and it goes as follows,

"The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive, but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope."

Sir John Buchan (1875-1940)

p.s. I think that in the future I'm going to work on the art of trolling.

You can contact Gary at 218-766-9462 for up to date information or submit your photos at [email protected] or [email protected].[[In-content Ad]]

---