The muskie King caught over the weekend in the highlands of West Virginia broke the state record, as reported by Field & Stream on March 23,2022.
King’s 55-inch monster smashed the old record by over 11 pounds. But what happens after you land a record-breaking fish? Well, let’s just say King’s weekend didn’t go as planned.
It all began with the catch, of course. King awoke early on Saturday, the first day off he had had in two weeks from his job at the West Virginia Department of Highways due to recent snowfalls.
He decided to make a quick visit to his preferred spot on the Little Kanawha River before going grocery shopping.
He began fishing from the riverbank, casting twice in an up and downstream direction; but with no results.
Casting across to a sandbar on the opposite side where the water was shallow but swiftly plummeted 14-feet deep, he started to reel in his 6-inch Hell Hound glidebait when it refused to move.
In hand were an 8-foot 6-inch extra heavy St. Croix Musky Mojo rod and Daiwa Lexa 300 reel.
“I knew I’d either hooked into a log or a really big muskie,” he tells Field & Stream. “Then she shook her head.”
Just before reaching the bank, the fish surged toward King, but then veered in the direction of a nearby blowdown.
King scrambled to maneuver the fish away from the structure, turned it back toward him, and guided it into his net.
For a giant muskie, this fight was relatively short. However, King’s encounter with the beast didn’t end there.
When King was nine years old, he caught his first muskellunge under a swinging bridge in the Little Kanawha, a tributary of the Ohio, near his childhood home in the Appalachian Mountains.
A 3612-inch fish caught by his family took some Polaroids, his grandmother filed the fish, and they cooked dinner. But for the next 18 years, King has released every muskie he has ever caught, including 28 over 50 inches.
“At first, I was just worried about getting her back into the river alive.”
The angler called another angler over and asked her to bring her bump board from home. He realized he might be on record territory.
After a preliminary measurement, he called another friend, who drove over with a park ranger from the Burnsville Lake Wildlife Management area, who in turn called Aaron Yeager, a biologist for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.
Though Yeager was qualified for certification, he hadn’t been able to get there for some time.
Instead of going to the grocery store, King waited in the river with the netted fish.
When Yeager finally arrived, he took the record measurements, but revealed that the certification for his scale had expired. His truck contained a fish transport tank with diffused oxygen.
A record weight of 51 pounds was verified at Gassaway, 25 minutes down Route 79.
Apparently revived by the oxygen in the fish tank, King explains, “She took off like a rocket.”
King had a long day that did not end after he signed the papers making his record official.
Phone calls began and Sunday, he received 70 bajillion friend requests on Facebook. Even on Monday when Field & Stream called him as he was operating a highway department heavy machine, King was managing all the calls.
His boss was accommodating but, King was eager for the weekend where he could have some respite on Little Kanawha River.
As the hype surrounding him decreased, King realized that this catch being part of his dreams is something that he may not be able to forget.
He still couldn’t believe all happened:
“I’ve always dreamed about this, but never believed it would happen.”
Sources; Youtube, Fieldstream
