Musky America Magazine December 2024 Edition

CAL JOHNSON’S OWN STORY… New World’s Record MUSKY! Here, in his own words, Cal tells you how he hooked, fought and landed the largest muskellunge ever taken with rod and reel By CAL JOHNSON - 1949 It had stormed throughout the night and prospects looked bleak when my son Phil and I clambered out of bed at three-thirty in the morning of July 24. Rain still pounded on the roof of our cottage at Moccasin Lodge on the shore of magnificent Lac Court O’Reilles, located about ten miles southeast of Hayward, Wisconsin. Shortly after four o’clock we gathered our tackle, put on raincoats and headed for the dock. It was still raining, but the thunder by now had become only a low rumble in the distance. The wind was blowing from a southerly direction and the surface of the waters was dark and ruffled. To me, it looked like the ideal day for the big Musky to move around. Phil and I got into our boat and started trolling about fifty feet out from shore over a bottom of gravel, sand and rock. It was not the first time we had fished Moccasin Bar. Six weeks earlier we had spotted two unusually large Musky there. We were not the only ones who knew of their existence. In fact,

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