Great Lakes Bass Fishing Forum

Guy's I e-mailed Jon Bondy with the details of this catch please feel free to comment on what I sent him , we had 13.66 lbs. 19 + to win.

Jon, You dont know me but I'm a local Southwest MI Bass angler that lives in South Haven MI.
I tour the great lakes with various trails and had an invite to fish St.clair with Brian Clark. You may remember him from DNR sports anyway we were fishing a CATT tourny to keep his points lead and had our five fish so we headed up the St.Clair river to upgrade when I caught a monster musky.

The details of the catch are as follows: Saturday 8/19/06 cloudy and raining off and on, drift fishing tubes in 22' of water north of Algonac with 3.5 inch shuberts tube (Fred147 Color) 1/2 0z sprout hook tube jig/w Rattle. 71.7 degree surface water temp. 8 lb test trilene, Fenwick rod Okuma reel.
She hit and we thought it was a nice smallmouth as it headed straight for the surface. To our surprise and the surprise of several boaters the fish went air born completely out of the water. She came in after two runs and we knew she was over 4' long and 25lbs. The other boats were asking how big and when we told them they laughed and as if on cue she got here wind back and made a spectacular run of over 100' jumping straight out off the water in the middle of four boats. The tube was hooked perfectly in the corner of the mouth or she would have come off earlier. I worked her back to the edge of my Champion 181 and took visual measurements with the edge. Later that proved to be 51". I would say she was 13" wide. The fish had several distinct fungas marks on its back and as we were letting the fish revive next to the boat she made a small lung and as the line was in her mouth now it broke and she swam off unhurt.  Jon She is very close to the picture of the big one on your web-site.

My questions?
What is the fungas and has anyone caught and measured this fish recently?
Were can I get a great reproduction mount of this fish. How much do you estimate an average 51" fish to weigh?
When are we going fishing, as I'm now hooked!!!!
PS Im grateful for your stance on Christ as I'm a Christian also, please check out my site.
Please call or e-mail
Rich Soderquist
rsoderquist@comcast.net
southbranchoutdoors.com

Don't know much about the fungus thing, but I was out on Friday and my buddy hooked into and landed a 30+lb carp.  Dang thing was the biggest carp I've ever seen.  Got a great pic of it.  Bass fishermen hate catching carp for the most part, but man it was a blast bringing this thing in.  Fun anyway.

Jon writes back that it was probably lamphre marks from the deep water. He see's it 1 out of every 2  muskies. He estimates that it was 35lbs if it was fat and it was!! Way to go on the buggle lips Len my main partner caught a large one on a senko this year.
Sody

I'm deadly on carp on tubes and grubs at times...

The muskies on SCR-LSC-DR have a disease that is hitting them the past couple of seasons - I think it is some kind of virus related to the rickettsia family (or I could just be making that part up) - that has been causing some deaths. I believe one of the symptons is open sores.