Big Fish Alert: Pending Michigan State Record Muskie

Big Fish Alert: Pending Michigan State Record Muskie

Angler Joe Seeberger landed this giant muskie—possibly Michigan’s largest ever caught with a rod and reel—in Lake Bellaire. Seeberger, a Portage, Michigan resident, was out fishing for smallmouth bass on Oct. 13 with his brother Chuck and friend Jason Orbeck.



Seeberger (center) fought the fish for two hours. But the men faced an even bigger hurdle when it came time to land the fish. It took three adults, two nets, two life jackets, and a dock line to get the behemoth into the boat. 

As soon as the crew got the boat out of the water, a county sheriff was waved down, who incidentally measured the monstrous muskie with a crime scene tape.

Once the fish was brought to shore, Seeberger drove for an hour in search of a scale. He finally found an industrial-sized certified scale at the Ellsworth Farmer’s Exchange. The fished weighed in at exactly 58 pounds, and measured 59 inches long, with a 29-inch girth.

Seeberger was fishing in 15 feet of water, along a steep drop-off, when the muskie engulfed his 7 1/4-inch sucker minnow.

“The very moment I set the hook, I knew it was a huge fish…bigger than any of the smallmouths we’d been targeting, that was for sure,” said Seeberger.

The fish was hooked at 8:30 a.m.

IT came to the boat right away and swam near the surface past the boat…like the shark in Jaws. After a few moments, it gave us a spectacular jump, [and] I was sure I’d lose it then. But I didn’t. After that, we had to chase it around the lake,” Seeburger said.

The men had the bow-mounted trolling motor down and in high gear. They kept on the fish as it made several trips between various depths during the battle. The muskie raced out to areas over 70 feet deep and back again to the shallows, just 5 feet deep.
Once the fish tired, two bass-size nets were used, one at the head and one at the tail, in an attempt to scoop the fish into the boat. 

“But both nets busted as soon as Chuck and I tried to lift the fish up,” said Orbeck.

By this time, another fishing buddy, Jeff Lutz, had hopped aboard Seeberger’s boat in an attempt to help land the fish.

Now with no usable nets, two life jackets were tied together in an effort to make a cradle.

“But they were too buoyant and we couldn't get them below the surface enough,” Seeberger said.

Finally, one of the boat’s dock lines was lassoed around the fish’s head, slid to its middle, and tightened down. With one man grabbing the head, one grasping the tail, and a third pulling up on the line, the fish was brought safely into the boat at 10:30 a.m.



Michigan’s new pending state-record muskie was fought on a 7-foot medium-action G.Loomis GL3 spinning rod and a Pflueger Supreme reel spooled with 8-pound-test Seagar fluorocarbon line. A size-1 Gamakatsu Octopus-style hook was tied directly to the fluorocarbon, and a small, single split-shot was pinched onto the line about two feet above it. The sucker minnow was lightly nipped through the nose.

Seeberger’s muskie, once official, will topple the current state-record catch by 7 pounds, 8 ounces. The current record belongs to Kyle Andersen (pictured here), who caught this 50-pound, 8-ounce fish in Torch Lake on Sept. 27, 2009.
Seeberger’s muskie could also beat the IGFA 8-pound-test line-class world record. That currently belongs to a 40-pound, 12-ouncer taken from Piedmont Lake, Ohio, by Pete Provan on June 2, 1997. A 42-pound, 6-ounce muskie taken by Denis K. Moser out of Leaser Lake in Pennsylvania on May 15, 1988 is registered with Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame.

The fish has already been dropped off to Jeff Lutz of “Lasting Memories” taxidermy in Charlevoix, Mich.