Longtime Wisconsin guide Jeff Van Remortel says the moon phase was in their favor on June 4, when he and a longtime client, Mike Jacoby, were out fishing for muskies in Green Bay. The action had been slow for a couple days before that, due to clear skies and heavy winds. But with the moon showing around 8 a.m., they had a 45-minute window when the bite turned on. It wasn’t long enough to catch very many fish, but they did land one great one: a 56-inch muskie that was recently certified as the new Wisconsin live-release record.
“We made about 20 more casts and [Jacoby] caught a 46 [incher], and then 10 minutes after that was the end of the moon, and we didn’t get another bite all day,” Van Remortel says. “Which is typical of muskies. You’ll get intense windows like that, especially during tough times in the spring and fall, when it’s either feast or famine. And right there for about 45 minutes, it was feast.”
Van Remortel, who’s been a full-time fishing and duck-hunting guide in Door County for 16 years, says he and Jacoby were in the right spot to capitalize on the bite that June morning. They were fishing a big weed flat, and Jacoby was casting from one side of the boat while Van Remortel covered the other. Jacoby had just gotten a follow from a 48-inch fish that charged his bucktail but wouldn’t commit.
“So I was like, ‘Okay good sign, moon coming here,’” Van Remortel says. “I was mid-sentence when this fish crushed me way out on the end of a cast.”
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He says the muskie ate just a couple cranks into his retrieve. He was fishing a big swimbait (a Swimmin’ Dawg), which he cut off and gave to Jacoby after he unhooked the big fish boatside. Jacoby landed his 46-incher a short while later.
Van Remortel was prepared to certify a catch-and-release record, so the buddies went through the proper steps to photograph and measure the fish on a bump board before releasing it into the lake. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has only been tracking live-release records since 2017, he explains; the previous record muskie was 53 inches long.
Van Remortel beat that length by a few inches. His fish also had a 26-inch girth, which didn’t matter for the length-based record but is part of why the muskie was so special in his eyes. He guesses the big female was around 25 years old.
“A 56- by 26-inch muskie, that’s a 50-pound-class fish. Which is the Holy Grail if you’re a muskie fisherman,” he says. “And just to catch one that old and that clean — it looked like it had never been touched by a person.”
Van Remortel says he’ll be featuring the state-record fish in an upcoming lesson on his educational website, Musky Academy, which helps anglers learn new tactics and approaches for catching big muskies.
He also might have another Wisconsin record to certify soon enough. On Thursday, Sept. 11, while fishing with another client, they caught a 56-inch fish that tied his catch-and-release record. And in years past, he’s caught even longer muskies in Door County.
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“I told myself years ago that if I ever caught another really, really big one, I would try and get it certified,” Van Remortel says. “It’s also cool, I think, to bring attention to the state’s live-release program and promote catch-and-release in this day and age.”
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