Steve Thibodeau says he’d never before seen a musky as big as the one he caught in September from Maine’s Glazier Lake. And that’s okay, because nobody else had ever seen one that big before in the state, either.
On September 22, Thibodeau, of Fort Kent, Maine, boated a new Maine state record musky — a 48-inch, 31.69-pound fish that carried a 22.5-inch girth. Thibodeau’s musky narrowly eclipsed the previous record, a 31.02-pound fish caught by Jeff Albert of Madawaska, Maine, in 2007, also from Glazier Lake.
Thibodeau, a Musky Hunter reader, said he has been fishing for muskies for about 10 years, almost entirely in Maine. He caught his first musky in 2006 and his previous largest musky was a 43 1/2-incher from the St. John’s River.
Thibodeau, 39, a highway maintenance worker for the Maine Department of Transportation, started fishing September 22 at about 11 a.m. With him was his girlfriend, Stacey Plourde.
“They weren’t biting at all,” Thibodeau said. “We started trolling on the edge of a weedbed, and I moved out a little deeper. I was thinking about fishing a little closer to where my pickup was parked, but then I made a couple more turns and then the big one hit.”
Thibodeau said he was trolling an orange tiger pattern, 10-inch Believer with about 100 feet of line out over 25 to 35 feet of water when his fish struck. The time was 5:45 p.m.
“I was holding the rod when it hit and I’ve never had a pull like that on the line before,” he said. “It started fighting and it pulled so hard the reel broke right off the pole and flew up in the air. So, I put the rod between my legs and under the seat and grabbed the top of the reel and cranked with the other hand. That’s pretty tiresome, especially when you’re nervous,” Thibodeau said.
“So I kept pulling. I then realized my drag was set too loose, so I tightened it, and then the fish couldn’t take any line so I had to loosen the drag. I had to go back and forth between tightening and loosening the drag.
“Finally, I got it started toward the boat and when it was about ten feet back I had to turn the bow of the boat, where my girlfriend was, toward the fish. I said ‘Make sure you take it head-first’ but then the net got hooked on the side of the boat. I saw where it was stuck and pulled it loose, and I told Stacey to scoop it and she did it perfectly.”
Thibodeau, who usually fishes the St. John’s River, said this was the second musky he’d ever caught from Glazier Lake. He plans to have the fish mounted.