We recently received a note from our good friend Capt. Mike Richardson of West Virginia with a picture of a humongous Muskie that hit the scales at over 50 lbs. Mike told us his buddy caught it and it is now a new state record! We had to investigate it further.

The buddy in Mike’s story turns out to be a man named Luke King, an avid angler from West Virginia and a new state record holder. According to Luke’s Facebook, the fish now holds the West Virginia state record for both length and weight.

“She was 55 1/16” long and weighed 51 pounds on certified scales,” says Luke.

Since we didn’t see any water, boats etc. we certainly wanted to look into the story since the fish was supposedly released.

We talked to Luke last week and he laid out the entire story. He’s a very interesting character and we could tell by his Muskie knowledge that he’s all business when it comes to fish handling.

Long story short, Luke landed this behemoth along a steep bank with a typical “huge” Muskie net. These nets are amazing in that you can let the fish swim around without any harm (they thrash the odd time, but they seem very content and docile in these big baskets).

Luke carefully walked the netted fish to a more accessible area, and then waited for a local DNR officer to arrive. They took all the measurements and got the fish to a certified scale via a holding tank the officer had in his truck which is specially made for carrying big fish.

After weighing the fish, they brought it back to its place of capture and released the beast in all its glory.

Luke has caught over 1100 trophy Muskie throughout his career; he knows how to treat his finned buddies.

Congrats to Luke on the fish of a lifetime!