I have a 53-inch 42-pounder on my wall from Canada in the early 1990s,” says the guide. “When I caught it I thought, ‘Well, there’s my fish. That’s the one I’m looking for.’ Now? This place? When they’re going good, I see a couple fish like that a day, sometimes.”

“This place” is Minnesota’s Lake Mille Lacs. Over the past handful of seasons, this sprawling lake in central Minnesota has produced a run of muskie fishing success—big fish, in astonishing numbers—that has set the muskie world spinning. It has become the place to be if you’re a muskie angler looking for a monster.

The guide works these waters most of the season, primarily chasing muskies, with the odd walleye or smallmouth trip mixed in. “Used to fish walleyes a lot,” he says. ”Now 9 of 10 calls are about muskies, I think with good reason. The fishing’s out of this world right now.”

He asked to remain anonymous. “Guides talking about how great fishing is on their lake can be a little suspect,” he says. “Besides, too much politics among the guides, too many egos. Too old for that. Rather just keep my name out of it.”

He laughs when I suggest that having his name in an article in In-Fisherman would be good for business. “Staying busy is the least of my problems. Some times of year, I could book myself three times over and still turn people away.”

The sheer numbers of big muskies caught in Mille Lacs over the past couple of seasons, and the truly massive dimensions of some of the fish, lead to an inevitable question: Could this lake produce a new world record? It’s widely speculated that fish surpassing Minnesota’s state record, a 56-inch 54-pounder caught out of Lake Winnibigoshish in 1957, have already been caught and released. Certainly, several credible reports exist of fish that have come close. How big can they get? Is this the home of the next world record? Can the run of big fish continue?

The answer may lie in knowing how Mille Lacs became what it is today, a convergence of biology, management strategy, and changing angler behavior and ethics.

Everything that Rises Must Converge

Like many of what are now Minnesota’s premier muskie waters, Mille Lacs had muskies introduced by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) beginning in the early 1980s.

According to Tom Jones, DNR Large Lake Specialist for Mille Lacs, stocking began in 1984 with fish from hatcheries in Wisconsin. Stocking of Wisconsin-strain muskies continued until 1989, when Leech Lake-strain muskies became the brood source for the Minnesota muskie program. Initial stocking occurred annually and at intense levels—5,000 fish per year, with one year in which 10,000 muskies were planted.

With a limited amount of competition from Mille Lacs pike, newly stocked muskies thrived in an environment rich in forage—perch and suckers, and later, as muskies matured, Mille Lacs’ massive cisco population.

It’s fish from these initial intense stockings, according to Jones, that have produced exceptional trophy numbers in recent years. “Anglers talk about the sheer numbers of big fish right now,” he says. “It’s not just their perception. Our survey numbers support that observation. Fish from the initial years of stocking are 15 to 16 years old, and there are some huge year-classes of fish that age.

“In our most recent survey, if you look at female muskies, there are more fish in the population over 49 inches in length than under. We surveyed 72 females and 26 of them were over 50 inches, 5 of them over 53 inches.

“The biggest we surveyed was a 54-incher, which died,” he says. “We found her the next day. She was empty of eggs at the time and was still in the high 40-pound range. Full of eggs, she’d have been in the mid-50s, probably. That fish had a tag from a study that was ongoing in the mid-1980s—before the change to the Leech Lake strain—so it was a Wisconsin-strain fish from one of the first 3 or 4 years of stocking.”

Indeed, many of the largest fish taken on Mille Lacs in recent years have been mature Wisconsin-strain muskies. “From the fish we see in our survey nets, the Wisconsin fish carry more weight for their length than the Leech Lake fish seem to,” Jones says. “As those fish peak, there’s the potential for some very big fish in the system.”

Though year-class sizes and first-generation advantages in development are obviously at the heart of the flourishing fishery on Mille Lacs, how anglers have reacted to a fishery with large numbers of trophy-caliber fish also is significant. The maturation of the Mille Lacs muskie fishery occurred during an evolutionary period in the sport that probably played a signi-ficant role in the lake’s ability to sustain a quality fishery despite intense pressure—the emphasis placed on releasing trophy muskies.

Catch-and-release has become the prevailing ethic among today’s muskie anglers. When Lac Seul and Wabigoon—off-the-beaten-path waters in northwestern Ontario—were discovered by anglers in the late 1980s, trophy hunters decimated low-density populations of trophy fish in a few years.

Lac Seul became a catch-and-release fishery. Increased length limits nearly came too late on Wabigoon, although the population is slowly rebounding. These two lakes become cautionary tales about the danger of over-exploitation of trophy fisheries for anglers and fishery managers alike.

On Mille Lacs, though some harvest occurs, the vast majority of muskies of all sizes are released. Had the catch-and-keep mentality of the 1980s and before persisted, the story of Mille Lacs might be far different. The summer and fall of 2006 brought reports of multiple releases of muskies in the mid-50-inch range. Reports of kept fish of the same size are relatively scarce.

How Big and For How Long?

When and at what size these fish may ultimately peak is hard to say. Research by Casselman, Crossman, and Robinson studying Ontario muskies placed the potential maximum age of female muskies in some waters at 24 years. Should Mille Lacs muskies reach such ages, today’s top year-classes, now 15 and 16 years old—and already approaching 50 pounds in some cases—may have another half-decade of growth ahead of them.

How big are the fish our guide has seen? “Well, I’ve had measured fish in my boat to 53 inches,” he says. “And I had one roll out of my hands before we could measure her that may have been more—though not 55 inches. So I’ve handled some big fish. Honestly, you get used to seeing 50-inchers. But there are fish out there that just make me sit down and think about things for a while. I can’t say how big they are. They’re just awfully, awfully big. I’m saying the biggest fish out there have yet to be caught. I don’t think you’ll find many guys who spend a lot of time on the lake who would argue that. I’m not the only one who’s seen truly giant fish.”

We must also note, however, that the number of big fish in Mille Lacs has probably peaked and may now be in decline. When you look at adult fish—fish over 5 years of age, according to Jones—the fishery peaked in about 1998, when those initial stocking year-classes were in their prime. “Mortality in fish populations is inevitable,” Jones says, “whether it’s due to angler harvest or natural causes. Right now, we’re at the top of the bubble. We expect to see numbers overall decline in the next 5 years as those huge year-classes begin to leave the system.”

The DNR is in the process of assessing the level of natural reproduction occurring in Mille Lacs, and will base future stocking on the fishery’s ability to sustain itself. One thing is certain—the future fishery won’t contain the numbers of big fish it does now. “We can’t maintain the lake at the level the population is at now, in all likelihood,” Jones says. “We want Mille Lacs to be a premier muskie fishery, and we can do that. But population numbers like we see now aren’t a realistic longterm objective.”

Environmental factors will also play a role in the longterm prospects for these fish. “Climate change may have a profound effect on the fishery,” Jones offers. “It’s likely that in 50 years, there won’t be ciscoes in Mille Lacs.”

Cisco populations may be in decline already. The summer of 2006 saw large cisco die-offs due to high water temperatures. “What affect will that have?” Jones asks. “We don’t know. But the fish will have to change their forage base. Can they do that and maintain the sizes we see today? I suspect not.”

For the time being, Mille Lacs is the place to be for a shot at a truly giant muskie, perhaps even a world record. Uncertainty about the future aside, and inevitable changes in the fish populations notwithstanding, Mille Lacs is today a remarkable fishery at a remarkable moment in time—something for which there is no precedent, no example but the thing itself.

*Rob Kimm is the editor of Esox Angler magazine, an exceptional muskie angler, and a frequent contributor to In-Fisherman.