{"id":115737,"date":"2026-02-17T02:56:38","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T02:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/115737\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T02:56:38","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T02:56:38","slug":"massive-52-inch-pennsylvania-muskie-caught-through-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/115737\/","title":{"rendered":"Massive 52-Inch Pennsylvania Muskie Caught Through Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brett Baldwin, 25, left his home in Smethport, Pennsylvania, long before dawn on Jan. 31. He and his buddy Anthony Sprague headed to a favorite ice fishing spot at the north end of the 12,000-acre Allegheny Reservoir<\/a>, just south of the New York state border.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got there about 5 a.m., a place where we\u2019d done well for walleyes and pike,\u201d Baldwin told Wired2fish. \u201cWe drilled ice holes and each placed five tip-up fishing rigs with flags scattered around an under-ice point that slow-tapered from 6 to 15 feet deep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early Action <\/p>\n

\"On<\/p>\n

The temperature was 0 degrees at dawn, said Baldwin, but the action was fast and furious starting at 7 a.m. Many of the fish were small walleyes<\/a>, but there were some good fish, too. <\/p>\n

Then, at 9:30 a.m., an unexpected toothy predator arrived.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a line of several tip-up flags go off, and I was checking one after the other,\u201d said Baldwin, a Home Depot store manager. \u201cI got to the fourth tip up and the reel below the flag wasn\u2019t spinning. I grabbed the 30-pound braided line [tied to a 10-pound test fluorocarbon leader] and set the hook.\u201d<\/p>\n

But whatever Baldwin set the hook in didn\u2019t budge. He thought maybe it was fouled in brush or stumps. Pulling hard on the line, Baldwin tried to break the bait and hook free from the snag.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight then, the fish ran with tremendous power,\u201d Baldwin explained. \u201cIt was the heaviest fish I\u2019ve ever felt, and I knew I needed help so started yelling for Anthony to come over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sprague was checking his tip-ups and was a good distance from Baldwin when he saw him motioning for help. It took a few minutes for Sprague to get to Baldwin. Deep snow on the lake\u2019s 10 inches of ice made for a tough trek.<\/p>\n

A Formidable Fighter<\/p>\n

\"Brett\"Brett<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Anthony got to me, I told him the fish was huge, maybe a state-record northern pike or giant muskie<\/a> because it was like nothing I\u2019d ever felt before,\u201d said Baldwin. \u201cI finally got the fish up to the hole and we could see it down below that it was a huge muskie. We both start freaking out.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so huge I was really worried about losing it \u2014 like having buck fever, but about a big fish, not a deer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baldwin battled the muskie for several long minutes. Get got it close to the eight-inch diameter hole in the ice a half-dozen times. But each time, the fish took off on a run away from the hole. Sprague had removed his heavy coat in the frigid weather and plunged his arm deep down the hole to grab the muskie each time it came near. But it always surged away whenever he touched it.<\/p>\n

The fish fight lasted 15 minutes before the muskie began to tire. Sprague drove his arm deep down the ice hole again. This time, he grabbed the fish by the gill plate to haul it up. Baldwin grabbed the fish, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe kept pulling the fish out of the hole, and we kept pulling and pulling, like it never would come out of the hole because the muskie was so long,\u201d said Baldwin. \u201cWe got it up and saw how huge it was, and we started yelling and high fiving, like two kids with their first fish.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Catch to Remember <\/p>\n

They quickly measured the muskie at 52 inches long, with a 25-inch girth. It wasn\u2019t weighed because they wanted to release it right away so as not to injure the prized catch. Baldwin estimates the muskie at 45 to 50 pounds, saying it was heavy and fat, possibly from spawn inside it.<\/p>\n

Then the anglers released the muskie headfirst back through the hole and into the lake, where it swam strongly away.<\/p>\n

Baldwin plans to have a replica mount made of his huge muskie and is currently looking for a good taxidermist to do the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I don\u2019t catch another fish all ice season, I don\u2019t care,\u201d he said. \u201cThat giant of a muskie is all I\u2019ll ever need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Bob\"Bob<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBob McNally<\/a><\/p>\n

Bob McNally has been around fishing and the outdoors all his adult life. He has fished throughout the much of the world pursuing the globe’s important gamefish. He’s written over 5,000 feature magazine articles, and for many years also was a full-time metropolitan newspaper outdoor writer, and is the author of 11 outdoor books. His writing, broadcast and photography work have won dozens of state, regional and national awards. For years he hosted a daily syndicated fishing radio show, and was a weekly on-camera host of a fishing TV show for Fox Sports Outdoors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brett Baldwin, 25, left his home in Smethport, Pennsylvania, long before dawn on Jan. 31. He and his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-115737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-pennsylvania","9":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","10":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}