If you’ve ever pursued “the fish of 10,000 casts,” then you know that the hooks on muskie lures come in two sizes, large and extra large. These hooks — trebles usually — are designed to penetrate the hard mouth of a muskie, and knowledgeable anglers keep the hook points scary sharp.

It’s common to cast from sunrise to sunset on decent muskie water and not get a single strike, which is why anglers often summarize their day by talking about how many “follows” they had; muskies have an insanely frustrating habit of following behind a lure but not striking it. I provide this background so you can better understand an evening of muskie fishing recently experienced by my 20-year-old son Elliott, who was in the boat with his regular fishing partner, Sam. 

(Note: I’ve written about Elliott and muskies before on this website; click here for “A Boy’s First Muskie.”)

Elliott and Sam spend a tremendous amount of time on the water, generally pursuing largemouth bass and northern pike, but they have also experienced great success for channel catfish, sunfish, crappies, and smallmouth bass. It’s no exaggeration to say that the pair racks up thousands of hours fishing each year in Minnesota, with occasional trips to South Dakota and Canada.

Elliott had recently caught and released a 38.5-inch muskie (above) while fishing with his friend Ty, and the following day decided to hit the same lake with Sam. The weather had been unstable the previous evening when he caught his fish, and storms were once again a possibility before sunset, so Elliott and Sam jumped in the boat and hoped to score again.

It didn’t take long for the action to begin. Elliott quickly had a 40-incher (guess-timate) follow his bucktail, then not long after Sam hooked a fish of similar length on a Storm Kickin’ Stick (now discontinued crankbait/twitchbait), only to lose it boatside after a 5-second battle. A half-hour later, a 38.75-incher hit Sam’s Kickin’ Stick, and this time the guys were successful in netting the fish, taking a quick measurement and photos (below), then letting it go in great shape.

With an hour before dark, the guys were excited for a chance at a two-fish evening. One storm had just passed south of the lake, and another thunderhead looked like it would miss a safe distance to the north. The young anglers knew enough to head for shore if necessary, but they also understood that unstable weather meant muskies would be on the prowl.

“I was casting perpendicular to the boat, toward shore,” Elliott explained. I was throwing sidearm off my right side because Sam was in the back of the boat, on my left. It was a shallow flat, dotted with thick coontail clumps that grew to the surface. The muskies were hunting between the clumps, so Sam and I were working our lures pretty fast to keep them out of the junk.

“We were talking, I don’t remember about what, when something crushed the back of my head. My hat went flying, and I was confused and in extreme pain. I didn’t know what hit me. Imagine getting hit in the back of the head with a baseball-sized rock thrown at 75 mph; man, it hurt.”

Sam takes full responsibility for the accident. “It was just a bonehead move on my part,” he said. “I was casting in the same direction as Elliott, perpendicular to the boat toward shore. I wasn’t throwing off the back of the boat or anything like that.”

Like Elliott, Sam is right-handed, and while he’s certainly skilled enough to throw off his left shoulder (farthest away from Elliott), he was casting off his right shoulder for added distance, which meant he needed to be extra careful.

“I guess I dropped a little too low, kinda sidearm,” Sam admitted. “Plus, I had too much line out from my rod tip on the cast. I can’t believe I hooked him.”

How bad was it? As you can see from the photos on this page, the Storm Kickin’ Stick is a jointed lure with two large trebles. Sam must have quickly swept his rod back to make a cast, and the rod loaded fully. As Sam rocketed the lure forward, it smashed into Elliott’s head. Elliott estimates that Sam’s lure traveled 6 feet forward from the back cast to when it struck his skull.

At impact, the jointed lure broke into its two segments. The front section smashed into Elliott’s hat, ripping the hat from his head, and bending one of the hooks severely. It’s likely that the hat protected Elliott a bit. As the photo below shows, the treble from the bait’s back section embedded deeply into the back of Elliott’s head.

As it turns out, I was bass fishing solo in my kayak on a nearby lake when Elliott called to tell me the scary news, so I was able to rush to the muskie lake to help Sam and Elliott get their boat on the trailer. Thankfully, while the wound bled quite a bit intitally (top photo), it finally stopped.

Emergency Room Visit

An hour later, Elliott was sitting in the emergency room of a nearby hospital, having just received a shot to numb the area around the embedded treble. Elliott explained to the doctor that he was able to remove one of the treble’s hooks in the boat, but the second one was in too deep, well past the barb.

“What’s your plan of attack?” Elliott asked the doctor. “Will you push it through, cut the shank below the barb, then back out the hook?”

While that technique often can work, this particular hook was bent too much to allow it to be pushed through. The round bend was flattened too much; the only way to remove the hook was to slide it back out, the same way it had entered. In order to do that, the doctor used a scalpel to slice Elliott’s skin to provide a pathway for the barb to move backward.

Once the hook was removed, the wound was cleaned and then closed with a single staple, which Elliott had to have removed a week later on another visit to the doctor.

Lesson Learned

Watch enough muskie content on YouTube and you’ll see the vast majority of anglers casting lures with 2, 3 and even 4 feet of line hanging from their rod tip. Does it increase casting distance? Absolutely. Does it increase your chance of hooking a boat partner? Absolutely!

Only you can determine whether the risk is worth the reward. In my opinion, I’d rather cast a bit shorter distance but be much safer. I have only a few inches of line (above the wire leader) hanging from the rod tip as I make a cast. The ONLY time I could see having more line hanging from the rod tip while making a cast is if I were solo in the boat and wanted to make extra-long casts.

Be careful out there!