Fish that have taken you the most work to land...

[MuskieBait]

Is that online scouting/detective work? Or actual in-the-field work?

There are some species I've wanted to hunt down where it took me over 4 years of Google searching for material to read...and took me 4 years to actually go fish and catch them...

Anyways, I got too many of them...but here are some fun local ones I can think off the top of my head...

First Mooneye - stepped into a deep hole in the river...went from "butt deep" to "chest deep" to "over my head deep" and losing my footing. If it wasn't the air in my slightly large waders keeping me some what floating and bobbing in the current, my waders would have flooded and I would have been dragged downstream. Luckily I just bobbed until I floated past the hole and found footing again. That evening, I finally caught my first Mooneye.

First Lake Whitefish - drove the snowmobile into a puddle on the ice, about 2 feet of water above the ice, stuck in the middle of this puddle surrounded by 100 feet of frozen water on all sides, wading thigh deep in freezing water (in snow pants) for 30min to retrieve our lost gear and pulling out the snowmobile, walking though thigh deep snow after with numb feet and legs and losing my boots in the snow (my lower body was so cold and numb I couldn't even feel the boots falling off)...and have to walk back in the snow in my wet and frozen socks...all 50ft of it! Oh of course, when we are finally dry and some what warm after the ordeal, we drove home and the truck lights turned off. We had no headlights, tail lights, trailer lights...driving in the middle of nowhere at dusk...then we finally got back to civilization just before dark, changed the fuse, drove 5 minutes on the 400 in the dark and all the lights went out again...parked on the shoulder, put in another new fuse...all the lights went out again...The trailer was the problem. Luckily we found a Tim Hortons about 1 min later and parked there and slept in the truck for the night. My feet, even though they were "warm" were tingling for 2 weeks...the feeling you get from hitting your funny bone...except it was non-stop...luckily we caught our first whitefish just before we drove into the puddle on the ice...

First Lake Trout - Hiked on a lake on the ice for 3k pulling a 40lb sled in a blizzard, set up a tent style shelter in said blizzard, auger though 24"+ of ice with a manual auger that was just long enough to poke through the last 1/2" of ice...we were literally drilling on our knees trying to make the auger blade punch though the last little bit of ice...fishing all day in the blizzard for no bites but one...which was the laker on the tip up line set outside.

I really should write a book.