It was a bitter cold and windy morning on Feb. 24 when Victor Gelman set out to catch a record-class muskie on 1,900-acre Greenwood Lake. After walking through the snow to his spot on the New Jersey side of the lake in Passaic County, Gelman used a power auger to drill five 10-inch holes through the ice.
“I was all alone, sitting in a chair that morning watching my tip-ups with live 8-to-10-inch sucker baits below the ice,” Gelman tells Outdoor Life. “The wind was blowing 25 miles per hour, and the temperature was about 20 degrees. It was right after the blizzard of the century when I got on the ice at 8 a.m., and the fish didn’t bite until 4 p.m.”
It was the only strike he had all day, and the tip-up was 80 yards away when Gelman noticed he had a fish on. After getting to it as quickly as he could, he had to break ice away from the hole to grab the 50-pound braided line that was coming off the reel spool.
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“I pulled on the line, and it was like having a tug-of-war with a Rottweiler,” says the 47-year-old angler, who owns the Warwick Chocolate Factory in New York. “I finally pulled the fish to my hole and when its head popped up, I knew it was a giant. Then it pulled back down through the hole and took off on another run.”
Even with 50-pound test and a wire leader, Gelman knew there was a chance of losing the fish. Finally, he hauled it back up toward the hole and got its head up. Then he lifted the giant fish through the ice and onto the snow.
“I knew it was a special muskie,” he says.
Gelman wanted to release the big muskie alive. But the fish was hooked deep and bleeding, and he knew there was a chance it would die soon after he let it go.
“I didn’t want to keep it,” he explains. “But I knew it was close to a record, and the New Jersey fisheries department likely would want to see the fish and inspect it, which was better than putting it back in the lake to die.”
Gelman contacted the fisheries folks at a nearby New Jersey hatchery that’s been stocking muskies for years. They stayed open until Gelman got there with his fish. Craig Lemon, the superintendent of the Hackettstown State Fish Hatchery, measured and weighed the fish on their certified scale.
The massive muskie tipped the scales at 45.02 pounds, and it measured 51.125 inches long with a 27-inch girth. Gelman says the record paperwork has been filed with the state, and his fish should top the current record, which weighed 42 pounds 13 ounces and was caught back in 1997.
Gelman donated his muskie to the hatchery so biologists can dissect it and learn more about its age, physical condition, and what it was eating.
“I love muskie fishing and would never have caught my fish without the outstanding stocking and research work done by state biologists who created the fishery in Greenwood Lake through their tireless efforts,” Gelman says. “It’s my honor to help the fisheries staff.”
Gelman says he’ll also have a taxidermy mount made of his fish if it becomes the new state record. This would be a dream come true for Gelman, and the culmination of a determined effort that began two years ago, when he caught a 52-inch muskie from the St. Lawrence River in New York. That fish was released, and he still doesn’t know how much it weighed.
“I have a photo of me and that fish in my chocolate shop, and everyone who walks in wants to know where I caught the muskie and how much it weighed,” he says. “I’ve told everyone who saw that photo in my shop that I’m going to catch a muskie that size in New Jersey, and I finally succeeded.”
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