World Record Muskie release Program Announced
Category: press release
Dec 11th, 2015 by OutdoorsFIRST
Modified Dec 11th, 2015 at 12:00 AM
MuskieFirst (www.muskiefirst.com) announces the “World Record Muskie Release” program. MuskieFirst’s Steve Worrall has agreed to sanction, on the MuskieFirst web site, a forward-thinking category to recognize and maintain the World Record for released muskies. Today’s conservation minded Muskie anglers overwhelmingly believe that a super fish need not be killed to be recognized by the angler’s peer’s, if accurately documented.
MuskieFirst has “commissioned” (pro-bono) Muskie Historian Larry Ramsell, two term past President of Muskie’s, Inc. International, to develop the guidelines for this program using his vast muskie record knowledge and data base of very large kept and released muskellunge. Ramsell, author of three editions of “A Compendium of Muskie Angling History”, developed the world record program as World Record’s Secretary for the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame (NFWFHF) in the 1970’s, and was for 30 plus years, the Hall’s World Record Advisor. Ramsell also served as a Representative of the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) for 16 years for Muskie related matters. He is currently the Founder and Chairman of the Modern Day Muskellunge World Record Program (www.modernmuskierecords.org), although this MuskieFirst release program will be a separate entity.
This program came about after a monster Muskie was caught and released on Mille Lacs Lake, Minnesota on November 25th, 2015, by Dominic Hoyos fishing with Dean Block. The giant fish measured 55 inches long on a proper bump (measuring) board and had an amazing girth measurement of 30 inches, properly taken with a soft measuring tape around the fattest part of the fish’s body. The manner and professionalism of documenting this great catch triggered the motivation to develop this long desired release world record program. These two anglers set the bar of documentation extremely high with great photographs of the measuring of length and girth and full body photo shots from different angles, as well as taking a video of the actual live release of this magnificent fish.
While the exact weight of the released Muskie will never be known, Ramsell spent several days researching fish formulas on the Internet and reviewing four more prominently known formulas for calculating the weight of a muskellunge using length and girth. None of the known formulas were considered accurate enough to be used as they were, so Ramsell used his data file of recently captured, weighed and released and captured and kept muskies in the weight caliber range of the Hoyos/Block fish to modify a known formula to more closely conform to the known fish weights in this data base. This new formula, now known as “The Modified Crawford Formula” (L X G/25 minus 8) is simplistic in its use and extremely accurate throughout the data base range of weights used (from 53 to 61.25 pounds) without under stating fish weight. In addition, over stating of fish weight was extremely minimal with this new formula on this data base, ranging from +.16 pounds to +.68 pounds or .29% to 1.1% of actual fish weight. None were under stated, a previous problem with the original formula, where the “minus” number was 10.
The “Mille Lacs Queen” (http://muskie.outdoorsfirst.com/board/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=106545&posts=100&start=1) will take its place as the MuskieFirst World Record Muskie Release and the weight “estimate” will be listed at 58.00 pounds. It is the only known large Muskie release to be so completely documented to date. Congratulations to the team of Dominic Hoyos and Dean Block on a tremendous accomplishment!