This is a late report but a great story nonetheless. On a gloomy day back in August, OK prostaffer Jamie Pistilli and I took U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Elward "Pat" Cortez out in search of big musky on an eastern Ontario lake. Pat is stationed here in Ottawa and was actually scheduled to leave for Kandahar, Afghanistan in the days following this outing. Although he'd never targeted musky before, he's no stranger to large predator fish and was keen on putting another notch in his belt before leaving for the sand.
As a storm loomed in the dark morning skies, we started casting over a submerged hump smack dab in the middle of a deep weed bed. After losing my first 'ski boatside and Jamie missing another on a figure eight, we decided to head a bit shallower and toss at some shoreline structure. Pat followed suit, heading further east than us. Didn't take him long to distance himself from us in his Pro Angler and in a matter of minutes he was on a fish. From the way he was screaming, we figured it was a decent musky :)
After a short battle, Jamie moved in boatside and assisted Pat with hook extraction and measuring the fish. The tape stretched to 44.5" of lean, mean musky. Pat was ecstatic. So were we.
We ended up going only 1 for 6 that day, but the one we did end up with made a rookie musky fisherman quite happy. And his two buddies quite proud. Congrats Elward!