Quote Originally Posted by rickerd View Post
Thanks again for your reports Juls.

Shows us we are all human.
I was out Sunday 30 mins after you from BP in friends boat. We started just north of dump and headed ENE with wind on troll 2.7-3.0 mph. Harnesses on 1 side 2 on slide divers and 1 on 40 jet off board. The other side had same hardware with spoons. We struggled only put 3 in box. But I had a fish on a lite bite diver with harness for 30 plus seconds. It was big on the outside and kept moving outside away from boat. It was heavy I couldn't move its head but kept feeling him swim. Then it turned away from me for 20 feet took out drag and broke off. Same thing as you a clean break on 20 pound fluoro. This was in the first hour we fished and 5 minutes later my buddy says, snap out of it whats wrong. I said I cannot get the thought out of my head I just lost a musky. I've fought and landed a handful 9-11 pound walleye and none of them took me to task like that fish. He was just playing with me.

Rickerd
My biggest sheephead to date is 14.5 lbs. When I hooked this fish, it started taking line in short spurts and was not stopping. Finnally had to pull gear and chase it. Out in open water targeting walleyes my guess would be a very large sheephead. 20+ pounders are out there. In fairness, there are pike and muskey out there, but they generally hang around skinnier water around structure. I've caught just about every thing that will bite a trolled lure in Erie(steelhead, browns, coho, a king, whitefish, pike , muskey, large/smallmouth/rock bass, you get the picture) and sheephead, pound for pound, are as a good a fight as any and big ones will test your tackle.