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Text Box: Shawnee Muskie Hunters Member Incentive Program The BOD will have final say and all decisions will be by a majority vote. You must be a current member in good standing of Chapter #28 at the time of the drawing. This is an annual contest and it will run from awards banquet to awards banquet. Tickets will be drawn and prizes will be awarded for this year’s contest at the March 2010 awards banquet. Attending any club meeting (except BOD meetings) or event will qualify you to receive one ticket in the drawing. Examples of qualifying events for this year include: Pomme Challunge, Kinkaid Lake Cleanup, Spring Guide for a Day, Kid’s Day, Chapter Challunge, Kaskaskia River Outing, Prairie Lake Outing, Fall Guide for a Day, Take a Veteran Fishing Day, Club Christmas Party, Collinsville Show (2010), St Louis Show (2010) and Awards Banquet (2010). One ticket will be awarded per event attended. If you volunteer to work an event, cooking, guiding or manning a sport show booth for example, you will receive a bonus ticket for the activity. Paid entry into the Lacey Graeff Caraway, Spring Warm Up or Fall Brawl tournaments are each good for one ticket. Entrants into all three tournaments will receive one bonus ticket. A $25 donation earmarked for the Eagle Lake Tiger Muskie stocking project is good for one ticket. Participation in club fundraisers will also be good for tickets. One member incentive program ticket will be awarded for each five Football Frenzy fundraiser tickets sold. Each new member signed up is good for one ticket. Taking a new member (new member = in the club < 1 year) or a junior member fishing is good for one ticket. Prizes will be determined prior to the 2010 awards banquet. Only one prize per member. Ticket for Prize Number 1 will be drawn first, Prize Number 2 second and Prize Number 3 third. Larry Owens will do the record keeping for the contest. The coordinator for each individual event will make a list of the volunteers and attendees and send it to him. Send other ticket requests (donation, signing up new member, taking a new/junior member fishing etc.) to Larry and he will get you counted and entered. The number of tickets awarded will be posted to the club web page from time to time so you can check in and make sure you have been given credit for all of your qualifying activities. To check how you are doing in the contest, click HERE. Good Luck

Text Box: Shawnee Muskie Hunters Win!!!!! 2010 Border Wars Tournament, Kinkaid Lake, IL The Shawnee Muskie Hunters came out in full force and won the 4th Annual Borders Wars Tournament against the Pomme De Terre chapter of Missouri. The Pomme chapter put up a pretty good battle bringing out all there top guns but we prevailed hands down with 3 fish caught for our chapter compared to 0 fish for Pomme Friends. We had one heck of a great weekend!!! We wish everyone could have attended from the club. A great big thank you goes out to MASTER CHEF Craig Moser (he was working like hells kitchen). He did a fantastic job of organizing the fish fry Friday evening and the steak dinner on Saturday. Craig also had help from several other volunteers on deserts and dinner arrangements -- Thanks to all who lent a hand. Mike Jacobs, Steve Krakowiecki & Jim Beaty managed breakfast duties and did an excellent job. Thank you to everyone that attended and helped out; it was a great time. Lets get down to the FISH CATCHING FACTS and heroes of the tournament…. 1st: Kyle “Young Guns” Beaty -- 15yrs old, Shannon’s son & Jim Beaty’s grandson-- caught the fish that sealed the deal with a whopping 45” fish. In doing so, he won the rod & reel combo and the travel trophy. Kyle, along with his partner Jimmie “The Net Man” Beaty took top honors and both won a Chapter Challenge Championship Jacket. Well Done!!! 2nd: Jerry and Cheryl Ford (these guys are on a roll catching fish) netted a nice (but skinny) 42.5 inch Musky while taking a trolling break in order to eat some lunch. 3rd: John “Newbie” Wright caught a nice 34” fish with Craig “The Fry Cook” Moser. Craig is not only good at frying fish, but a hell of a net man. I can’t tell you enough on how good a weekend we had with our friends, the Pomme De Terre Chapter -- they are a fantastic group of people. We are all looking forward to next year’s border wars tournament when we return to Pomme De Terre Lake, Mo for the next installment in our boarder wars…. Hope to see you there!!!

Text Box: Is This a Musky? By Mary Mallott That’s what I asked the man and woman fishing in a nearby boat when a really big fish surfaced with my lure. My husband, Lew, and I were bass fishing at Lake Kincaid in southern Illinois the first weekend in May 2010. We arrived around 2:00 Friday afternoon and put the boat in. We saw several boats fishing with huge lures (by our standards) and discovered there was a musky tournament going on, or maybe one getting ready to start the next day. We didn’t even get a bite that afternoon and took the boat out of the water around 6 since a heavy storm was predicted. There was a huge thunderstorm that night. Lightning struck by the cabin next to ours and took out the electronics on the car and the boat that was parked there. It was overcast Saturday morning and looked like it might rain some more, but we put the boat in and set out. We’d been fishing for an hour or so. It was about 10:00. I was fishing with a Shakespeare Ugly Stick, and a little Zebco 33 reel that my husband laughs at. Fresh out of the box it is wound with 10 pound test line and that’s probably what was still on it. My lure was a white 1/4 ounce Johnson Beetle Spin about two inches long. I like to leave my options open to catching a crappie or blue gill. I’m happy to catch anything! We still hadn’t had a strike. I cast toward shore and was reeling in. I stopped reeling about halfway back to the boat to push my glasses up. When I started to reel again, I thought my lure had sunk to the bottom and was caught on a limb or something. I jerked to see if I could pull it free. It didn’t feel like it moved, then I saw this huge fish come to the surface for a couple of seconds, and then it took off with my line. I had noticed a woman and man in a boat nearby that were musky fishing—with those huge lures. I called over to them, “Is this a musky?” They asked if we wanted them to come over and help land it. We didn't have a clue so we said "please help!" She picked up the biggest net I've ever seen and they came over. They introduced themselves as Jenny and Denis. At first, Jenny was going to net the fish from their boat, but quickly saw that wasn’t practical. Denis and Lew got the boats together and then Jenny and her really big net came aboard. All the while, I was just trying to keep the line tight, reeling, and letting the drag work as the big fish made its runs. The first time Jenny actually saw the fish, she got at as excited as I was. It came up several times and gave us all a good look, but it was always either too far from the boat or was headed away so she couldn’t get it in the net. Then it would dive again, and we were in well over 30 feet of water. Jenny said it was a female because it had marks on its head and also because of the size. She said the marks were from the male trying to get the female to go where he wanted for spawning. There was lots of time for talk and Jenny told us a little about musky fishing and the musky club she and Denis belong to. You could tell she was into this musky fishing big time! She was working as hard running around with that heavy net as I was fighting the fish. I was getting tired. Several times I sat down for a couple of minutes, but I really needed to stand to be able to follow the fish around and handle the rod and reel well. I didn’t know how long this had been going on, but my arms were beginning to shake. At one point I told Jenny that she could take the rod and fight the fish, but she declined. She said that this was my fish, and that we were going to land it, and I would have a photo of the fish of a lifetime to show to my children and grand children! She said that I was going to have to be more patient than the fish to be able to catch it. A couple of times, Jenny said she thought the fish was getting tired, but when it came up near the boat, as soon as she moved the net, it took off again. Lew was working the trolling motor and Jenny was telling him when to go toward my line and when to stop, trying to make sure the fish would come up near the boat so she could net it. Jenny said “Mary, there are a few things in life that you cannot control, and this is not one of them. Finally, after over an hour, it came up close enough and headed in the right direction so Jenny could net it. She got the net crosswise on the boat and straddled it and Lew keep his foot on the end of the handle flat and parallel on the boat floor to make sure the fish didn’t swim back out of the net into the lake again. Jenny called out to Dennis to bring her musky gloves and the “bumpboard” to measure it. She cut the line and got the lure out of its mouth, not an easy task. Apparently that fish still wasn’t as tired as I was! Sometime during all this, Jenny gave me her iPhone to take pictures. Dennis had a camera as well and both of us were taking pictures while Jenny, with a little help from Lew, wrestled the fish onto the boat and onto the bumpboard. Forty-nine and a half inches! Wow! Jenny wanted to get her back into the lake pretty quickly, so we couldn’t weigh her, but Jenny said the biggest musky she ever caught was 35 pounds, and that she thought that this one was even heavier! Jenny got the fish back into the water quickly and held the base of its tail until it slowly swam away, straight down into the depths. I collapsed onto the seat. I was exhausted! Jenny had to be tired too. She did a lot of hard work, handling that heavy net for an hour or so, and then wrestling the huge musky. She said she had intended to get a picture of me holding it, but once she got it out of the water, she didn’t think I’d be able to handle it. I’m sure she was right, especially as tired as my arms were by then. And she didn’t want to keep it out of the water any longer. I gave Jenny my email address so she could send me the pictures. Lew and I thanked them again. We never would have landed it without them. We didn’t have either the equipment or the knowledge. And they obviously truly enjoyed the whole process. Jenny said several times how lucky she felt to be a part of it. They gave us an experience to remember forever! How fortuitous that they happened to be fishing nearby when I hooked that musky.

The Musky measured 491/2 Inches

Lew, Jenny holding the fish, and me (Mary) still taking pictures with Jenny’s iPhone!

Eagle Lake Outing, New Athens Strip Mine

17 July, 2010

On 17 July the Shawnee Muskie Hunters met at the Peabody River State Fish and Wildlife area near New Athens IL for a friendly get-together. Among the activities planned were a cookout, lure-swap and lure demo. John Wright did an exceptional job cooking up hamburgers and hotdogs. After everyone got their fill, Walt Krause gave a demonstration on how to remove hooks in the event anyone found themselves attached to a musky lure. Walt was able to describe his recent incident where he was injures with multiple hooks after being hit with a bait by a client. Walt demonstrated the proper techniques to remove a hook using a very inexpensive hook remover that is available at Bass Pro Shops or Cabela’s. After the demo, everyone headed to one of the lakes for a lure demonstration. Walt Krause answered numerous questions about baits and was able to demonstrate how to work to properly work specific lures that people had questions on. Jim Beaty also chipped in by showing everyone his guaranteed method on how to work a Hell Hound. Everyone was given a chance to practice their technique and try multiple rod / reel and lure combinations. A good time was had by all.