Several months pregnant, Tessa Cosens, 26, of Hagerstown, Maryland has been kept off the water recently because of morning sickness. She made the best of one of her infrequent days on the water May 6 by catching the Maryland state record muskie.
The big muskellunge, which is frequently referred to as the fish of 1,000 casts, weighed 32.5 pounds and was caught from the bank on the upper Potomac River in northwestern Maryland. Cosens caught the more than the 4-foot-long beast on a 7-foot muskie rod and a double spinner.
Once the paperwork clears with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, it will go into the record books as the state’s largest muskie caught in non-tidal waters. It replaces a 2011 record fish that was also caught from the Potomac. That fish, caught by Kenneth Files, weighed 31 pounds, 12 ounces. The IGFA all-tackle world record muskie weighed 67 pounds, 8 ounces. It was caught from Wisconsin’s Lake Court Oreilles by Cal Johnson in 1949.
According to a Maryland DNR press release, it took 15 minutes for Cosens to land her big muskie.
“All the guys around me stopped fishing and looked at me,” Cosens said. “There is no other fish that fights like a muskie.”
To help determine the age of the fish, Cosens is donating a sample of the muskie’s scales and cleithrum – a large bone above the gills – to the department for further analysis.