Pa. angler gets bucket list fish of a lifetime over his birthday holiday weekend in Erie

Lake Erie presented a Pennsylvania angler with a belated birthday bucket-list fish of a lifetime in Erie.

Scott Bielanin, of Harborcreek, turned 52 on May 21, but he didn’t get his gift until May 25 when he hooked into a 53.5-inch, 42-pound musky.

“It’s a muskellunge, but I would call it an alligator,” he said laughingly about the large-toothed fish.

“It was a giant fish, it was definitely a bucket list fish that I’ve had for a long, long time,” the competitive sport fisherman said in a telephone interview.

He’s caught other muskies over the years in the 30 to 35-inch category. “They all have been beautiful fish and we’ve always let them go,” he said.

When he finally got this musky in the boat he remembers thinking, “It’s a wonderful fish, it’s an absolute monster,” he said.

He was trolling for walleyes with Capt. Joe Spangler and Ray Fiscus in the North East area of the Great Lake when the fish hit his Joe Renosky 5-inch stickbait. “I was using light tackle,” he said about it taking about 30 minutes to net the lunker.

Over the past two years, Bielanin caught some large walleyes measuring 34 and 36 inches and he first assumed he had another trophy-sized walleye on his line.

“It was staying down and I couldn’t move the rod, you would have to take the boat out of gear so you could get a few feet on it,” he recalled. “It was coming in and it got to the boat and we still couldn’t see it because it was down in the water column. It ran out 200 feet and we were just stumped,” he said thinking it could be a large brown trout.

When it came back toward the boat, “it came up and surfaced in the prop wash and I could see the stickbait on the bottom of the jaw, it was shaking its head trying to throw the lure and that’s when that gut-wrenching feeling sunk in that this was an absolute giant,” he said.

They soon realized they only had walleye nets and not their larger salmon net. He remembers his fellow boaters telling him the fish won’t fit in their nets.

“I didn’t think we could land it, it’s going to break us off,” Bielanin said.

“The fish went wherever it had to, we were on light tackle, and I couldn’t force it in, hurry up and get it in. We got half of it in the net and we started picking up on it, when we got it in, it was bleeding pretty good from the gills,” he said.

While they usually release the muskies they catch back into the water, he and the other two experienced musky anglers aboard soon realized the fish was not going to survive the ordeal. He decided the best thing he could do to honor the musky was to have a taxidermist mount it. In Pennsylvania, anglers can keep one muskellunge a day if it’s at least 40 inches long.

“It was just an amazing fish. I never thought I was going to catch one the size of this. It was an absolutely incredible specimen, it was just amazing. I’m still in shell shock,” he said on May 27.

When he tried to measure the fish, he soon found out they needed to take the fish to a sports shop to be weighed.

“We have a pretty decent scale and it maxes out at 40 pounds,” Bielanin said.

Lynne Rudzinski, who co-owns East End Angler in Erie with her husband Kirk, weighed the fish for him. “Because it was so big we kept it in a garbage bag and weighed it,” she said.

“The weight kept bouncing all over (on the scale) because the fish was real long so it was really hard to get,” she said about it being 42 pounds. She was surprised by the large fish. “Not a lot of people catch muskies in Lake Erie,” she said.

The actual state record for a muskellunge was set 101 years ago. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission reports Lewis Walker Jr. of Meadville, holds the record with a 54-pound, three ounce musky he caught in 1924 in Conneaut Lake, Crawford County.

The challenge with getting this fish mounted will be finding a place to display a fish that’s more than four feet long.

“My significant other, Marge, I called her and she was not ecstatic,” Bielanin said with a smile. The couple used a tape measure and found a wall that had enough real estate that should respectfully display the hefty trophy.

He also enjoyed telling his family about his big catch.

It was comical because he caught the fish in the area where family members have a home and rental places. “I got the fish and sent a picture to my sister, ‘Tell your tenants that it’s safe to swim with their kids and small pets this summer.’ I said, ‘I just eliminated an apex predator out of the water,’” he said.

There was supposed to be a fourth regular fishing buddy, Mike Mishik on the boat, but he couldn’t make it because he lost his own coin toss. “He flipped a coin and told his wife I’m either going to fish on Sunday or fish Monday.” Later in the day, Mishik’s wife called to congratulate and scold Bielanin. He remembers her saying, “Of all days, you had to do it while Mike wasn’t there.”

Bielanin enjoys fishing with others, especially during this epic battle.

“The enjoyment of seeing Ray’s reactions while I was fighting the fish is priceless. And then you have the back of the boat captain, Joe, him saying, ‘You’ll never get it in the boat, the net is too small, it’s going to break the line.’ He was really giving me great confidence. And then I have Ray five feet beside me telling me, ‘You can’t lose this fish, you can’t lose this fish,’ and I’m looking at both of those guys and I’m like, Hell or high water. It’s light tackle, the fish is going to do what it’s going to do and I’m just going to coerce him to slowly give up,” Bielanin said. “I do know that all the small panfish and small walleye in that area were rejoicing when he went in the net,” he said with a laugh about the large predator.

Reflecting on the experience several days later, it stirs up mixed emotions for him.

“We were catching some nice walleyes, it was a nice day and then we got the fish of a lifetime. It’s a unicorn fish,” he said. “I’m not proud of having to put that on the wall. It’s a double-edged sword. It was a beautiful, beautiful specimen.

“It was a present from Lake Erie to me,” he said about it being his birthday weekend.

Reporting by Brian Whipkey, Pennsylvania Outdoors Columnist / Erie Times-News