This is the story of massive, rare freshwater predators and a pair of fanatical anglers who follow them. Rising star Chris Willen and undisputed legend Larry Dahlberg have always accepted their addiction to the adrenaline of musky fishing.
Watch the film or read on to learn more about what happens when two musky addicts stop counting casts and focus on making casts that count.
Meet the Hardest Fish in Freshwater: The Musky
Musky fishing is for the addicts. The nuts. And if done right, the full-on bums. That’s how renowned musky guide and multi-technique angler Chris Willen describes his relationship with these massive green and always mean fish. They’re ghosts. Since his days as a grom dreaming about this elusive fish, he’s always accepted they were somewhat unattainable. And that’s exactly where his obsession started.
Musky guide Chris Willen hard at work.
“They have to eat. They have the fact that they’re big with that giant mouth engulfing something. It’s just cool to see. Muskies are the common man’s big game, trophy fish. They’re the king of the castle,” says Willen.
He’s not wrong. Many people have heard of muskellunge but precious few have ever chased, let alone caught, one. These mysterious denizens of far northern waterways are brutally challenging to track down and even harder to get to bite.
It’s a plotline The Hunt for Big Fish star and 2017 IGFA Fishing Hall of Famer Larry Dahlberg knows all too well. Dahlberg’s attraction also stems from the fact they’re so difficult to catch and the reasons why these ghosts are the tip of the pyramid. By nature, any fish that occupies pole position becomes harder to find because there are just so few of them, and Dahlberg says that’s exactly what makes the vaunted musky so worthy of the chase.
Ghost hunting the fish of 10,000 casts
They’re not for the part-timers or the pontoon-boat cocktail crew. In fact, any musky angler will quickly tell you it’s 10,000 grueling casts per fish, minimum, so not capturing makes it easy for a pilgrim to make excuses. Wrong water conditions. Wrong barometric pressure. Wrong color of underwear. The lists many anglers create are endlessly absurd, and typically salved over a pitcher of dive-bar Lienenkugels.
Anglers of Willen and Dahlberg’s caliber aren’t the “excuses” type. They just put their heads down, turn their minds on, and absolutely grind looking for the answer. Above all, ghost hunting is all about attrition.
When fishing for muskies, both Chris Willen and Larry Dahlberg agree it’s about process over outcome.
A Musky Obsession Finds Its Match
Dahlberg readily admits to seeing quite a bit of himself in Willen, noting Chris’ passion for Wisconsin muskies and how to catch them. After a chance meeting at a random boat launch at the end of gravel road in the middle of a Midwest heaven, the two became fast friends with Dahlberg imparting years of hard-won musky fishing tips and knowledge. Willen returned that gift with a fiery stoke, new theories, and odd-but-enlightening new techniques that expanded Larry’s mind. But for Dahlberg, that new relationship would take a turn for the deeper.
Dahlberg had a son named Aaron, a renowned photographer and adventurer. The two were on a late-night phone call between Puerto Rico, where Aaron lived, and Dahlberg’s home state of Minnesota. They were feverishly discussing how to perfectly capture the moon on 35mm film. Aaron was enjoying the evening outside on an open-air balcony. Amidst the conversation, Dahlberg heard a strange noise and a jumble of clattering on the other end of the line. Days later, he would learn his son had been shot. It was the last of many conversations between son and father.
Willen has embraced Dahlberg’s wisdom about musky fishing and about life. As in all great relationships built outdoors, there are equal parts friendship, teaching, learning, and chosen family. The two men revere one another and enjoy every second on the water. Their shared obsession serves as an unspoken bond, and they help sharpen each other’s technique in a way that arguably makes them the two best musky fishermen on the planet.
A day with Chris Willen is a crash course in how to catch muskies.
Why Willen’s approach to muskies works
In Dahlberg’s words: “Too many anglers see the world through a soda straw as if they were myopic weenies. Chris views the musky world through every keyhole and every angle.”
Willen soaked up Dahlberg’s lessons like a sponge dropped overboard. It’s Dahlberg’s versatility that impresses him the most. The guy can rage smallmouth bass on a fly in Northern Minnesota one day and then dominate Nile perch a week later with live-bait and crankbaits on a seldom-seen river thousands of miles away in Africa.
Their bond transcends fishing lessons. “Just a whole lot. He means a whole lot to me,” sighs Willen. The same can be said on Dahlberg’s end.
Guide Chris Willen spinning deer hair in a feverish, late-night musky fly-tying session.
Willen’s Secrets to Musky Fishing
Dahlberg admires the way Willen approaches the hunt, believing angling success—particularly with muskies—comes down to three things: Mechanics, tactics, and strategy. Mechanics are the crucial piece of the puzzle, be it the ability to put a cast into a teacup-sized opening under an overhanging tree, casting for extreme distance, setting hooks effectively and when it all comes together, knowing how to quickly fight and land a fish. He’s not interested in fishing beside anyone who’s less than mastered these metaphorical Scrabble pieces.
A Dual Threat: Conventional Musky Fishing and Musky Fly Fishing
Willen often takes heat from other muskie anglers about his technique-agnostic approach to hunting these toothy ghosts. The man is a multi-tool with the build of a wrestler. One day he’s slow-walking a Jackpot over a massive lake’s emerging cabbage beds. The next day, he’s floating a tannin-stained Wisconsin river firing 12” bucktail creations 80 feet back into fly-robbing logjams, then fishing them cleanly through that chaos. He’s also a wicked fly tier and lure builder.
Technique-wise, he casts far and wide, and that’s exactly what first made Dahlberg take note of him. He regards Willen as a versatile mechanic with a deep bag of tools and he’s become mind-numbingly skilled at knowing the specific light, barometer and seasonal conditions under which to use each weapon. It’s also a picture-perfect description of what’s made Dahlberg so diabolical for decades.
Guide Chris Willen is no stranger to both conventional gear and fly fishing for muskies.
The fishing-for-muskie mindset
Willen will also tell you the hunt for muskies comes down to a feeling akin to the guys who step up to a big-league batter’s box. They’ve arrived with their eyes on the ultimate prize, ready to bring their A-game and prove themselves. Musky success is a lot like that, and when weather and water conditions align, there’s no excuse for not shooting your best shot.
It’s nice when the things you can’t control fall into place, but Dahlberg says it can also become an issue of stamina and endurance. Like a big-league baseball player, you have to have trained physically for the game. Mentally, you must ignore that your last 9,999 casts failed to locate and believe you’re just one cast closer to connection.
It’s ok if the musky wins
With musky fishing, the fish almost always win. The bite can be good for a spell, but then something changes and it’s no longer on. More often, there is no bite at all. You catch a single fish and then drift for hours with no action. Often unexplainable, these two can feel it in their personal lateral lines. They’re both fishy like that. Time also takes its toll. Uncut grass, garages that look as if a tornado moved in and never left, dishes in the sink, and neglected vehicles are the tells. For them, wealth is not measured in how much they’ve accumulated. Quite the opposite. A man’s wealth is judged by how little he needs, and if he has someone to take the oars while he tries a dicey cast.
“Muskies are excitement and turmoil and chaos,” says Willen, speaking like a mainline adrenaline junkie. But here’s the most important thing they’re not telling you about chasing ghosts: To catch one, first you have to believe they’re real.
