Kenora fisherman survives muskie 'fish attack'

Jon Olson, a fisherman from Kenora, Ont., has a fish tale few can top.

Olson was competing in the Kenora Bass International fishing tournament last weekend when he dipped his toes in the water before the weigh-in.

He said he felt a tug, yelled, and pulled a muskie out of the lake, its teeth clamped to his foot.

At first, Olson thought someone was literally pulling his leg.

"I thought one of the other guys was playing a joke and swam under the back of the boat and actually grabbed my foot," he said.

"But when I pulled my foot up and yelled, I (saw) it just attached."

Olson said the fish was more than a metre long and weighed about eight kilograms.

"All of a sudden something come up and grabbed my foot and I kinda just yelled and jerked my foot away," he said.

"When I pulled my foot, it pulled the muskie and pulled him out of the water by a foot and then he let go."

Olson has deep cuts on his foot and ended up placing tenth in the tournament. 

But he has a great fish story to tell.

• The muskellunge is the largest member of the pike family. The common name comes from the Ojibwa word maashkinoozhe, meaning ugly pike.
• The muskie diet consists of fish but can also include frogs, ducklings, snakes, muskrats, mice, and other small mammals and birds. Its mouth is large with many long, needle-like teeth.
• They typically weigh 2.3 to 16 kilograms and are 0.7 to 1.2 metres in length but some have weighed as much as 32 kilograms and been as long as 1.5 metres.
• Kenora is home to a 12-metre-high roadside sculpture known as Huskie the Muskie, the city’s informal mascot.