Got out on the Croix on Saturday… what a beautiful day – the water was like glass, very little wind, almost nobody else on the water… so peaceful…
I took my two sons and one of their friends out with me. We started jigging for walleye at a spot I had some luck at a few weeks ago but we couldn’t find any shad clouds and only had one bite in about a half-hour. We decided to go to our ‘never fail’ spot and had two nice fish in the box within 10-15 minutes of setting up shop. I glanced at my fish-finding and saw a very LARGE mark on the screen, just off the bottom. My son’s friend was at the stern and told him to just hold his jig a few inches off the bottom. After a few minutes, he exclaimed “Dang, I got a snag” as he pulled hard on his line. After a few seconds, the ‘snag’ suddenly pulled back – hard. FISH ON!!! 
He was running 8 lbs mono on his spool so when the fish took off, the drag sung like crazy. The rest of us in the boat pulled up our lines and I grabbed the troller motor controls. That fish took us on quite a journey! We started in about 25-30 fow and the fish followed the contour of the ridge across the river. It seemed to know exactly where it was headed – we ended up directly over a bowl that bottomed out at 65 fow and the fish headed straight down to the bottom. Over the next hour, we were able to get the fish up to about 15-20 fow 3-4 times, each time, the fish would dive back down, peeling drag…
At the 1 hour, 10 minute mark (several boats had gone by us and returned during this time), it seemed like the fish was finally giving in… working slowly, pulling up a few feet at a time, we made headway… I couldn’t believe the bubbles that darn thing was giving off – one of my sons commented that maybe we hooked up a submarine! I kept the boat positioned so that the fish was coming up directly to the side of the boat – so that I could either grab it by hand or my son could try to scoop it with a large net. Slowly, the kid pulled the fish toward the surface. A few feet up, a slight pull back down – it was truly 2 steps up, 1 step down with each draw.
We had the fish within a few feet of the surface – almost an hour and half had gone by – my youngest son exclained “look at the size of that!!!” – and then the unmentionable happened… SNAP!!! the line broke after the fish gave a good headshake 
. We all looked at each other for a few moments – nobody said anything except for the occasional expletives uttered by all – as we were dumbfounded by what had just happened….
My son was the only that got a look at the fish – he described it as nearly 2 feet wide at the pectorals that tapered back toward the tail. He didn’t see the head clearly nor the tail, just the midsection. From what he described (brownish, shaped like a big fat teardrop; two feet across at the widest part), sounds to me like a huge flathead… we’ll never know for sure…
By this time, the sun was setting and it was time to go in… we quietly stored the gear and headed back to the launch site in Hudson.
