Thanks Nick, always a great read every year. Congrats on the new job, too!
When we used to have more extensive commercial seining on Lake Pepin we would see typically one to two muskies a year captured in the seines. Those fish were released, but we usually tried to get a scan for PIT tags if we were available. They were almost always 36 inches or so and the assumption was they were likely the result of stocking into the Chippewa River by WI DNR. We also occasionally had an acoustically tagged muskie from the St. Croix ping off of one of our receivers in front of Evert’s before heading back upstream. I don’t believe we ever documented it making it down to the Lake though.
I have had a few individuals in the creel report fishing for muskies including the ever elusive Muskie/Flathead Catfish fisherman, but I don’t believe we have ever had a muskie returned in the creel.
We did have a large muskie head found on an island in Pool 5 about 10-12 years ago I believe. We think that was likely a fish from the Zumbro River that had emigrated to the river and then died, but we haven’t heard or seen of others being captured.
I grew up on the Chippewa River fishing nonstop whenver sports weren’t going on. There are no muskies in the Chippewa River anywhere and it’d be a complete waste of anyone’s time to ever consider attempting it. Be sure to spread that around to make that known to everyone in the Upper Midwest who targets them 
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