Two Dutch anglers landed a boatload of giant muskies on Eagle Lake with simple Euro tactics. Here’s how

Few things in muskie fishing surprise Charlene Snow, the general manager of Eagle Lake Island Lodge in the heart of northwestern Ontario’s Sunset Country. She has seen it all over the years, but when two guests arrived from the Netherlands last September and immediately starting boating bruiser muskies, she confesses to sitting up and taking notice. Muskies are, after all, the fabled fish of 10,000 casts, and the Dutch duo had never seen one before, let alone caught one.

By the end of their 10-day stay on Eagle Lake, the pair had netted eight muskies measuring up to 50 inches, along with multiple prodigious pike. Even more impressively, they caught every muskie on the retrieve—not a single one was hooked on a figure eight. They were obviously doing something very different, and in the process, making it look just a little too easy.

After reading Snow’s daily Facebook posts about the pair’s impressive catches, I just had to learn more. With that, she put me in touch with one of the anglers, Arjan Biemond. Here’s how he and his partner, Sybe Mellema, approached fishing a lake they’d never visited before, for a species they’d never seen. Learn from their experience, and your next muskie trip is bound to be a success, too,