Mike Hall caught and released a fish of a lifetime, a 55-inch muskie caught while prefishing on Green Bay for an AIM Pro Walleye Series tournament.

The excitement began when “his planer board pulling a No. 9 Flicker Minnow disappeared,” emailed Lou DiNicola, a fellow member of the Libertyville Fishing Club. “Mike soon realized it wasn’t a snag and after 20 minutes he got to the planer board. Mike eventually caught and released this (measured) 55-inch, (estimated) 50-pound musky. Biggest fish Mike’s ever caught and he has caught some monsters!”

Hall, a battalion chief on the Libertyville Fire Department, is the son of the late Jay Hall, who founded the LFC in 1979.

FOTW, the celebration of big fish and their stories (the stories matter, as this one shows) around Chicago fishing, runs Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times. The online posting here at chicago.suntimes.com/outdoors goes up at varied days of the week, depending on what is going on in the wide world of the outdoors.

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