The one that got away!

It was my last trip up to lake until next year. I had someone coming to pull the boat lift out and I had to winterize the RV and water lines. The only boat left is my 16 foot fishing boat with a 25 hp motor only problem is no depth finder. I get a call from guys pulling my lift and they are going to call me back before they come out, so I decide to fishing while waiting. Now with no depth finder I am thinking this going to be tricky. I am hoping because it is Sat. that there will be several boats on the lake and I will just use them as a guide. The week before everyone was fishing for walleyes in a deep hole in the middle of the lake, so I head there first. Sure enough there are a couple of boats out there so I head over and start drifting towards them. It is not very windy so I am fishing over the side with a big jig head and a gulp shiner minnow. I get close and see that they are catching fish and are using their electric motors to hover over a spot and fishing straight down with jigs and minnows. I still don't know how deep it is but know that it has to be over 40 ft by how much line I am putting out. I hang around for an hour and don't catch anything and see them catch a lot between 14 & 17 inches. Nice eating fish.. Damn I should have bought some minnows. There are starting to be a lot more boats so I move to wind side of the other boats and start another drift. I feel something hit my jig and set the hook. It is a nice fish and I am thinking it must be a big walleye. I get it about 10 ft from the bottom and now I can't move it anymore. I am using a light weight walleye rod with 8lb Berkley Trilene Maxx line. It is now about 10 minutes in and I start to horse the fish to the top. My light pole is bent almost in half and I am worried about breaking it. I am making circles around the boat trying to keep up with this fish. After 15 minutes, I finally get it to the top and see that it is a huge Muskie. Easily over 3 ft in length. Now what I am I going to do. I am by myself with a tiny little walleye night. I decide I am going to have to hand grab it. It runs several times before I finally get it to the side of the boats. I reach down with a glove on to try and get in it's gills. I couldn't do it with the gloves on and it makes another run. I throw off my gloves and get it back to the boat. I reach down and get a hand in it's gill and start to raise it up. In order to reach it I hand to go down to my knees. I am trying to stand up and lift the fish at the same time. I have about half of it out of the water when it decides to make a few very hard shakes and I loose hold of it and it runs again, but it is getting tired. I get it back to the side of the boat and reach down and the line breaks. I throw the pole a side and pin the fish against the boat with both hands. I get a hand in the gill and start to raise it up and see that my thumb is in the mouth of the muskie and I am starring at some big teeth and his mouth is closing as I am lifting. I drop the fish and it swims under the boat and then comes out the back on the surface. I try and reach him with the net and it swims away. It was a lot of fun and the only thing I regret was not getting a photo of the fish. Even though it never made it in the boat It was one of the funnest fish I have every almost caught. I have been very impressed with the Berkley Trilene Maxx line. I bought it for my father that has a hard time with breaking lines and it is almost impossible to break this line. I usually use Trilene XL and am sure that I would have lost the above fish on the way up if not for the Maxx line. Thanks Berkley!