The Muskie Man is in repose, relaxed in his wide, thick-cushioned, green chair in the living room of his retirement home.
In the deep voice that belies his 80 years, former Chicago angler Fred Cairo tells his story. And it is a whopper. This fish story is not about the one that got away but the one Cairo visualized. During his days fishing the flowages and lakes of Wisconsin, Cairo pictured himself one-upping Louie Spray and reeling in the world-record muskie.
He fished and fished and fished for years, and he caught some industrial-strength muskies, but his passion exceeded his grasp. And now he is left with a fantasy. If he had caught the world record, what would it have looked like? If he caught the world record, what would the scene have been like?
So Fred Cairo imagined a 100-pound muskie mounted right onto the wall of his garage. And he imagined a painting of his younger, muscular self in a small boat, wrestling a 100-pound muskie out of the water, teeth sharp and glistening, straining body fighting a heavy-duty lure, right onto his bedroom wall.
Oh, by the way, Cairo wrote a short story about how he caught the world record that never existed. The real-enough fiberglass mount is 67 inches long with a girth of 34 1/2 inches. The mount weighs about 35 pounds. Spray’s recognized record is 69 pounds, 11 ounces, 63 1/2 inches long, and 31 1/4 inches in girth.
Cairo’s is a counterintuitive fish story. This fish story is not a lie. It’s just not real. Cairo never has pretended he caught a 100-pound muskie. He never has pretended he hooked a 100-pound muskie that spit the hook and got away. He just acted out his fantasy for kicks.
“My goal was to get a world-record muskie,” Cairo said. “My ambition was to catch a world record and I didn’t. This is all to tell people what I thought a world’s record would be like.”
Before Cairo headed for this town of about 6,500 people an hour north of Little Rock 22 years ago, he was rooted in Illinois. Born in Chicago, Cairo grew up on the South Side, attended the University of Illinois and was a longtime Northern Illinois Gas Co. employee. He began fishing at age 6 and was an avid member of the Fox River Valley chapter of Muskies, Inc. Several plaques from the organization adorn the wall near the king of all muskies.
Cairo tells stories like a meandering river, tributaries included. He also has scrapbooks full of pictures that date to the 1930s when he and six buddies fished all over Illinois and Wisconsin. He first fished a relative’s fruit farm in Hinsdale and “it lit me up like a Christmas tree. If I saw a puddle of water I’d try to see if there was something I could catch.”
In 1948, Cairo caught his first muskie at Wabigoon Lake in Wisconsin and for the next 20 years he and his friends returned to the area.
“That kind of infected me,” Cairo said of his introduction to muskie fishing. “I was fascinated by them. They’re aggressive, but they can be very nonchalant. They can follow a lure to the boat and just turn away.”
He caught a 54-inch muskie at Lake of the Woods in Minnesota and in 1985 he saw a 60-plus-inch muskie in Wisconsin. He returned several times to the same spot and saw the fish he called “the big girl” but couldn’t catch it. Then it was gone. Maybe that was the muskie of a lifetime.
Cairo had his fake monster muskie mount made for $400 in the 1980s and he commissioned the painting in 1997, also for $400.
Cairo’s wife Betty is also a muskie enthusiast and has caught 36-inch legal fish. She tolerates the gigantic mount, but a visitor can’t help but notice it’s located in the garage, not the living room.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I didn’t want that in here.”
The mount once adorned a wall in a local restaurant, and boy, was it a conversation piece. Cairo placed a small plaque beneath the muskie as a disclaimer. Reading comprehension, however, does not appear to be the strong suit of those patrons.
People read the plaque and promptly asked, “Where did you catch it?” Or, “How long did it take you to catch it?”
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Cairo wants to see the mount at the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in Hayward, and executive director Emmett Brown Jr. said he is amenable.
As Cairo laughs about the pleasure he has derived from the fake mount, it makes one wonder if it wasn’t more fun for the Muskie Man than catching a real world record.
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