Tessa Cosens lands the fish of a lifetime and sets a new muskie state record for Maryland in the process.
May 6 is a date Tessa Cosens will likely never forget. It was on that day, months into a pregnancy but finally feeling well enough to go fishing, that she hooked into a brute of a muskie that set a new Maryland (nontidal) record. Cosens, 26, who hails from Hagerstown, was casting for muskie on the banks of the upper Potomac River with her fiancée and a couple of friends, when something big smashed her double-spinner bait in mid-retrieve.
"I knew it as soon as it hit my line," Cosens said. "It instantly started pulling drag and heading down, and then she shot straight up, breached and belly-flopped, and we all looked at each other and knew this was an incredible fish and would be an incredible fight."
Knowing they had a possible record-setting fish, the group of anglers began Googling what to do. They eventually took the muskie to a market shop which had a certified scale. When the dust cleared, Cosens' fish weighed 32.5 pounds and measured 49 inches in length. It's girth was 24-inches. This eclipsed the current record of 31-pound, 12-ounces, caught by Kenneth Files in 2011.
On May 10, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources confirmed the state-record catch in a press release.
Images Courtesy of Tessa Cosens.
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