Mason Alvardo with huge Muskie

Mason Alvardo walked along the St. Joseph River bank, casting into the chilly waters as he often does.

The IUSB student likes to hit the river near downtown South Bend in the late afternoon following a day of classes.

“I really like fishing for bass and walleye down there and catch quite a few,” he said.

His bait was a 3-inch Z-Man Finesse TRD worm fashioned on a tiny, 1/5-ounce jig head. The cleverly named soft plastic color was “Goby Bryant.”

The 27-year old Navy veteran, who served as an aviation boatsman mate equipment operator on the John C. Steenis aircraft career in the Southwest China Sea, enjoys fishing and being around the water.

He cast the TRD about 20 yards off shore into a seam of the current. He began bouncing the bait along the bottom as he has done many times to temp an unsuspecting smallmouth bass or walleye.

“I lifted up and the bait didn’t move,” he said. “I knew it was a fish, and assumed it was a big walleye.”

That assumption was quickly put to rest when a long, slender and toothy fish erupted out of the water.

“I initially thought it was a big pike,” he said. “When it jumped, I thought ‘there’s no way this fish is going to stay hooked up.”

In addition to the tiny lure, Alvarado was using spinning tackle, a G. Loomis NRX paired with a Shimano Stradic Ci4 reel – and only 8-pound Seaguar InvisX fluorocarbon line.

That’s no match for the razor-sharp teeth around the mouth of a huge fish. To make matters worse, he didn’t have a landing net.

“I really wasn’t nervous because I honestly thought I’d eventually lose the fish on such light tackle and with such a tiny hook,” he said. “But after 20 minutes of playing him, he swam closer to the bank and I could see the lure in the corner of his mouth. That’s when I figured I had a shot at landing this fish and that’s when I got nervous.”

It was also at that moment when he realized it was a muskie, not a pike, and a rare catch in the St. Joe.

Alvarado said a prayer seeking help from the Almighty.

“I asked God to let me land this fish because I knew my friends wouldn’t believe me,” he said with a chuckle.

Thirty-five minutes into the battle, Alvarado waded into two-feet of the cold river water, reached down and slid his hand inside the gill plate of the weary fish.

What he first thought was a walleye, and then a pike, proved to be a gorgeous, 32-pound, 48-inch muskie.

“I put his tail between my legs and removed the lure, then carried him to the bank,” he said.

Once on shore, Alvarado hollered at a middle school kid, who witnessed the battle while walking home from school, to come take a picture for him.

“Of course, my phone was dead so he used his and was kind enough to email it to me,” he said.

Alvarado normally practices catch-and-release with fish he hooks in the river, but this fish was just too special. He’s having T&T Taxidermy in Elkhart prepare the fish for display at home.

His muskie isn’t the first to be caught on the St. Joe, but it is rare. Muskies aren’t native to the river nor are they stocked there. However, biologists speculate those that are caught are escapees from stockings in Kosciusko County lakes. Those fish swam through small tributaries that eventually feed into the St. Joseph River.