When David Ramm hooked the big muskie on Crane Lake, he wanted to make sure his dad got to see it.

“I knew this was a fish of a lifetime,” said Ramm, 36, of Blue Grass, Iowa. “I said, ‘Look at her in case she gets off. I want you to see how big this fish is.’ He said, ‘Oh, my god.’”

Ramm was fishing with his dad, Gary Ramm, 74, of Davenport, Iowa, when he caught and released the big muskie on Sept. 11. Crane Lake is known more for its walleyes, crappies and northern pike. No muskies have been stocked in the lake.

The fish measured 58½ inches long with a 28-inch girth, David Ramm said.

Length-weight formulas put the weight of such a fish at 57 to 58 pounds. The Minnesota state-record muskie, caught on Lake Winnibigoshish in 1957, weighed 54 pounds. That fish was 56 inches long with a 27¾-inch girth, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

“After we got the fish in the net, when it was hanging over the side of the boat, I hugged Dad and said, ‘I can’t believe this just happened,’” Ramm said.

A muskie of that size is almost unheard of in northern Minnesota.

“The biggest we’ve ever measured on Lake Vermilion is 55.6 inches,” said Duane Williams, DNR large lake specialist at Tower. “I hear reports of 56 or 57 inches on Lake Vermilion that are probably fairly credible.”

The DNR’s International Falls fisheries team surveyed muskies on Crane Lake in 2008 and 2009, said Tom Burri, DNR assistant area fisheries supervisor at International Falls. DNR crews caught - and released - just four muskies up to 50½ inches long, Burri said.

But reports of big muskies have been increasing on Crane Lake in recent years.

“Every year I see a couple big ones,” said Jim Janssen of Voyagaire Lodge in Crane Lake. “Two years ago, a 50-inch and a 52-inch. Last year, a 50-inch and a 54-inch … The ones that are here seem to be quality, but not a ton of big numbers here, like, say, on Vermilion.”

The theory is that some of Lake Vermilion’s muskies slip over the spillway at the Lake Vermilion dam and make the 40-mile trip down the Vermilion River to Crane Lake. The DNR’s Williams and Burri both say they believe that’s how Crane Lake gets its muskies.

Burri, looking at a photo of the Ramm muskie, saw that the fish had one fin clipped - indicating it had been stocked, almost surely in Lake Vermilion. The four muskies previously netted by the DNR in Crane Lake were genetically tested and found to be of the Leech Lake strain, which is the strain stocked in Lake Vermilion.

David and Gary Ramm come to Crane Lake every summer ready to do battle with big fish. They come specifically to catch big northern pike. David also fishes for muskies elsewhere. He was using a St. Croix muskie rod with 80-pound-test PowerPro line and a 130-pound-test fluorocarbon leader. He was casting a black fire Double Cowgirl bucktail spinner in about 5 feet of water.

“I saw that fish come up and take the bucktail 10 to 15 feet from the boat,” Ramm said. “It just hammered it. But it didn’t fight a whole lot. It was just real heavy. It never came out of the water.”

After a short fight, the fish swam alongside the boat and right into the net Gary Ramm was holding.

“It took two tries with him on one side and me on the other to get it pulled over the side,” David Ramm said.

The two anglers shot video and took several photos. They measured the fish against a “bump board” on the floor of the boat. It measured 58½ inches, David said. He used a string to get a measurement of the fish’s girth. In a photo of the fish on the bump board, it stretches nearly from one side of the boat floor to the other.

The next morning, just to double-check, David Ramm measured the width of that boat floor - 59 inches.

“(The fish) was a half-inch short of going across the floor of the boat when I pinched the tail,” he said.

In addition to the big muskie, David also caught a 46-incher and Gary caught one about 38 inches long later on Sept. 11, the anglers said.

Sarah Tufte, co-owner of Norway Lodge in Crane Lake where the Ramms stayed, said she has no reason to doubt the Ramms’ claims about the size of the muskie.

“I believe it was as big as they said it is,” Tufte said. “They’re really honest people.”

The fish was released alive and in good shape, David Ramm said. He had no intention of keeping it, even though it might have been a state record.

“We said we’d let a fish like that go,” he said. “I knew what the state record was. I knew this fish was bigger. But I don’t want to be the guy who’s got his name down for a state record and for killing that fish.”

He plans to have a replica mount made of the fish.