Fishing with his friend Robert Garin of Brainerd, Mickel was drifting and vertical jigging a fireball jig tipped with a rainbow minnow in 12 feet of water when the fish hit.

“The bite was a ‘tap-tap-bam’. And I knew it was a big walleye right away,” said Mickel, who spends as much time as possible on the Rainy River.

Large fish sometimes do not put up much of a fight and this walleye didn’t make an effort to escape.

“It made one run and then came to the top. And then we just slid it into the net,” Mickel said.

When the fish was secure and the anglers had the opportunity to admire the catch, they were amazed.

“We measured it right away and it was 35.1 inches long and had a girth of 24.25 inches,” Mickel said. “On our cheap spring scale the fish weighed 17.9 pounds. And when I compared the measurements to the probable weight, the walleye also weighed 17.9 pounds.”

If those figures are correct, Mickel can lay claim to Minnesota’s state-record walleye.

The current record walleye is 17.8 pounds and was caught May 13, 1979 in the Seagull River in Cook County. That fish was 35.8 inches long but its girth was only 21.3 inches.

“As soon as I caught and measured the walleye I called the DNR, told them that I might have the state record and asked them what to do,” Mickel said. “They told me that the walleye was a catch-and-release fish and that, because of the regulation, it had to be released and couldn’t be recognized as a state record."