Fisherman catches rare ‘unicorn’ of a fish in Toronto Harbor, photo shows

Will Sampson has been fishing his whole life.

The 31-year-old seasoned fisherman regularly visits the Toronto Harbor where he usually catches pike, a fish common to the area, he told CBC. So, when he felt a heavy pull on his fishing line on Sunday, Oct. 30, he figured he would reel in his usual catch.

However, as Sampson pulled the fish in, he noticed its color and spots and realized he’d caught something much better than a pike: On the end of his line was a muskellunge, commonly known as a muskie.

“Once I saw it was a muskie, my knees immediately became like jello. They just, like, buckled,” Sampson told CTV News Toronto.

Unlike pike, muskie are incredibly rare in the Toronto Harbor, Sampson said.

“We knew it was a unicorn, like obviously there’s muskie in Lake Ontario, [but] in Toronto Harbor it’s super unheard of,” he told CTV.

Sampson said he did not have the appropriate equipment to weigh the fish, but he estimates it was about 20 pounds and 3.5-feet long, Toronto Sun reported.

After taking some pictures, Sampson released his catch, he wrote on his Instagram.

Sampson did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment.

A rare catch

Muskie are a freshwater fish that were once common in Toronto. In the last 200 years though, the fish have all but disappeared from the city’s waters.

Now, muskie are more commonly found in the St. Lawrence River and the Niagara Region, Rick Portiss, a senior manager of aquatic monitoring and management at the Toronto Region Conservation Authority, told CBC.

The fish are also present in fresh bodies of water in the United States, such as the Great Lakes, the upper Mississippi River and Ohio River drainages, according to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

Earlier this week, a muskie record was certified in Minnesota, after the 4.85-foot fish was caught on June 11 in Mille Lacs Lake, Fox 9 reported.

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