It was cold Saturday, but it didn’t seem to matter to the hundreds of people gathered on frozen Lake Ripley. In fact, recent history indicates that if temperatures aren’t hovering around the 0 ...

LITCHFIELD — It was the perfect day Saturday for ice fishing enthusiasts to take advantage of the calm, bright 45-degree weather and try to catch some fish on Lake Ripley in Litchfield, Minnesota.

Minnesota man Eric Bakke caught and released a muskie that was far longer than the width of his shoulders on June 11, from Mille Lacs Lake near the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area.

The muskie Bakke caught measured 58.25 inches, which beat out Minnesota’s two previous tied records of 57.25-inch muskies, both of which were caught from Lake Vermilion in 2019 and 2021 ...