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Click on any of the pictures below to see a bigger photo and a story.

Lenny Murphy, 15 years, with his 1975 opening day lunker.

Murphy, right, and his buddy Sutcliffe posing with the lunker.

Murphy, 29 and 1/2 years later, celebrating Christmas and his enduring fish story at home.

The Chaska Fire Department's annual ice-fishing contest winners, Feb. 2000.

A Firemen's Lake scene at a recent fishing contest.

Close-up of same scene.

A winter landscape by Pieter Brueghel: he must've been thinking of the Chaska ice fishing contests to come?

fish stories … then and now: or a little history of big doings on firemen’s lake

Back in the day — say, May 17, 1975 — Lenny Murphy was 15 and his friend Bob Sutcliffe 14. The two Chaska natives were up early that Saturday, the fishing opener, and bummed a ride to Firemen’s Lake from Lenny’s sister’s boyfriend.

Lunkers emerge

It didn’t take long, once they got there about 6:00 am, and dropped their lines in the drink (sucker minnows on their state-of-the-art Zebco 202s), before they had more action than they’d bargained for. There, at the wooded inlet by Schimelpfenig Park , Bob hooked a lunker northern pike — maybe 20 pounds — before it snapped his 10-pound test line and took off with bobber in tow.

Then Lenny’s bobber plunged and he had a ten-minute battle on his hands before he pulled in his own lunker, another northern that weighed out later at 24 pounds. When friend Bob came to Lenny’s aid with a half-rotten net, the monster fish simply broke through. That’s when Lenny and Bob, now a Chaska chiropractor, plunged into the water, pushed the fish to shore, and wrestled it to the death.

Lenny, who works for a remodeling company now, remembers how the next few days, once word of his catch got out and the newspapers came calling, all sorts of fishermen appeared, as if by magic, on the shores of Firemen’s — looking for the fish that had broken Bob’s line, reputed to be the mate of the one Lenny had caught.

Annual fishing contest

These days, the ghost of the lunker lurks still beneath the icy waters of Firemen’s every January. That’s when the Chaska Fire Department holds it annual ice fishing contest. The volunteer firefighters drill a thousand holes or so in the morning, and then in the afternoon the families and kids appear.

Retired volunteers Jerry Lubanksi and Reg Ohnsorg chuckle when they recall how the fishing contest was first held outside town at Lake Bavarian because no one believed there were any fish in the clayhole lakes. The contest started in 1957 and stayed at Bavarian for seven or eight years before coming to town at Firemen’s.

Though the state DNR stocks the clayhole lakes these days, say Lubanksi and Ohnsorg, back in the day it was only fishermen who’d throw a few excess catches into the lakes.

If you’re a fisherman or simply love family fun, come on out to Chaska’s Firemen’s Park on Sunday, January 30, 2005 from 2 to 4 pm. For this 48th running of the fishes, there’ll be fun for everyone and prizes for many. Fishermen can vie for prizes ranging from a 4 h.p. Mercury outboard to a fish finder; non-fishermen, for a $500 cash first prize through a 19” remote-control color TV. (All prizes are donated by local merchants.) Admission is just $2.00.

And, who knows, you just might catch a glimpse of, or feel a bump from, those lunkers of  glory days past. (Just a few years ago, recalls Lenny Murphy, the overall contest winner were a couple of 10-pound-plus northerns.) Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! C'mon down and throw in a line!