Christian Laettner, muskie fishing fanatic

I was walking around the aisles of the Chicago Muskie Expo at the Sears Center in Hoffman Estates in January and my eyes wandered everywhere as I tried to take in all of the sights. The corner of my eye caught a guy in a booth to my left rising from a sitting position in a chair.

He began to stand and kept rising and rising and rising. When he had finally reached standing position, it seemed as if he was 7-foot tall. Now that isn’t something you run across every day.

I looked at his face and he seemed awfully familiar to me. As I wondered where I had seen him before, my mind started rapidly searching through my memory of NBA players. Isn’t that the most likely place to find a 7-footer?

It quickly clicked in my head that I was looking at Christian Laettner, who actually stands in at 6-11. I remembered Laettner and his storied basketball career quite vividly. He was the best college player in the nation when he starred for the Duke Blue Devils.

He was part of the Dream Team that won a gold medal with Michael Jordan and company. Laettner was the only college player invited to join this incredible assemblage on professionals. Laettner went on to play in the NBA for 13 years and made the All-Rookie team and the All-Star team.

But I was puzzled. What in the world was Christian Laettner doing at the Chicago Muskie Expo? I approached him and asked the question.

Oddly enough, the Florida resident doesn’t get charged up by chasing bonefish or tarpon. He is a dyed-in-the-wool muskie maniac.

Laettner started fishing with his father as a youth in the Buffalo, New York area. He got turned on to chasing big muskies when he joined the Minnesota Timberwolves. He was introduced to muskies by Wolves strength and conditioning coach Sol Brandys.

Brandys took him to Lake in the Woods in northern Minnesota for his first visit in 1996. He has been there every year since then. Laettner’s best Lake in the Woods fish checked in at 52 inches. His biggest muskie overall was a 54-inch beast from Lake Bemidji. Laettner has boated 20 muskies of 50 inches or larger in his career.

One of Laettner’s business ventures is running “Laettner Weekend” basketball instructional camps for high school players. He comes in and runs instructional workout sessions for the kids, clinics for the coaches and has a dinner with parents and sponsors to raise money for the school’s program.

Laettner tries to schedule these clinics in locations that are renowned for their muskie fishing opportunities. This allows him the balance of the trip to get out on the water and chase after big muskies.

Laettner is expanding his love of muskie fishing into new business opportunities. He has established “The Muskie Life,” which has a website and a Facebook page.

Laettner certainly sounds like he has been bitten by the muskie bug in the largest way possible.

I got the opportunity to ask Laettner a few NBA questions. He told me that he rarely watched the game. He said that it was hard to watch something that you wish you could be a participant in rather than an observer.

I asked him about the Chicago Bulls. He told me that he was a huge fan of Bulls’ coach Tom Thibodeau. He said that Thibs and San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich were the two best in the business.

I asked him why he felt that way and he told me, “The best coaches talk directly to their players and treat them like men and with respect. The best coaches ask their players to follow a small set of rules and goals, four or five at the most. You can’t ask players to do 10 or 12 things on the court. Thibodeau asks his players to buy into playing defense and not many more things. Keeping it simple works well.”

Laettner pointed to Pat Riley as his idea of a perfect coach.

“I only played for Coach Riley for one year with the Heat at the end of my career. If I had known earlier what a wonderful experience it was, I would have directed my agent to get me on a Pat Riley team much earlier.”

Laettner was a very interesting guy. It is always great to meet someone who has fallen head-over-heels in love with the sport of fishing. In Christian Laettner’s case, that fall is from a much higher altitude than for most other people.

Fishing report

Northern Illinois – Dave Kranz from Dave’s Bait, Tackle and Taxidermy in Crystal Lake reports: “It is only six weeks until spring and the 30-day forecast looks like we will have ice right up to the first days of spring. Late season ice is a great time to use a dead smelt on the bottom for pike. I prefer sandy areas around good green weeds in 3 to 6-feet of water. The panfish also look for the oxygen producing weeds to hang around. I like wigglers, wax worms or spikes on a tungsten jig. For the non-ice fishermen, a jig and minnow below the McHenry, Algonquin or Carpentersville dams may get you an early season walleye bite.”