Vern Evans
This story, “The Legend of Muskie Joe,” appeared in the May 1983 issue of Outdoor Life.
Muskie Joe Stamper was a living legend along the tree-lined banks of Kentucky’s Kinniconick Creek. For nearly 50 years, the dedicated angler pursued the muskies that this stream is famed for. He was the first full-time muskie fisherman anyone could remember in eastern Kentucky, and was perhaps the oldest active muskie fisherman in the country until he died of a sudden illness in the late winter of 1981. In his lifetime he probably caught as many as 300 legal-size muskies and was considered the all-time champion muskie angler throughout this rugged hill country. His fame as a muskie fisherman was widespread. Few are the fishermen in the tri-state area of Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia who have not heard the legend of Muskie Joe. Many thought he was just that — a legend. But in truth he was real — very real. This is the story of Muskie Joe:
Coffee was a dime a pound, good bacon cost 8½¢ and you could buy a 25-pound sack of flour for 30¢ when Muskie Joe Stamper first caught muskie fever. That was just after the tum of the century and Joe was just a “barefoot boy”-as he always referred to his younger days-when he got in on the last, big crosstie float down the Kinniconick.
It was on that trip, while working as camp cook, tie jam breaker and general ginhand, that Joe was to see his first 3ófoot muskie. The great silver-sided fish swam under a tie jam and, when Joe stepped onto the blockage, he spooked the fish which, in tum, came up through the stacked-up ties, hit him across the knees and almost knocked him into the chilly waters of the spring-running stream.
He was born Joe Edward Stamper on March 13, 1887, at the Head of Grassy, Kentucky, on the headwaters of the Laurel Fork of the Kinniconick. His father, the late Taylor Stamper, was a barrel maker and crosstie drifter. The Stamper family was known for its great 35-mile tie floats down the Kinniconick. Each spring they routed as many as 150,000 hand-hewn crossties during a float that required six weeks and 20 men to complete.
Joe’s recollections of Kinniconick muskies really went back to when he was just a toddler wading in the clear waters of the Laurel Fork. The “big pike,” as they were known in the late 1800s, ·came to the clear water and gravel bottom of the little stream each spring to spawn. Joe recalled that he and his friends had always tried to gig the big fish with pitchforks.
Early muskie fishing methods along the Kinniconick included stout lines tied to swinging limbs, trotlines, pitchforks and rifle bullets. Occasionally, someone would even fashion a giant seine to net them or find a few sticks of dynamite to bring enough fish home to fill a “90-gallon picklin’ barrel,” Joe said.
Joe became a serious muskie fisherman in the late 1930s when he and his brother Commodore built a small cabin on the banks of the Buckeye Spring eddy on the Kinniconick. There they operated a small sawmill for awhile.
“It got so we didn’t get much sawin’ done,” Joe explained. “Commodore was a family man and owned a big farm, and I couldn’t operate the mill by myself so I just started doing a little fishing to kill some time.”
By this time, Joe had acquired a casting outfit and a couple of plugs his uncle had given him. One of the plugs was broken off by a big muskie the second time he cast it. His uncle later shot the fish, thinking the plug would still be in its mouth!
For several years Joe lived a laid-back lifestyle in his small cabin alongside the clear waters of the Kinniconick. He made some boats from big yellow poplar trees.
“Why son, I’d fish one eddy in the mornin’, come home and have a big dinner of cornbread and beans and go out and fish another eddy in the evenin’. Sometimes I’d go out an catch me a three-footer in the evenin’ after a big supper of cornbread and beans. I’ll tell you fellers, I ate an awful lot of cornbread and beans back in those days,” Joe recalled, chuckling.
He lived off the land during those early years on the Kinniconick. Food from the garden, wild ducks off the creek and plenty of squirrels, rabbit and grouse from surrounding woodlands kept him fit and healthy. Strangely enough, he never cared for the taste of fish until his later years.
Joe was one of the very few local residents who picked up a rod and reel for sport. There was very little money for sportfishing in the aftermath of the Depression years and, when World War II broke out, all the young men along the Kinniconick went off to war. By this time, Joe was 53 years old and too old to go back into the service. He had served honorably during World War I, fighting in three major battles, and was later honored as a sharpshooter.
Joe never caught a six-footer. The best he could ever do was a four-footer that weighed 32 pounds. The fish was saved and eaten on Joe’s birthday.
“I was a sniper and a darned good one to boot,” he said with a gleam in his pale, blue eyes. “Had a lot of practice huntin’ squirrels along Kinniconick.” During World War II, Joe was about the only fisherman to be found on the Kinniconick.
During his boat-building years, Joe constructed more than a dozen wooden johnboats that he rented to visiting fishermen for $1 a day. It was a Cincinnati group of sportfishermen who hung the title of”Muskie Joe” on the longtime muskie angler.
He remembered when the first rod and reel was seen on Kinniconick Creek. Joe was only about 10 years old when his uncle, G. W. Stamper, brought a casting outfit up from Cincinnati along with a big spoon. According to Joe, G. W. immediately went out and hooked a five-footer.
Joe always referred to the muskie he saw, hooked or caught, as being so many “feet” long. He never used inches for measurements of the big gamefish. He was always talking about the legendary six-footers that he claimed lived in the deep holes of the Kinniconick.
“Why me and a woman was fishing the Armstrong eddy one day when a six-footer came up to sun himself awhile,” Joe reminisced. “I had plenty of time to measure the fish — using a seven-foot boat oar for comparison. Yep, no question about it, that fish was a good six feet.”
Joe never caught a six-footer. The best he could ever do was a four-footer that weighed 32 pounds. The fish was saved and eaten on Joe’s birthday.
The best muskie that Joe remembered being taken from the Kinniconick was caught by Old Doc Bertram. He brought a new casting outfit and a couple of lures up from Cincinnati and caught eight muskies that ranged in size from 12 to 19 pounds — all on the same day.
It is difficult to say just how many legal-size muskies Muskie Joe caught in his lifetime. “Me and Old Charley Rose kept track of the fish he and I caught while we fished together, and it was more than 100!” Joe once said. “Course, you got to remember, me and Old Charley only fished together for about 15 years.”
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Joe did all of his muskie fishing from the big, 16-foot john boats he made in the late ’30s. He never liked aluminum and figured fiberglass boats were too expensive. Besides, he felt that commercially built fishing boats were too skimpy on space. “You’ve got to have some room in a boat to battle a big creek muskie,” he always advised.
The muskie man’s tackle box wasn’t anything to brag about, either. He never owned more than a dozen lures and didn’t figure he needed any more.
“It ain’t the lure, boys. It’s the time that’s most important when you’re muskie fishing,” Joe would say.
Joe claimed a muskie on the prowl would “hit a corncob but wouldn’t be fooled by the best piece of hardware that ever came down the pike if it ain’t on the prowl!”
Even though Joe fished off and on for muskies most of his life, it wasn’t until he moved to the cabin on the banks of Kinniconick that he became a full-time muskie fisherman. In those early days, one of his favorite tricks for fooling muskies was to nail some brush to the side of his boat.
“I’d reel a plug in and a muskie would come after it,” he said. “When it thought the plug was gettin’ away in the brush on the side of the boat, it would hit, nine times out of 10.”
In the more than 40 years that Joe fished for muskies, he observed that the fish are like a lazy man: “They’ll stay in the shade whenever possible!”
He also noted that muskies are deepwater loafers but will take two-thirds of their food from the surface. “Ain’t no use to throw a bottom-bouncer for a muskie, because it ain’t even lookin’ that way,” he’d say.
During his observations of muskie feeding habits on the Kinniconick, Joe noticed that the water tigers would feed once every nine days and less than that during the heat of summer. He always claimed that the best time to hook a muskie was during April and May. Fishing during September and October was his second choice with November and December his third choice.
“I’ve caught a muskie on every holiday of the year and had to make a few up of my own,” Joe would brag.
His favorite time of the year to fish for muskies was during October, when there were lots of leaves on the water. “Minnows hide in the leaves in the fall and an old muskie watches the open-water places,” he explained. “That’s where you want to place that plug, boys.”
One of his favorite tricks for fooling muskies was to nail some brush to the side of his boat.
Joe also noticed that muskies feed when the temperature rises from its low at night to a high during the day. “When it frosts during the night and then warms up to about 65° during the day, it’s a doggone good time to be muskie fishing,” Joe claimed.
Joe also liked to fish for creek muskies before a major storm front moved in. “A creek can get high and stay that way for a week or more when heavy rains come,” he said. “A muskie knows that, and will feed up to the last minute. Boy, it’s a good time to be tossin’ hardware. I’m a-tellin’ ya, those muskies sure liked that water.”
Joe always advised anglers to fish in a shaded area, whether the sun is shining or not. “Even at night, the shaded areas are where the muskies will lay,” he said.
A bad time to fish for muskies is anytime during July and August, when the air temperature is falling, after a flood, when the stream is falling and on bright sunny days.
“I’ll fish right on as long as I’m able and I’m going to catch that six-footer someday,” he said. “I know the log that he’s laying under!”
If Muskie Joe Stamper would have lived 11 days longer, he would have made it to his 94th birthday. “You know boys, it’s the winter that gets us old folks. If I can make it through March, I’ll catch that fish this summer!”
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Ironically, true to his observations, Joe never made it through March. On one of the very few times he had left his Kinniconick cabin, Muskie Joe Stamper died while on a visit to Indiana. For 40 years, the spirited muskie fisherman from Kentucky’s famed Kinniconick Creek was a living legend. Joe’s gone now, but the legend he instilled in the hearts of muskie men down through the years will live on for as long as stout-hearted anglers float the twisting stream, searching for the fabled six-footer that Muskie Joe knew was there.
“You know boys,” he would often say, “I’ve got a sweet-water spring in my front yard, a good, warm cabin, plenty of fishing tackle and muskies in my backyard.
“What else could a man want in his lifetime!”
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