Interesting Musky Study

DNR Report

That was interesting!

I am glad they did that study since there has been talk of introducing muskies to more lakes. I hope this will ease the minds of those that oppose this.

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That was interesting!

I am glad they did that study since there has been talk of introducing muskies to more lakes. I hope this will ease the minds of those that oppose this.

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No kidding

It’s about damn time somebody put out some hard facts on this topic

There’s just to many people, who are whining about how they think the muskies are eating all their precious walleyes

Good read and it makes sense. Thanks for sharing.

I live on a lake with a large muskie population and also a world class bluegill fisherie. Small gills are a result of under harvest IMO

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Crystal Lake is what makes the panfish population so awful. They are tiny in that lake.

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Ryan I first fished Crystal Lake in the late 70’s, and they were tiny then too. That was a long time before they stocked Tigers in there.

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Crystal Lake is what makes the panfish population so awful. They are tiny in that lake.

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Ryan I first fished Crystal Lake in the late 70’s, and they were tiny then too. That was a long time before they stocked Tigers in there.

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hate to think that panfish could be susceptible to over-harvest…

sarcasm aside…I believe I read of a study in Michigan where they indicated that once a lot of the ‘larger’ bluegill specimens were depleted in a given body of water…it took a lot longer than expected for the remainder to ‘replenish’ those bigger fish…

the study suggested that removing bigger bluegills actually inhibited production of larger bluegill for an unexpectedly long length of time…

edit: found this study that was recently published by Illinois…interesting in terms of addressing the question asked about ‘size structure’ of bluegill populations…and the potential impact on predators (note: it seemed that ‘more’ predation increased over-all size structure…in this case, predation would be defined as ‘other fish’ not human pressure which would select the larger of the BG population …)

Kurt I think this is absolutely correct. I always thought of it this way: On a typical spawning bed, the optimum spot would be right in the middle. All the other sunfish would be surrounding and protecting your nest. The fish in the middle is probably the biggest one. So the objective of all the other sunfish is to get as big as the biggest guy so they can have a shot at the best spawning sites. If the biggest fish are 11 inches long, then maturity would be delayed and they would have to keep on growing. If the biggest guy is 4 inches long, then why waste all the time and energy growing bigger? It strikes me as bizzare to see these little fish activly spawing on Metro Area lakes. It’s all totally out of whack. In addition, I think the tendancy to kill and eat the main predators in a lake has contributed as well. If there were sqadrons of 5-10 pound Northerns running around eating small panfish that would also force them to get bigger just to survive. I know there are Pike of that caliber still in area lakes; however there shopuld be LOTS of them given the amount of food, the growing season, and the water quality available. And there aren’t.

I think the old ideas of keeping the biggest fish and letting the little ones go has actually worked against us, and it might take many years to fix. I used to fish with some guys (on lakes I will not name) that contain some real monster Bluegills, honest pound+ fish. Years ago we started releasing all of those big big fish and keeping smaller ones hopefully to minimize our impact on the fishery.

Rootski

Rootski