Are Muskies Territorial?

[tferch]

I was fishing the Paul Hartmen Classic on Cass Lake last year and I saw four muskies all stacked up on each other, all over 40', within five feet of eachother in the fall. I was wondering what kind of expierience people have had with muskies and territory's? Are they as territorial as people make them out to be?

[RK]

Hiya,
No, I don't think they are territorial at all, at least in the sense that they'd chase other muskies off 'their spot.' Have seen many many occasions where muskies are within a few feet of each other, at all times of year. Sometimes, they do school up, sometimes lots of them at once.

When I worked at Camp Fish in Walker I was guiding during one of our spring walleye workshops on a lake that was a very good muskie lake. We were jigging an inside turn, and one of my guests stood up to stretch. Then he says "hell of a big log pile up in that corner isn't there..." Well, I knew there were no log piles anywhere close by, so I stood up too. Up on the lip of the inside turn in about 8 feet of water was a pile of muskies. Hard to count accurately because the fish were milling around a little and we were drifting, but we counted 37 of them, from probably 5 to 30 pounds, all within an area less than the size of half a basketball court. The were likely pre-spawn or had been bumped off a spawning area by a wicked cold front. It was really something.

Also see multiple muskies on a spot during the summer on lakes where you can see the things on the bottom, like Leech or Mille Lacs.

Muskies certainly do camp out on a prime spot, and you may see the same fish on the same spot multiple times on some lakes (sometimes even catch the same fish off the same spot more than once). At other times though you can catch more than one fish from a small area. Steve Scepaniak, a guide on Mille Lacs, just wrote an article about this for Esox Angler, that'll be out in our summer issue, and Dan Craven has written about multiple muskies in the past as well.

Cheers,
RK

[Diggs]

I dont think their terrortorial, because on Mille Lacs while trapping minnows 2 weeks before opener I seen 10 40+" muskies sunning themselves right below the surface. all where within 50x50 area.