muskie strains

[mtreno]

ok i got started talking a bit about this in the metro section and thought i would move it to here being the musky forum.

anyway i have different musky strain questions - leech - WI - winni (mississippi?) - does lotw have its own strain? would make sense - how about mille lacs?

i know they put the leech strain in there now and messed around with the WI strain for a bit in there but my grandfather talks about getting them in there years ago while walleye fishing. were they always there and there is a mille lacs strain as well?

how about this WI strain? so you mean to tell me every lake in WI that was a natural musky lake had the same exact strain of muskies in there. i know most of those lakes get the leech lake ones now as well. how about Canada? what strains do those shield lakes have? is that where lotw's came from?

ok sorry for all the questions but lets start from here - i have more to come because as a go i keep coming up with more....

thanks

[mudman]

from what I hear WI is a mess!!!! the DNR has introduced a spider lake strain to many of the lakes that have proven not to reach 45+inches. I read this in a muskie first forum.

I think they stocked Mille Lacs with the leech strain back in the late 70's early 80's not sure though. that would be an interesting story if someone had it, how it went from nothing or very few to a world class fishery in a couple of decades.

the MN strains I know of are Leech, great lakes and upper miss and shoepac I beleive?

Wi has spider, LCO, Chip, and a few others mixed in.

there is LOTS of discussion on this topic on other sites and it tends to get heated, with a mix of facts that seemingly can't get straightened out.

[mtreno]

well i dont want to start anything here thats for sure - think it makes for an interestion topic. shoepac - never heard of that one - where are those from? forgot all about the great lakes (which is hard to believe they are kinda hard to miss) the gradfather story is from 40's - 50's era - he told me they used to shoot them in the head and let them sink to the bottom if they got one because you know they eat all the walleyes up...... funny how times change.

that sure was some poor research in WI.

[Random guy]

Yes this does seem to become a heated topic, simply for the reason that when something goes wrong finger pionting and politics kick in. We won't have that problem on FM, "we have more fun" I have a bad fetish for reports, studies and surveys on musky, I found this in one of the the reports explaining the infamous Shoepac strain a little. I would post more but we would all fall asleep and drool on the keyboard.

This Shoepac strain is a strain that matures at a small size and earlier age

(Younk et al. 2004), and rarely exceeds 42 inches (Bylander undated), and

spawns at a lower water temperature (Younk et al. 1992). This is the strain used

at one time by Minnesota in its hatchery and stocking program. These Shoepac

fish, were found to have a problem with ..."maximum size attained", and were

replaced by Mississippi River strain muskellunge. It was found via genetic study

that the two strains were "...genetically two different animals. That finding, in

addition to previous data compiled, has led to a decision by Minnesota DNR to

switch over completely to Mississippi (Leech) strain in its management efforts..."

(Strand 1982). Jerry Younk (MN DNR) stated of the smaller growing Shoepac

strain: "We used those eggs in our stocking for nearly 30 years, and our survey

data, as well as angler reports, suggested that muskies just weren't attaining the

sizes they had in the past."- Wisconsin Muskellunge Restoration Project Report, 2005

Yes Wisconsin and Minnesota had a little trouble in the past but they are jumping through hoops to fix the problem. I believe the research and the efforts of both the states and sportsmen combined will bring all fish back back to the glory of yesterday. Look how many 50" fish we are seeing in the last five years in both states.

[MSRiverdog]

Don't remember where I got the information but I've alway's been of the thought that Wisconsin based their Musky program in the begining on the Leech/Mississippi strain. Flame away WS folks.

[WMRP Member]

The MN DNR went exclusively with stocking of the Leech Lake strain, AKA Mississippi strain of muskie, in the late 1980's after conducting studies using the Leech, Schoepac, and 2 WI strains. The studies showed that the Leech strain grew faster and larger than other strains and also showed superior natural reproduction and survival rates over other strains. Prior to this most of the muskie stocking was of the Schoepac strain and they also used WI strains on a limited basis in some waters. The huge increase in the quality of muskie fishing in MN, and especially for larger fish, can be directly traced back to the MDNR's wise decision to stock only the Leech Lake strain of muskie. WI lakes are stocked using muskies of mixed strains or origins due to the many years of mixing of strains from all over. Unfortunately, many of the strains used in the mixing were made up of smaller growing strains that closely resemble the Schoepac strain of muskie from northern MN. The WDNR hired a geneticist for $250,000 to try and help them sort out the mess they created. At the last state muskie comittee meeting he told them they are doing about the worst thing they could possibly be doing using Bone Lake as a source for broodstock for NW WI because of the mixed strains of muskies it contains and because they can't reproduce without mans help. He said they have basically created a man-made hatchery strain of muskie that can't reproduce naturally. These fish rely on man to strip eggs and milt and then raise them in hatcheries and then stock them in our waters in order to maintain populations because they are not able to naturally reproduce in nearly every single water they are stocked into. Heck, they can't even reproduce in the water they are coming from, the brood stock lake, Bone Lake. To make things worse, these fish rarely grow to even 45 inches. Many tagging studies strongly support the fact that these fish have extremely poor growth rates and ultimate growth potential. These hatchery fish in most cases take as long as 20 years just to reach 40 inches in length. Most don't even grow that large. EVER! I could go on for hours talking about this but I won't. Its just too depressing to talk about knowing that WDNR has no plans to correct this problem anytime soon because they refuse to admit that there even is a problem.

[Steve Foss]

The tragedy in all this is that it takes so long to grow a musky population. Once the game and fish folks realize what's been fouled up, it'll take 20 years or more of serious stocking with different strains to turn things around.

[WMRP Member]

Actually, if the WDNR would have done, or would do now what the MNDR did in the mid to late 1980's, WI would already have a much better trophy fishery available now or in as little as 10 years. Instead they don't want to admit there is a problem and they want to do the same studies that have already been done in the past with different strains for the next 10 years before they will consider changing what they are doing now. This is too little too late for most of the muskie fishermen in WI to experience the benefit and in my opinion, is totally unacceptable. The WDNR of the past & present created this mess and now they are dragging their feet and turning the other way to the problem instead of doing everything possible to fix it now. Most of us will either be gone or too old to pursue these fish by the time anything changes with the way they are addressing this problem. God bless the MDNR!

[Random guy]

Quote:

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God bless the MDNR!

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Now thats a phrase you don't hear often.

[RK]

Hiya,

Muskie 'strains' is a pretty complex topic that not even all fisheries biologists will agree on. You sort of have to be careful with the terminology a little...

Basically though, in MN the fish that are stocked in lakes like Mille Lacs, Vermilion, and the other stocked lakes are what's often called the 'Leech Lake' strain. The name doesn't have anything to do with where the strain originated however - it's where the initial taking of spawn occurred after Bob Strand identified where and when the Leech Lake fish spawned in the 70s and 80s. This is the same type of fish that's also native to the Mississippi River, and likely where they came from in the first place. When initial stocking was done on the Mississippi a few years back, there was some concern that the Leech fish and the native river fish were genetically far enough apart that there was a risk of outbreeding, so some native river fish were stocked in a lake as a sort of genetic savings account, but it was later determined through DNA analysis that the fish were virtually identical.

The 'other' Minnesota muskie is the Shoepac strain - named after the lake where they were first found. Unlike the leech lake fish (until Strand's research), the fish in Shoepac spawned in an easily identified area, and were relatively easy to capture for spawn taking, so Shoepac fish were used to stock many MN lakes (including a lot of lakes with native populations of 'Leech Lake' strain fish like Baby, Mantrap, etc.) for decades, until it was determined that the Shoepac fish just didn't have the growth potential of the Leech Lake fish.

Besides those two flavors, there are the muskie found in the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence, etc. The Great Lakes stran fish are remarkable critters - big beautiful spots and tremendous growth potential (I'll be on the St. Lawrence again this fall for a week, and hopefully I'll get to see that potential for myself ).

Lakes in NW Ontario also have their own variety of muskies which are distinct in markings and behavior from the MN fish.

One of the big distinctions between Leech Lake strain fish and other fish such as the NW ON fish is a behavioral difference during spawning. ON fish (and native WI fish) spawn in shallow weedy areas. Leech Lake fish spawn deeper, and only spawn over a very specific substrate of marl and chara. Strand's research identified only 6 spawning sites on Leech, and since then, only a couple of other suspected spawning locations have been identified. Points out the fragile nature of spawning habitat, even on a 120,000 acre body of water. Leech lake fish also spawn twice rather than just once. Eggs of two different sizes develop comingled in the egg skein, with half the eggs developing fully, while the other half develop to only about 50% of their full size. When the initial spawn takes place, only the fully-developed eggs are released. The remaining eggs then develop to maturity very rapidly, and a second spawn occurs a week to 10 days later. The supposition by biologists is that this spawning behavior (spawning away from shallow weedy areas and two spawning cycles) is an adaptation to competition with pike and perhaps a second chance for year classes affected by adverse spring weather that increases fry survival.

As for Wisconsin... Personally I think there has been a lot of leaps of logic made on the part of the so called Winsconsin muskie restoration project. There's no question that in some respects Winsconsin's muskie fishery isn't what it could be, but I personally don't think simply changing which fish are stocked is any kind of silver bullet to the problems that fishery faces. Angler harvest is a much larger issue, to say nothing of spearing, etc. And for a lot of WI lakes, they simply don't have the biomass and forage available to grow trophy-class fish no matter what strain is stocked. I do think the WMRP raises some valid points about some issues, but I think it's also safe to say that their methods may not have won them as many supporters as it could have if they'd been a little more considered in their approach, and a lot less shrill.

Cheers,

RK

[Steve Foss]

Thanks RK. Is there biological evidence to suggest the Leech Lake strain actually survives pike predation better than other strains, or is that simply informed supposition?

Someone stocked muskies in the 700 acre lake where we have our cabin north of Bemidji. Muskies are not native to the chain, which takes in six lakes and has pike as its only Esox species. I wonder about the survival because, given the location, it's most likely those are Leech Lake (Mississippi) strain fish that were introduced. Lots of reports of musky on Lake Beltrami (where we have our cabin) are coming in, and the chain produces pike over 20 pounds each year. Makes me wonder if there's a chance at all the musky will eventually reproduce. I think it would take a good number of fish to make that happen, especially since the more dominant pike already are so well established. I caught a 5-lb musky last summer on B that was spotted, and there have been reports of larger musky there, specifically a report that a 40-inch and a smaller musky were swimming together quite a lot in spring in deep reed beds in a fairly shallow bay.

Sorry, don't mean to pull this topic away from its original intent, but you seem to be well read on the subject.

[Cooter]

The latest word I've heard is the WIDNR will stock 4 lakes in WI next spring with Leech strain fish. Our club is planning on purchasing and releasing 500 Leech fish into Wissota this fall, which is one of the 4 lakes the DNR is considering for testing the Leech strain.

I always wonder why not try targeting some lakes in WI that are known producers of trophy fish and then selecting only large males and females out of those systems for future stocking purposes?

[mtreno]

Cooter -

"Our club is planning on purchasing and releasing 500 Leech fish into Wissota this fall"

So is that something you can just get a permit of some sort to do or is the wdnr already planning a program and you are just adding to it?

[RK]

Hey Steve,

I think it's a little of both - evidence and informed supposition. It's known that Leech Lake strain fish can compete with pike and that if they have adequate spawning habitat they can have fairly good spawning success. It's also known that other strains like the WI/ON fish tend to NOT do as well when pike are introduced (there are some examples of smaller systems in ON where pike have been introduced that bear this out.) Still, I think there's an element of deductive reasoning at work there, so always a possibility that suggesting the dual spawn is an adaptive behavior to overcome predation is a case of post hoc ergo propeter hoc...

You know, I've heard a couple rumors about Beltrami, etc too. I have a good friend with whom I have a game of 'I know where there are muskies you don't know about...' that's been running for years, so I always keep my ears open for stuff like that. (I have one in my hip pocket right now that's going to mess him up, and I'm just waiting for the right time to nail him with it...heh...) Muskies tend to find their way into all sorts of places they "aren't supposed to be." Only time will tell whether or not they develop into fishable populations or not. And who knows how they got there. Could be natural migration through small or seasonal waterways (I know of one case where muskies moved from one lake to another through a creek that only has water in early spring) or someone practicing a little pickle bucket biology... Hard to say.

Cheers,

RK

[Steve Foss]

RK, I was told that a rep for a well known musky lure manufacturer who lives on the lake put 'em in there.

I know muskies can get to strange places. I suppose Bemidji is the closest lake with a musky population. Don't know my watershed there good enough to guess at what twisty paths multiple muskies may have taken (also haven't heard any reports of 'skies on the other lakes in that chain), but who knows how it came to be?

I will admit I like the idea of having muskies within reach of my dock.

Hope your game-playing friend isn't an FM member, or the musky's out of the bag!

[WMRP Member]

RK

In a post earlier you said: "When initial stocking was done on the Mississippi a few years back, there was some concern that the Leech fish and the native river fish were genetically far enough apart that there was a risk of outbreeding, so some native river fish were stocked in a lake as a sort of genetic savings account, but it was later determined through DNA analysis that the fish were virtually identical."

I was wondering if there is any documentation of this DNA analysis finding? If so, could you please tell me where I can find it?

Thank you

[jtroop]

I assume the shoepac strain is from shoepac lake (NE side of Kabetogama) ? Looks like a tough lake to get to.