Catching Muskies – All About Muskellunges
Fast facts:
- Muskies can live to be 30 years old
- Maximum length of a Muskie: 6 feet
- Maximum weight of a Muskie: about 70 pounds
- Trophy length: over 4 feet
- Trophy weight: over 40 pounds
- Mature females tend to be larger than males, but mature and grow at a slower rate.
Muskgers are an unschooled predatory fish, which generally tend to stay out of sight of each other.
They typically lurk near rock slopes or sandbars in the middle of lakes, along beds of weeds or other vegetation, and in shady waters near overhanging tree-lined shores. They prefer larger lakes with deep, shallow basins and large aquatic plant beds.
They have a typical ambush predator design, elongated body, flat head, and tail fins set far back on the body.
The stealthy muskie hunts waiting motionless. When a fish swims by (any fish, including other musklers), they strike, impale the prey with their large canine teeth, spin it, and swallow it upside down. Interestingly, the size of the fish a musk eats seems to be related to the final size it can reach. As the fish grows, the size of its prey naturally varies more. Even if there are many small fish available, a muskie may not be able to grow without large fish to eat. Musk rats, ducks, shrews, mice, and frogs also appear in the stomach of musk men from time to time.
A varied diet:
Muskellunges are known to have a varied diet. They will eat other musklers and any fish they see, as well as ducklings, smaller muskrats, shrews, mice, and frogs, and larger musklers have been known to eat whole adult ducks. There is a report of a Wisconsin man in 1999 who was dangling his feet in the water (not fishing), when a medium-sized muskie jumped in and tried to swallow his toe! He ended up scooping the muskie out of the water and pulling it off his foot. The foot required 66 points and was eventually allowed to keep the fish, despite the illegal size and illegal fishing method.
Is not recommended use your toes as bait.
Other facts about Muskellunges
Musk and pike (or “Northerners”) look very similar. The surefire way to distinguish a musk from a north is to count the pores at the bottom of the jaw: a musk has six or more, a north has five or less.
The muskellunge tiger (E. masquinongy x lucius or E. lucius x masquinongy) is a hybrid of the muskie and the northern pike. Male hybrids are almost invariably sterile, although females are sometimes fertile. Some hybrids are artificially produced and planted for fishermen to catch. Tiger musks tend to be smaller than non-hybrid musks, but they grow faster. The body is usually quite silvery and largely or entirely unmarked, but with indistinct longitudinal bands.
Although interbreeding with other species of pike can complicate the classification of some individuals, zoologists often recognize zero to three subspecies of muskellunge.
- The Great Lakes (spotted) muskellunge (Esox masquinongy masquinongy) is the most common variety in and around the Great Lakes Basin. The spots on the body form oblique rows.
- The Chautauqua muskellunge (E. m. Ohioensis) is known from the Ohio River system, Lake Chautauqua, Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence River.
- The clear or barred muskellunge (E. m. Immaculatus) is most common in the inland lakes of Wisconsin, Minnesota, northwestern Ontario, and southeastern Manitoba.
Catching the Muskie:
If you want to catch a muskie, you will need a heavy rod to cast baits, a substantial level wind reel, a 20 to 35 pound test line, a variety of artificial lures or live baits, and a lot of patience. Allow at least 20 minutes at each location before continuing; large fish are generally not very active.
It takes the average angler between 20 and 80 hours to catch a legal musk!
Muskrs are generally not edible fish. As predatory fish, if the edible fish in your region have small amounts of toxic substances in their systems, they will accumulate in much larger amounts in the musks that feed on them. Before eating a muskellunge, pay attention to the fishing advisories for the lake or state in which you are fishing.
Threats to Muskie:
The health and success of the muskellunge is highly dependent on the health and availability of aquatic plants in its environment. Minnesota fishermen are beginning to notice that some of their favorite “weed beds” seem to be disappearing, thus reducing the spawning grounds and hunting grounds of the musklers they like to catch. Measures are being proposed, including greatly reducing the number of piers allowed on the shore of a lake, thereby reducing the human footprint on lakes.
The Muskie and Northern Pike are considered sport and trophy fish in Minnesota and are therefore valuable to the sport fishing community and the tourism economy, but overfishing damages the population of this solitary fish.
So fish carefully and catch-and-release this fish to preserve its continued abundance in all of the great lakes.