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Posts: 284
Location: Eagan, MN | In regards to trophy musky captures as a percentage of overall muskies on a particular body of water, why would the results for anglers not mirror that found in the actual musky population? In other words, multi-year creel surveys show that anglers are catching trophy muskies at a much smaller percentage of total musky catches (3% to 5%) than actually exists in the overall musky population based on multi-year DNR test nettings (20%). Btw, a trophy is defined as 50" or greater for this discussion. Brian |
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Posts: 1971
| lots of variables...on some lakes one 36" muskie could easily be caught 5 time in a single season by anglers.. I think on most lakes anglers catch what is in the lake (especially if lake is under 10,000 A).
Edited by IAJustin 5/16/2016 12:29 PM
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| I think I was above 20% last year. I did catch the same 51 twice. I don't keep track of all my catches but did remember the 6 , 50+.
All in the metro. The mid to upper 40 class fish has dropped off significantly for me the last 3 years.. |
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Posts: 284
Location: Eagan, MN | IAJ, so the younger, more inexperienced fish are getting caught more frequently than the older, more experienced fish, skewing the percentage of angler-caught trophies downward? I could believe that happens for sure, but the percentage of trophies in the lake is 4X to 5X the percentage of trophies being caught by anglers. That seems like it would be an awful lot of recaptures of small fish to skew the results that much. Big fish get recaptured/recycled too as Mnmusky points out. Maybe not nearly as much as we'd like to believe? I'm sure you are correct that lots of variables could be in play.
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Posts: 1971
| no there are way more 30-48" muskie than over 50" in any lake ,,, if not the lake is in big trouble! |
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Posts: 1971
| Are DNR test nets set during spawn , skewing the numbers?
Are 50" + fish more likely to be kept?
Is the creel survey all angler or muskie angler's equipped to handle 50"+ fish? |
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Posts: 1971
| What lake are you referring to? Vermilion? If so I don't buy that 20% of every muskie in that lake is over 50" .. there are lots of 30" fish in the lake they just don't live where they can get eaten easily 
Edited by IAJustin 5/16/2016 3:11 PM
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Posts: 8719
| I think it's a combination of factors.
1. The larger fish in the system are not often hanging around the types of cover we typically fish.
2. The larger fish are eating much larger prey than what's represented by a typical size musky lure.
I'm sure it varies from lake to lake, but for the most part your "typical" angler is (unintentionally) targeting the smaller fish. We all want to catch big fish, but most of us simply aren't targeting them effectively. |
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Posts: 1000
| mnmusky - 5/16/2016 12:34 PM
I think I was above 20% last year. I did catch the same 51 twice. I don't keep track of all my catches but did remember the 6 , 50+.
All in the metro. The mid to upper 40 class fish has dropped off significantly for me the last 3 years..
Thoughts as to why such a high %? Would appreciate any insight you have into targeting these larger metro fish. Have yet to catch my first 50 so any insight would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Ben T |
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Posts: 829
Location: Maple Grove, MN | I think the big fish are just harder to catch. If the 20% of fish that are trophy sized are 200% smarter than the smaller ones, then it would seem they would be more difficult to catch. What I hate is when the big, smart ones not only don't bite, they steal your credit card and buy stuff on eBay with it. We never had to worry about that stuff when I was a kid. 
I think it also depends a lot of the size of lure that one is using. If one is throwing smaller lures, one will tend to catch more smaller fish. But if you're throwing big lures like one or two lbers, you're not going to catch many small fish. |
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| time of day, time of year, knowing spots on spots and mostly, A LOT of luck. I usually don't get that many biggies in a season. Just a good year and not a big quantity. I'm more concerned of the drop in 44-49" fish that was the norm. lots of sub 42's which is good I guess for the future. |
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Posts: 1080
Location: Aurora | Tight-lipped anglers/tight-lipped biggies. |
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| Sidejack - 5/16/2016 7:21 PM Tight-lipped anglers/tight-lipped biggies. Bingo. |
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Posts: 44
| Angler Catch vs. DNR netting on the IGL's (Iowa) is pretty comparable around a few percent. I'm not sure what lake you are referring to with 20% over 50. I'm guessing it was a very small sample size and not reflective of the entire population and/or the lake has had very poor recruitment for a while and the netting only reflects recent surveys while angler catch data is historical?
Sorry I re-read your post and saw that it wasn't just recent surveys. That is odd, I find it hard to believe that a lake has a population of 20% over 50 considering half those fish will never reach 50 (males) it would have to be a population of older fish and some really good growth to have that kind of percentage.
Edited by drewten 5/16/2016 11:57 PM
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Posts: 20180
Location: oswego, il | DNR test nets are put where these big fish will be, all of them actually. Fish spread out and fisherman are not all fishing where those big fish live like the DNR nets were when they were placed.
Edited by ToddM 5/17/2016 11:41 AM
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Posts: 1529
| big fish,its patterns where and when.. keep logs and you will see the data thru the years. |
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Posts: 44
| Most surveys are done to get a reliable representation of the population, not to select for bigger fish. Biased data is not good data so unless there was a reason for sampling larger fish this should not be the case. If the sampling does target larger fish this is obviously not a true representation of size structure and in that case you can't compare the two. I say most, because this is not always the case and in some instances certain sizes of fish are targeted.
On the other hand fisherman are biased towards catching the largest fish. You should actually see the opposite when it comes to average angler catch size vs. average netted size if the sampling is done in a way that eliminates bias.
Based upon the percentages you have given I would lean towards the angler catch as being closer to the percentage of what's actually out there. I understand you may not want to give up the lake name on a public forum but if you want to pm me any more info I can possibly shed some light on the differences you are seeing in catch rates. |
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Location: MN | DNR's typically set their trap nets in the spring during the spawn because that is when the fish are the most concentrated and in shallow water where the fyke nets work the best. Mature fish will be found in these spawning areas but you won't find many smaller immature fish. If we assume there is a 50/50 sex split between mature adults found in the spawning areas it isn't that unrealistic to believe that some waters will have 2/5 of the mature females over 50 inches. Realistically there are probably more males so maybe 1/2 females are 50+ but still not that hard to believe on some mn waters.
Fisherman catch fish of all sizes including lots of those smaller ones that aren't in the spawning areas when the nets are out. I think fisherman creel results most likely paint a more accurate picture of the size distribution in the lake.
That's my guess anyway. |
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Posts: 1906
Location: Oconto Falls, WI | Big muskies don’t get away from the DNR netting them like they do from anglers. Also a lot of anglers don’t target trophy muskies consistently where they are found the highest percentage of the time throughout a calendar period. Creel surveys I feel are a poor representation of what is in a lake. A lot won’t tell the surveyor if they caught a big fish, or even a small one. The creel surveyor is also not at the landings 24/7, and thus may not be there at some prime times depending on season.
Food for thought. I am going to flip the question on you. Why is it some netting efforts on particular lakes never show any trophies, but angler effort or visual sightings contradict what showed up in nets?
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Posts: 44
| I will leave the discussion at this. Fox Lake (Sherburn, MN) for example has a pop. estimate at around 400 fish and is roughly 1000 acres (or a fish every 2.5 acres) which is pretty good density. With an assumed 20% over 50 there would be 80 muskies in Fox Lake over 50! If there is a population with that kind of density of fish over 50 keep it to yourself because you have a gold mine.
The creel is not designed to be there at prime times, that would bias the creel. It is a stratified random selection of days picked well ahead of time so catch effort and harvest is not inflated by "creeling when the bite is good" It's specifically designed or at least should be to reflect what is actually out there. The only bias comes from the fisherman which select for a certain size fish in some cases but is not reflective of the creel itself.
If both creel and sample netting are designed to reflect size structure of the population of any fish. Which most are it is safe to assume that the percentage of a certain size fish will be roughly the same in both strategies. If not, one or both are flawed in some way, based upon my experiences most musky fisheries do not have a population of 20% over 50. Not to say it can't happen. If the population of the lake in question does in fact have this ratio then the creel survey is definitely flawed in regards to estimating that percentage.
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Location: MN | drewten - 5/18/2016 1:15 PM
The creel is not designed to be there at prime times, that would bias the creel. It is a stratified random selection of days picked well ahead of time so catch effort and harvest is not inflated by "creeling when the bite is good"
Right, but the netting is done at a specific time, during the spawn, which typically catches primarily mature fish. |
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Posts: 284
Location: Eagan, MN | Travis, I don't know the answer to your question, but the first thought I had was what the DNR says about muskies being under-represented in certain test nettings; that is, muskies have a tendency to avoid test nets. I think they may be referring to gill nets vs. trap nets though?? Don't know for sure. I don't think they can avoid trap nets as easily and I believe trap nets are what is used on this particular lake to assess the musky population.
I've been fishing this particular body of water for many years. My results don't compare to the DNRs percentage of biggies, but they are better than those shown in the creel survey. It would be nice to understand what the true population distribution is to gauge my success at targeting large fish. If 1:5 fish in the lake is 50" or bigger as the DNR test nettings suggest, then I need to significantly change my approach. If 1:20 fish in the lake is 50" or bigger, then I'm doing alright. |
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Posts: 2687
Location: Hayward, WI | Interesting question that I don't really have an answer to. Somewhat related and interesting to me is I study lots of netting/shocking DNR reports for panfish to find new lakes to ice fish for bluegills and crappies. I almost always catch fish bigger than the biggest fish they netted or shocked, and my average size would usually run higher than the DNR reported average too.
A person would always think that netting or shocking would find the biggest fish in the system, since they don't need to be tricked into biting a lure and then landed. That doesn't always seem to be the case though.
Translated to muskies - I think you can use netting surveys to get a general idea of size structure (are most 32 or less or is there a good population of 40, 45, upper 40, 50's, etc. I really don't pass too much judgment till I fish a lake enough to get a good picture of how it fishes and what it contains. |
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