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| This summer, I made my first trip to Canada. Fortunatley, within the first hour of our weeks stay, I met an expert musky fisherman who had been coming up to this musky lake for every year but 2 since 1972. I probaly leanred more in this week, then I did in the previoius 4 years of musky fishing.
Over the course of the week, my wife and I learned a lot from Ron. He taught us how to fish open water (my wife caught her PR in 70 feet of water in the middle of the lake, he located the fish 5 minutes prior), how to locate fish fish with electronics, and told us when and where to fish on a lake that could take years to learn (27 to be exact).
Last year there was a link to a picture of a GIANT NORTHERN on muskiecentral.com. The picture showed a Native American seated with at least 5 kids holding a northern pike that was longer then the six of them seated side by side (the fish was laying across their laps). I sent this picture to Ron (the individual mentioned above) along with pictures from our trip. For those of you who remember seeing the picture last year (at least a 80 pound pike), I am sure you have not forgoten about it. It was a giant.
Well anyway, here is Ron's theory. He sent it to me in a e-mail:
...also the big northern in the news clipping, what a monster!
There has to be one laying like that on the bottom of Lake xxxxxxxxxxx, what
do you think. I also have a hunch any fish that big will only be caught on
dead bate and not casting or trolling. An old commercial fisherman on Lake
Superior, dead and gone now, used to tell me about the big lake trout in
Superior prior to the invasion of lamprey. He said that the 70+ pound trout
could be caught in the reefs on the bottom using dead Cisco's and probably
never caught trolling. He said that they called them "Cisco eaters",
because they seldom swam far from the same location and just ate the slowing
moving and dead fish. Too oily to use for commercial fishing purposes he
always threw them away when they got in their nets. No reason to believe
that big northern might have the same behavior. The midsize and little ones
are the active feeders, moving around a lot. The big are the fat and lazy.
So, what do you think? Are big muskies big fat and lazy? Are they waiting on the bottom for dead things to float down to the bottom?
I live in La Crosse, WI. Every once in a while they need to hire divers to go down to the bottom of the Mississippi underneath the Dresbach, Dam to work on the structural elements of the dam. You have probably heard the stories to. They go down, see the big catfish that have been reported to be an excess of 6 feet long. Come back up, and refuse to go back down for fear that they might get eaten. Maybe this is just an urban legend. But I am sure that there are giant cats below the dam feeding on all the free food.
Thanks in advance, Terry Paulson [8)] | |
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| The only flaw I see in this theory is oxygen depletion. Once a lake stratifies in the summer there is often not enough oxygen below the thermocline for a musky or pike to survive. Even ciscoes usually don't venture below the thermocline. Although the farther north you go the shorter the time that there is a thermocline. I don't know if the great lakes ever do stratify though. | |
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| Can muskies move in between the thermoclines? And if so, how long can they be below the thermocline before they have to come back up?
Terry Paulson | |
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Bottom Feeders????