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| Sometimes a story can be more informative than all the speeches and Power Point presentations in the world. Here's one I'd like to share:
THE JOURNEY
Imagine for a moment that you are a young female hatchery born mixed LCO strain muskellunge, only 12 inches long. A well-meaning human has released you into Lake Hayward in Sawyer County, Wisconsin. It is mid September. Where might you go? What might you do?
After cruising along the shoreline for awhile, you find yourself near the Namekagon outlet. You’re attracted to the flow and go right over the dam.
You gradually drift downstream with the slow current and find yourself entering another flowage, the Trego flowage. The river was getting uncomfortably cold. You head for deeper, warmer water to spend the winter.
With the coming of spring, you enter the warming shallows and begin to feed aggressively. There are minnows, perch, and even recently hatched northern pike to eat. You grow. You have a couple close encounters with large hungry pike, but you’re lucky. You escape. By fall you are 20 inches long.
In late September you find yourself again at a Dam, you get caught in the current and go over the dam where you are whisked downstream.. The flow beckons you, and the abundant prey fattens you for the long winter ahead. But the shallow, flowing water gets uncomfortably cold. So just before ice-up, you drift down out of the Namekagon River and into the St. Croix river.
You endure another long winter. But when spring finally arrives, you take a spin around your new home and find that you are now big enough to eat a wider variety of fish. You still must beware of bigger predators, but you’re fast becoming one of them. You feed. You grow. By fall, you are 28 inches long. You have little to fear from other fish.
You spend the next three years right there in the St. Croix river – feeding and growing. You make the mistake of attacking a strangely wounded fish on the surface of the water one summer. You find yourself pulled against your will to the surface where a strange creature holds you out of the water momentarily, then releases you. You’ve dodged another bullet. Your photograph hangs on a wall somewhere, with 32 inches written beneath it.
The following spring, a strange new urge makes you restless. You instinctively move toward flowing water and find yourself again drifting downstream, you go over the top of another dam. You enter the Mississippi river. It is shallow and warm compared with most waters in the area. The new urge is becoming overwhelming, but there are no others of your kind in the area. Your instinct is to move into flowing water to find them.
Soon you realize you are not alone. There are others like you here (only larger) – others who have made the same journey.
You cannot all stay in the same small place, or soon there will be no food. You move up the Mississippi River – a large river stream with many deep pools. Large suckers are abundant and you feed well, but you still aren’t growing like the others in this river.
You forget the urge for a moment and keep moving upstream, hoping to find shallow highly oxygenated water. Finally you find it – Little Falls on the Mississippi River. This is more like it. You lazily drift with the current, feeding on suckers and resting in deeper pools. The urge has gone away. You don’t quite understand what that was all about, but it does not matter.
As fall approaches, you again seek deeper, calmer waters to spend the winter. You have traveled many miles to reach this point, and you do not have the desire to head back down stream, so you now use the nearest deep hole you can find. Finally, a place to rest for awhile. You are now 35 inches long and still fear the larger muskies that inhabit this river.
Winter passes. As the Mississippi River rises and warms the following spring, the urge you felt last year becomes even more insistent. Every fiber of your being compels you to swim upstream. You move, fast. You keep moving upstream until you reach a great barrier – the Little Falls on the Mississippi River.
In the great pool below the dam you again encounter others of your kind. And now the urge is overwhelming. Several males escort you to the shallow, weedy margin of the river where you relieve yourself of the heavy load of eggs that developed over winter.
You are exhausted. You rest in the deep pool for a couple weeks. Finally, hunger compels you to move to feed on abundant suckers. You have completed a ritual that will be repeated annually for the next several years. Your journey is over. You are home.
Or so you thought. A couple years later, a skilled angler fishing from a large boat in the Mississippi River fools you into thinking that one of his lures is something you should eat. For the second time in your life, a strange creature forces you out of the water.
The strange creature admires your features, your green color. He wants to see you and your kind in his favorite lake. So this time, instead of releasing you, he places you into a small box with flowing water. At 36 inches in length, you fit in next to a 29 inch walleye.
A full hour passes. You sense movement, but you have no real understanding of your situation. Finally the lid on the box opens, and you are gently removed and placed into a lake again.
This place is a mystery to you. It does not smell like anyplace you have ever been. You have entered Leech Lake in the Northern Minnesota. There you will spawn several times with others of your species, but not of your strain. Your grandchildren may not be fit to survive and reproduce because some of the most useful genes of their parents got scrambled during the mixing of strains. But you don’t care. Your days are numbered. Your journey is almost over. Leech Lake is now destined to be like Lac Court Oreilles, a place with small mixed strain Muskellunge that are unable to reproduce. All because the DNR refused to use Muskies that have good traits like fast growth and natural reproduction in the St. Croix river where the Mississippi strain Muskies are native.
Unfortunately it is not the end, It’s only the beginning. Small mixed strain Muskies are also being stocked through out the Northern edge of Wisconsin into the Great Lakes, where a similar journey is taking place…….Fisherman care and are speaking up. Biologists warn us that it will take many years and studies in order to stop this. By then it may be too late.
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Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Please name biologists I can call to interview who have said we have to 'stop this' and are willing to go on record, I'll call them Wednesday and have an interview up Thursday. Thanks! | |
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Another Journey