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Posts: 126
| At the MInc Pittsburgh meeting a member of the fish commision presented info on a fish that was captured in 2006 and was 38.5"/13lbs. They recaptured the fish in 2008 and the fish was 50"/39lbs. It sounded impossible to me but the fish had a pit tag in it. Has anyone else seen or heard of growth rates like this in tagged fish that were recaptured? |
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Location: Freedom, WI | Was it near a nuke or chemical plant.   |
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Location: Madtown, WI | maybe the big one ate the little one
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| Where did you say that lake was? |
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| Usually a growth rate like that only happens after the trip, and talking to some friends at the bar. |
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Posts: 126
| Haha definately lake X and I was discussing with another member about the big one eating the other one but it would digest it and poop the tag out. I suppose it's possible that the tag was still in there and in the right place when the scanned it, then she dumped it later. I have an easier time believing that actually. It makes for interesting conversation though. I was just wondering if anyone had info on extreme growth rates of tagged fish that may be onlong these lines. |
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| yeah and the high rate of growth is great but the problem is the life span. Fish that grow really fast are nice, but if they only live ten years then the potential for those big fish decreases just as quick as it rises. |
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| H2o,
Seriously, thats incredible. I don't know if that is even possible. I'll make some phone calls I work with a couple of fishiers guys maybe they can answer your question. I'll get back to you. |
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Location: On the X that marks the mucky spot | That's not possible. It's probably a data error. |
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Location: Northern Wisconsin | Hawkeye - 4/13/2010 2:40 PM
>>>That's nothing unusual. "Genetic freaks" have been known to roam the Hayward area since the late 1930's. They are easily identified by their extemely small heads relative to their body length.<<<
Are you talking about fish or people?
LOL |
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| Duplicate pit tag used? |
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Location: Kronenwetter, WI | Identity theft? |
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| I was referring to the muskies and I should have said that "used to" roam the the waters around Hayward. These "genetic freaks" mysteriously disappeared after 1949. A prime example of their kind is mounted and on display at the Moccasin Bar in downtown Hayward.
There is speculation that their kind now reside only in deep water and that they NEVER visit the shallows under any circumstances. Apparently they also possess an intelligence level much greater than the size of their head (brain) would indicate. |
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Location: Ogden, Ut | Improbable, but not impossible. Timing is everything when reporting data like these. A fish tagged in the early spring of 2006 and later sampled in late fall of 2008 could have experienced 3 full growing seasons. Four inches per year on adult fish is great growth but certainly not impossible. You'd need the whole story to tell for sure.
S. |
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Location: APPLETON, WI | It's incredible if it's true... I'm curious, what's the normal growrth rate? I'm assuming the rate tends to slow down once they reach a certain length and/or age...? |
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| >>>I was referring to the muskies and I should have said that "used to" roam the the waters around Hayward. These "genetic freaks" mysteriously disappeared after 1949. A prime example of their kind is mounted and on display at the Moccasin Bar in downtown Hayward.
There is speculation that their kind now reside only in deep water and that they NEVER visit the shallows under any circumstances. Apparently they also possess an intelligence level much greater than the size of their head (brain) would indicate.<<< I'm following you now, Guest. Legend has it that Spray and Johnson caught the last ones willing to visit the shallows. |
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Location: Ogden, Ut | PSYS - 4/13/2010 3:34 PM
It's incredible if it's true... I'm curious, what's the normal growrth rate? I'm assuming the rate tends to slow down once they reach a certain length and/or age...?
'normal' depends on many factors - growing season length, forage availability, water quality (temps, DO, pH, etc.), forage types, cover available...you get the idea. There usually seems to be some limiting factor(s) preventing this type of enhanced growth - rarely do all the stars align to produce growth like that, but it does occasionally happen. In many waters, big muskies are lucky to put on a half inch to an inch per growing season.
They do tend to slow as they reach their 'ultimate' maximum length. Under optimal conditions, this fish could presumably have grown 6, 4, & 2 inches in it's last 3 years, as an example.
S. |
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Posts: 256
Location: MadCity Wisconsin | Muskie growth rates...........This is what I have been told by Wisconsin DNR biologists.........Since 2005 when our club purchased a several hundred Leech Lake strain 11" fingerlings and DNR put in Wis. Chippewa Flowage strain fingerlings the biologists told us that under best circumstances the muskies would grow up to 6" per year until they reach around 36" at which time the growth slows to about 2-3" per year until "full maturity" for that particular fish.
As we have caught a few of these fish since 2005 we have found that they are indeed averaging 6" per year growth. One fish, a Chippewa Flowage strain, grew 6.5" per year after we caught it and scanned the PIT tag. |
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Location: APPLETON, WI | That's awesome info... thanks, Sorenson! |
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Location: Brookfield, WI | PSYS - 4/13/2010 6:54 PM
That's awesome info... thanks, Sorenson!
Good looking and smart. What a combination.
Kevin
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Location: Grand Rapids, MI | I would love to talk to the biologist because I sure would like to know more about this fish. As Sorno noted the time of initial capture and recap would be nice to know. I would also like to know her age, I assume they took a dorsal spine and aged the fish on the first capture. The origin of this fish, specifically her genetic origin is of interest as well. There are some mixed genetic pure strain with DNA closer to a hybrid than a pure strain. |
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| The Hayward area biologist you should talk to is Frank Pratt. Back in 1998 he examined a jawbone found on the shore of the "Chip" that he said belonged to a muskie with a head as large as 19". He went on to say that the jawbone of a muskie is 45% of the head length and the head length is 20% of the total length of the fish. This means the jawbone on a 19" head would be 8.55" long and would represent a muskie 95" long.
The surprising thing is that this 95" muskie was aged by Mr. Pratt to be only 15 years old based upon the growth rings at the rear of the dentary portion of the jaw. This fish may have grown 6.3" every single year of it's life. Yes, these Chippewa Flowage muskies are truly something special.
These facts can be referenced in the Feb/March issue of Husky Hunter Magazine in the article entitled, "Did A World Record Musky Die Last Season". |
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| I'm sorry. I was referring to the Feb/March 1999 issue of Husky Hunter Magazine. |
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| Will, that would be great for our MI research purposes! Hopefully it's true, but I'm kind of skeptical. The old cliché, if it seems too good to be true.
LOL! I read that article in Musky Hunter and could hardly believe what I was reading too. Pratt also compared those those jaws to Johnson's mount...and guess what...they were from an even bigger fish than the world record  |
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| What I couldn't understand is that Frank Pratt said this newly found jawbone was just "slightly" larger than the jawbone on Johnson's world record and yet it supposedly was from a muskie with a head as large as 19" and a total length of up to 95"!
And what a growth rate. 95" in 15 years? Wow!!!
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| And by the way, have you ever seen a 50" muskie with a head only 10 inches long? This is supposed to be the "normal" head to total length relationship of a muskie according to the Hayward area biologist! A challenge should be made to Frank Pratt to show us an adult muskie with a head that is only 20% of the total length. If he is unable to do so it should prove once and for all that Louie Spray's 1949 mount was a fake and that the record should be disqualified. Spray's 1949 mount had a head to total length relationship very close to 20%. |
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Posts: 51
| Based on growth data for 5403 muskies sampled throughout Wisconsin the predicted age at 38" is 9. By age 21 the 50" mark is predicted for length. Average maximum length or length at infinity is 53.17" based on the sampled fish. If this fish actually grew 11.5 inches and 26 pounds in 2 or 3 years it is truly above average. I'd be all over that waterbody hoping for more like the one sampled. |
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| If you feel that a muskie that grew 11.25" and 26 pounds in 2 or 3 years "above average", how do you feel about the muskie that the Hayward area biologist claims grew up to 95" in 15 years? The Chippewa Flowage is the waterbody you should be spending your time on! |
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| I think it is kind of interesting that guesty over on the other thread is upset with this guest poster instead of the source of the info.I personally see nothing wrong with these posts as they are just relayed information.I'd like to see MH magazine to do a follow-up article on this because I think this type of misinformation from a DNR biologist is pretty alarming. |
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Posts: 723
| Back when Kevin Kapuscinski was heading up the GB restoration project,
we were constantly relaying tag information back to him from the fish we were gettin up there. It wasnt uncommon to end up with 2-3 tagged fish in a day,
But the info of those fish, which most of us know grow pretty rapidly in length and girth, showed average growth rates of 3-4 inches a year with one of my fish a little over 5. the fastest one was 45 upon recapture,
but the majority of all the fish that we were getting were all in the mid 30's to low 40's range. The time period was when Kevin was really pounding in a lot of fish out there a few years in a row, so there were numerous subjects of the same size in there, you could easilly identify the year classes, and in all of our catches out there you would see the oddballs show up, if there was a low 30 size class, then and upper 30's size class, then a mid 40's size class, you would catch a fish or two that were inbetween those sizes, and they were just porkers! they stuck out amongst all the other fish we would catch.
Lookin at all the pictures we have of fish from there there were definitely some Elite of the few that had faster growing rates. Looking at the smaller heads with enormous bodies, or a fish that was 40" but had the head of an ox on it, you know lookin at that fish, that it was designed to be a bada$$.
We have gotten some Bigger fish that were tagged, and unfortunately, a lot of those tags are covered in zebra mussels or so much goo that you would just end up rippin the tag out if you tried cleaning it off.
and when Kevin left wisconsin there really wasnt anyone relaying that tag info back to us that we were still sending in, so that little program that we found so interesting kind of just died. I think it wouldve been really interesting to see what those growth rates ended up at with some of the larger fish in that system.
anyway....
Its like lookin at a kid in junior high that has size 12 feet and hands the size of dinnerplates, but he's lanky as can be, pretty sure once he hits softmore year he's going to be 6'3" and can slam dunk.
in my eyes, anything is possible given the right circumstances, if those fish spend a lot of time swimming with their food, constantly eating a rich oily diet, such as shad, which probably digest very quick compared to a hearty sucker or pile of perch,
im sure that those fish that are in those circumstances are going to shine above their counterparts.
Id post some pictures of GB fish, but im sure everyone here knows what they look like 
Edited by dogboy 4/16/2010 7:10 AM
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Location: Money, PA | IMO H2O, muskies are like people....that IS certainly an unusually fast rate of growth for a muskie, but keep in mind, that fish grew 11 inches in two years. Thats a lot, but certainly NOT impossible. I have a pretty good idea of where that fish was from and some of our western PA lakes are packed full of awesome, fatty foriage full of protiens and good stuff for them fish to grow and be healthy. However, we can pretty much all agree, that some special food is not going to make those things grow at that rate; otherwise everyone would be dumping that bait into their systems. The key has to be the genetic make-up of that particular fish. Genes are peculiar and wonderful things...they are what make each one of us different from the other...some of us short and stubby, some tall and lanky and others huge and obese. The latter not being the genes we want to see in us, but certainly in what we're after!! Lets just hope that fish is out there reproducing and making lots of babies...just my .02 |
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| That some interesting stuff on the Green Bay fishery.I think that the fish you think have with small heads and big bodies actually have normal size heads and the big body just make the head look small. Same with a skinny musky, the heads just "looks" to big for the body.You never hear a bass, walleye, or any saltwater guy say a particular fish has a big head. Why would muskys be any different?
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Location: Green Bay, WI | Back in November 2007, PointerPride and I caught a 50.125" musky on Green Bay. The fish had a Floy tag on it. It was 19.6" when stocked on the East end of the lower bay in September 1996. It was caught 11/4/07, so that's just over 30" growth in just over 11 years, or about 2.75" per year.
TB |
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Posts: 73
| Interesting data, Tom---which would put a 50-51" fish at 18-20 years old. Is that typical of Geen Bay Musky? |
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Location: Green Bay, WI | No I do not believe it is. The last I heard, the age at which these fish are reaching the 50" mark is around 13-14 years. I even heard a remark that it might be younger, although I cannot confirm that. I don't have all of my musky-related literature at work on this machine, so I don't have access to Kevin Kapuscinksi's paper from circa 2005; but I think David Rowe has updated the growth model. So I don't have the latest data.
But there's a thread in the research section of the forum that talks about this very thing:
http://muskie.outdoorsfirst.com/board/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=50...
I started the thread about a year ago, but haven't done much with it recently. There is some "interesting" (ie; calculus) math in that thread, which is probably why I didn't get as much discussion as I had hoped for at the time...lol.
I will try to get the most recent growth curves from David Rowe, and see how things might have changed based upon his recent data.
EDIT: I just did a quick confirmation, using the von Bertalanffy equation given in the above link. If there are 1270mm in 50 inches (1" = 25.4mm), then it should take about 13.6 years for the *average* FEMALE musky in Green Bay to reach the 50" mark. Note that it would be different for a male musky of course, and this is the middle of the model--which is surrounded by a confidence interval. So there would be a range of potential ages, in other words. That age range would require significantly more calculation than I have the time for at the moment, so I'll just state the average age value of 13.6 years, and leave it at that. But again, if the growth curve data has been updated, then the age estimate will likely change as well. If you want to see the math, I would be happy to show it.
TB
Edited by tcbetka 4/19/2010 9:46 AM
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Location: Pittsburgh | Most of our Musky water reservoirs here in Pa are lowland,hilland impoundments.The forage base is gizzard shad,alewifes,suckers,quilbacks,carp.All such impoundments extremely fertile. Not being a biologist I would guess the growing season to be nine months. If it was 3 seasons that would make it 20 Ozs. a month of growth.This seems improbable but what do I Know.If its true good for me as I have the next 6 wks to fiish |
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Location: Green Bay, WI | In reference to the post I made above...
I should point out that the 2.75" per year annual growth rate I mentioned for PointerPride's fish...was an average growth rate. Obviously, these fish grow more in their early years, when they are not yet sexually mature--and then this rate decreases pretty significantly when they start devoting their energy into gonadal development. Thus they are not going to maintain a constant growth rate. In fact if you check out the thread I linked above, you'll see graphs for both size-at-age and the growth-rate-at-age parameters.
Sorry, I should have mentioned this in my original post above.
TB |
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Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Tom,
Thanks for the data, it puts things in perspective. Good to hear from you again! |
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Location: Green Bay, WI | Thanks Steve, happy to help...
I've been busy with work, and taking a few computer science courses over the past couple of semesters. But I've been lurking about on a regular basis. It's good to see that nothing much seems to have changed in the 6-7 months since I was posting more regularly, lol.
TB |
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Insane growth rate?