Posts: 3480
Location: Elk River, Minnesota | Good Afternoon,
The Shoepac strain of fish is essentially that...fish that came from the Shoepac lakes you mentioned. Years ago,fish from these waters were used for stocking purposes in various lakes in the state. I don't think they stocked many lakes from the Shoepac strain, but Baby Lake near Hackensack was one of them, and to this day, seems to show little improvement in fish size 20 some odd years after they stopped stocking it. The whole woman lake chain had very healthy populations of lech lake strain fish that were naturally occurring, and by introducing the shoepac strain, the fish just don't "seem" to grow as large and the other area lakes that did not receive shoepac stocking.
Currently, no stocking of Muskies is taking place there, so the genetics (I feel) are spread out throughout the system, and the fish, although being spotted like a leech lake strain, are roughly 32 - 38 inches in length. There are very few large ones to be found, and this lake contains a healthy forage of suckers and Ciscos. I don't have any data to back this up...only 27 years on the water fishing it and seeing the trends. In fact, I don't think there is any data that exists in muskie numbers for the lake based upon the stocking of the Shoepac strain fish.
Steve |
