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Posts: 227
Location: New Brighton, MN | I've noticed that pretty much all muskie in my home lake are really scarred up this time of year. especially on the top of their backs... I've assumed this must be due to spawning.... I guess i'm not really sure what they are from. Fighting with other fish? scars incurred by travelling up the shallow river to their spawning area? Does anyone know what this might be from? Do the scars just heal after a few weeks? I'm totally confused. |
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Posts: 8776
| Willis
Remember way back in high school when you were always gettting in fights over girls, showing off, pushing smaller guys around, being a bully, srapping it up with guys in gym class, or after school?
It was all about the girl right?
Muskies are like teenagers, they pretty much shred each other to see who gets the girls! |
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Posts: 178
| Willis, I concur with esoxaddict. DNR biologists observe this every spring. The fish we capture by fyke net and/or electrofishing often exhibit severe wounds, including gashes one might think they would never recover from. Fyke nets themselves can cause some abrasion, but their effect does not explain the serious wounds we see routinely in both netted fish and in fish that we capture by electrofishing. The males simply tear each other up over spawning rights with the females. Remarkably, most seem to recover from this annual bloodletting just fine. Just goes to show that muskies actually are pretty tough. They recover well from such wounds. A more serious trauma for large muskellunge is to be caught from deep water in mid summer, played to exhaustion in warm surface water, photographed for awhile, then "released." We believe lots of those fish die. If you must fish deep water in mid summer, please play your fish quickly, never remove them from the water, and release them immediately after a quick water release photo. Thanks!
Dave Neuswanger
Fisheries Team Leader, Upper Chippewa Basin
Wisconsin DNR, Hayward |
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Posts: 1636
| You guys ever see yellow spots on the fish during the spawn? I've seen them on several, but there is usually only one perfect, yellow circle on the fish. Anyone know what they are? |
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Posts: 8776
| Sounds like Yellowdotitis to me... |
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Posts: 1636
| Yellowdotitis? |
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Posts: 8776
| Closeley related to the less common reddotitis, and the rarely seen but nearly always fatal greendotitis 
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Posts: 284
| Nice jeff that's great, I really think you had him going. |
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Posts: 1636
| No, not really. |
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