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Location: Palm Coast, FL | http://outdoors.mainetoday.com/fishing/432097.shtml |
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| Sure we like muskies, but to these guys they are an invasive species that is seen to be decimating the fishery that they love.
Guess I cant really blame them for being mad. |
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Location: Minocqua, WI | Just let nature take its course.... good grief... |
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Location: Pittsburgh, PA | I dont know what id do in it that situation but from where i sit id say who cares musky are better in my opinion but i like trout to. But what can you do muskies arent in the streams so im pretty sure they will not completlt wipe them out. |
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Posts: 431
| I must say it is distressing to see musky destroying native brookies. If anyone has seen a native brook trout, they are absolutely beautiful. Anytime you have non-native species negatively impacting native species it gives cause for concern. |
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Posts: 8
Location: northern Maine | As a resident of northern Maine I know first hand about this muskie fishery. The local fisherman do fish for muskie but many do not beleive in catch and release, they are afraid that the native fishery of wild brookies, landlocked salmon, and touge will be destroyed. The fishing in the fish river chain of lakes is fantastic for landlocked salmon, brook trout, and some touge, for trophy fish. Landlocked salmon will weigh up to 15 pounds, trout up to 6 to 7 pounds. The normal is 2 to 7 pounds for salmon, and 1 to 4 pounds for brookies. So now you have the reason why muskie are not as reveered as in other areas of the country. Fortunately fishermen are starting to see this fish will not go away and are starting to release some of the muskie, unfortunately the state considers muskie an exotic fish and has no plans to impliment a size or bag limit on muskie.
thanks for reading my ramblings on muskie in northern Maine dandy |
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| Replace the words trout and salmon with muskie and invert (in the article) muskie with the dreaded snakehead. Now how would you feel? Especically if the gazillion members of SnakeheadFIRST (it's not that far a stretch, think about the adoration the lowly carp gets over in Europe) were applauding that the snakehead was flourishing?
ZM |
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Posts: 8772
| Two words
Asian Carp
not really any difference is there? |
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Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Actually, Addict, yes there is. Asian carp taste REALLY good canned, and grow so fast they don't have alot of contaminants when at 20" or so...
Point taken, just messing around on a snowy Tuesday. |
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Posts: 170
Location: Chicagoland | I love how they paint the picture that the muskie is like a snakehead, capable of living in the dirtiest and oxygen-lacking waters in the world and still managing to destroy your fish population if they somehow get it. Muskie are a fragile species, and the waters in maine seem to be ideal for their needs. I;m sure it is awful to hear that the locals trout and salmon are being angry, and its just how we feel if a lake gets VHS or something. But hey, on the bright side, this sight may be getting a lot new members pretty soon... |
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Location: oswego, il | Snakeheads and asian carp are much more prolific than are muskies and will have a much bigger impact. Absolutley no comparison. I am not saying muskies are not impacting the fishery but what about those non-native landlocked salmon? No impact there? I bet where they are located, there are many more of them than muskies and are having a much bigger impact on the native species. They eat fish too. |
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Location: WI | what the heck is a snakehead??? |
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Posts: 384
Location: Eagle River, Alaska | Although I don't get to fish musky as often as I would like......and having been a member of this forum since its inception.....this discussion just kills me. We have threads spread everywhere on musky forums about expanding their range...increasing size limit, or not allowing any take at all.....and most of those with coherent replies consistently state that musky should be managed according to scientific understanding....not on how people "feel" (since most fishermen are not musky fishermen), or purely anecdotal evidence. Musky have been stocked and extended well beyond their native range. With just a casual glance at the history of the mismanagement of fisheries in this country from day 1 you would think anyone who loves fishing would understand "invasive species" and its potentially huge effect on native species when introduced. There are NO waterways or systems in the midwest or eastern part of the United States which bear any resemblance to the original fish ecosystems....carp are a wonderful example but any fish we love can be invasive. I grew up in the west and have always had a great reverence for rainbow trout but as I studied more about the history of fishing in the west I realize this nonnative trout to most waters as well as brown trout and brook trout have devastated native trouts....especially cutthroat. You won't find brookies or browns stocked in western streams anymore but they are persistent.
Back to the thread at hand, first off landlocked salmon are native to the state of Maine. There are dramatic differences in traditional "warm water" fisheries where musky are native and a cold water trout and salmon enviornment. Musky have caused severe decline in the number of salmonids in Maine where they have spread. And when did musky become a "fragile" species? The are definitely not fragile but are always a low density fish. I don't blame the state of Maine for wanting them to be gone......whether I love to fish musky or not. There are several studies you can google up from University of Maine and state fishing agencies which show the detrimental effects musky are having on the native ecosystem they were accidentally introduced into. New Brunswick, Canada is having the same problem with musky.
And you just can't wait for "equilibrium" to be established as there isn't any established coexistence with these fish in Maine. The damage could be permanent and irreparable if not contained. Pike are native to interior Alaska but "enlightened" imbeciles put them in southeastern salmon and trout waters many years ago and they have annihilated some runs of sockeye salmon. There is fear they will get into the Kenai River and cause untold damage to the largest Chinook salmon in the world....they are devastating on the fry.
I have personally witnessed what an "invasive species" can do to an entire ecosystem from my parents home on Flathead Lake, Montana. Flathead is a sprawling, deep water, 28 X 12 mile lake. Many nonnative fish were introduced a 100 years ago and at the expense of the native westslope cutthroat which have almost disappeared, their was an equilibrium achieved for decades with nonnative kokanee and lake trout and native bull trout. 25 years ago some idiots in the fish and game department introduced the insidious "mysis" shrimp upstream of Flathead and it worked its way into the lake....without much science to look at they figured these larger mysis would provide much more food for the millions of kokanee than the native daphnia shrimp. Turns out in the deep waters of Flathead the mysis shrimp migrated up and down in the water column at directly opposite time of the kokanee and both fed on the daphnia. In three years the kokanee salmon were completely gone....millions of the tasty devils. Without the kokanee the bull trout population plumetted and the lake trout population, which utilizes the mysis exploded. Unfortunately, Flathead went from a lake which turned out 30 and 40 lbs lake trout to a lake full of stunted lake trout....the limit is 30 lake trout a day under 30 inches. But all attempts to restore the previous balance have failed and never will return as the mysis can never be irradicated. Now if you read fisheries biology magazines and material this is sited as one of the greatest ecosystem catastrophes brought on my a state agency trying to "improve" a fishery by introducing a nonnative, invasive species. It really sucked.
If you want people to accept science for perserving and C&Ring all musky then you need to give other fish and ecosystems the same playing field. Just because musky are great predators and fun to catch doesn't necessarily make them the fish to put everywhere. Let's be fair.
I love musky.....but science is science even if we don't like it.
My rant is over.......Brian
PS: The northern snakehead and giant snakehead are inadvertent Asian imports originally spreading from VIrginia. They have become well established in the Potomac River and are big toothy ugly mothers. They are considered one of the top species in countries like Thailand. Interestingly enough, they so far, have not seemed to be effecting the bass numbers in the rivers they have infested.
Edited by DocEsox 2/6/2008 3:27 AM
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Posts: 280
| Great input Doc! Good to see your post. Hope you're doing well in AK.
DougP
Edited by fins355 2/6/2008 12:28 PM
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Location: Sherry, WI | Doc's response should be placed somewhere on top and locked there. His response should also be required reading for prospective management professionals and all M1st posters! |
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Location: Wausau, Wisconsin | Wow. |
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Location: Sandusky, OH | Kootenay Lake, BC, was the reason mysis were stocked in Flathead Lake. The kokanee growth rate exploded following their indroduction, creating an extremely important (and envied) fishery there. Unfortunately, it wasn't until years later (after the Flathead introduction) when, following the construction of a dam in a connected river, biologists realized that the current in Kootenay Lake swept mysis into areas of the lake where they were vulnerable to predation by kokanee. Dam construction altered the flows, allowing the mysis to avoid predation, and the kokanee population crashed, similar to Flathead Lake. The introduction of mysis into Flathead Lake by the 'idiots in the game and fish department' was based on the best available data; unfortunately, the best available data wasn't good enough. Let me also add that researchers have spent years trying to figure out what happened in Kootenay; it wasn't an easy problem to understand.
The rest of the story.
Eric
Edited by bluegill 2/6/2008 6:38 PM
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Location: northern Maine | Just finished reading Doc's post and must add that many esox fisherman may not know the thrill of catching a 5 to 7 pound wild landlocked salmon, or 4 to 5 pound brookie on a fly rod. I fish for muskie,myself, but salmon and brookies are on the top of my fishing list. The St. John River and its tributaries, the Big and Little Black Rivers, the Allagash River, and the St. Francis River were pristine water sheds with the only native wild brook trout fisheries east of the Mississippi River. Most of this area is a primitive area with logging and paper company wood roads with no services for many miles around. thanks for reading this post about my stomping grounds. Dandy |
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Posts: 2361
| http://www.newhampshire.com/article.aspx?headline=Irresponsible+ang...
Here is an article tangential to the Maine Muskies, with blame for the "bucket biologists" and btw, muskies are not an easy fish to bucket stock in numbers, nor do they reproduce easily with low numbers so it would take some dedicated bucketing in my opinion to do muskies this way, possible though.
But to me here is the key relationship to fishing success for these people and their future trout/salmon trips...
The next day we fished nearby Square Lake, accessing it by the Burnt Landing area. The woods roads bringing you into Burnt Landing were the best we've ever seen there.
Publicize, improve access, watch quality of fishing deteriorate.
I don't doubt that muskies will impact trout populations and salmon populations also, but there are evolutionary fences for these fish, ie water temps, cover and habitat preferences, tendencies to go with the easiest meal, and the fact that these fish do NOT actually swim into the mouth of the muskies, and all these factors will limit the predatory impact of musky, much more than say, if northern pike had been added to the system in a big way. Northern pike would have much less holding them back in terms of water temperature and would/will be a much worse introduction in terms of impact. I would really like to see some documentation of the musky impact on the populations. In a riverine population what goes first, the trout and salmon or the suckers and chubs? I don't have any sense of what the most abundant and easiest attainable meal is in the waters mentioned, but would not automatically assume that trout is their main menu every third day or so(or the musky I seem to fish, every MONTH or so).
"We have seen a definite decrease in sucker numbers out there. The tiger muskies have really hammered the suckers. And, we've seen a corresponding increase in the size of kokanee and rainbow," he said. "Before we started the tiger muskie, the rainbow were averaging 11 or 11.5 inches. Now, we're averaging 15 or 16 inches with a lot of them bigger than that."
http://www.billingsgazette.com/newdex.php?display=rednews/2005/09/0...
Other muskie interactions have shown that muskies and trout/salmon populations can co-exist, and this article certainly seems to demonstrate that the tiger muskies(more pikelike in their temperature preference) certainly can coexist with trout(though I would consider rainbows more athletic than brookies), so, it may be that the overall impact of muskies on the trout resource is negative to some extent, but I don't think we are looking at extermination here, and as a game species, the muskie may be AS MARKETABLE , or even MORE MARKETABLE than a bunch of pan sized trout. It is just a matter of education.
I don't propose that the scenario in Montana and Maine are similar or that the results are going to be similar, after all a change in the dynamics of the overall population may enlist the "law of unintended consequences" in a big way, but until there is some hard data, eh?, let's not cry for the lost brookies of Maine.
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Location: Eagle River, Alaska | Eric....I apologize for the comment of "idiotic" in relation to those who decided to transplant mysis into the Flathead Lake system....it was originally done in Swan Lake in 1968 and they migrated downstream to Flathead soon after. My reason for the "idiotic" comment is by that time there was so much overwhelming evidence coming to light of the negative and sometimes irreversible effects of introducing nonnative fish or species (like the mysis) to waters where they weren't present. Look at the water systems throughout the US....aquaculture has nearly made the term "native" unknown. I just believe they should have shown more restraint before introducing an organism at the very basal level of the food chain....the effects can get so compounded as you move up the chain and the results can be catastrophic...as they have been. You are right about the original introduction into Kootenay.....thanks...didn't know that and researched it .....here's a great article on mysis and Kootenay Lake: http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-3139870_ITM Fascinating that mysis seemed to have nothing to do with the explosion of the size of the kokes but it was the phosphorus being added by the industrial wastewater. Another thing was simple catch and examination of kokanee during the time period consistently showed that mysis rarely showed up in the stomach contents. Kokes are native to Kootenay but not Flathead....additionally the base premise for attributing kokanee's dramatic size increase was due to the mysis introduction. Yet in Flathead the size of the kokes was always in the 14 to 20 inch range...they seemed to be doing fine, size wise, before the mysis. Problem is there is such a traditional attachment to management over the years that somehow technology can fix things or make them better.....once you start to tinker....the tinkering never seems to be able to stop due to repurcussions.
"... but I don't think we are looking at extermination here, and as a game species, the muskie may be AS MARKETABLE , or even MORE MARKETABLE than a bunch of pan sized trout. It is just a matter of education..."
fsf....the first part of this quote and the last part are almost an oxymoron. Let's wait for hard data....so we wait and after the natural ecosystem is damaged beyond repair then we try to fix it.....technology can fix everything. The musky are the interloper and should be treated as such.....how many more fish disasters do we need to look at? As I mentioned the University of Maine and the state fish agencies list several studies already done that has shown dramatic decline in the numbers of native fish where the musky have become established. I believe your personal preference for musky some how will not give heed to science regardless of the number of studies down. It's dang hard to be objective when you have strong feelings for one side or the other.
Brian |
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| http://www.fortkent-muskie.com/catch.html
more to come
http://www.flyfishinginmaine.com/story.php?id=28
http://www.fws.gov/northeast/gulfofmaine/downloads/fact_sheets/alew...
Edited by firstsixfeet 2/7/2008 9:20 AM
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| this truly has been a refreshing read from my perspective. living in ontario in the great lakes watershed i can see many parrelel facts. i wish every thread was like this..great in put folks. |
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Location: northern Maine | hi fellows, a point that needs to be made is that muskie were not introduced into the Maine watersheds, but rather by an illegal stocking in the province of Quebec in Lac Frontiere by some individuals who wanted their own private muskie haven without consulting the Maine biologists or wardens. A few years after this stocking, heavy rains caused the lake to overflow into the St. John River releasing a few muskies and as years passed we have a muskie fishery. From the banks of the St John River , thanks dandy
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