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Posts: 1202
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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Posts: 69
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.
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Posts: 32958
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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