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| This season me and my partner went to a new inland lake close to home bass fishing. Instead of braving the 4-5 footers on St. Clair to fish muskies. We've made it there twice this season, the first time my buddy had a follow of what seemed to be a musky. We passed it off as a Tiger because we heard that they stocked the lake with Tigers a few years back and quit after a year. The next time we went out, in the exact same spot I had a musky blow up on a tiny jitterbug at boat side. It appeard to be 35"-40". I recently got on the DNR Fish Stocking site, and to my surprise they have been stocking the lake since Oct. of 98 with northern strain muskie, and never stocked any tigers (with in the last 20 years anyway). If the first stock was 12" long how big would they be know? Would they be worth fishing for or wait a few more years?
Thanks in Advance,
esox-anator |
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| Here's a basic growth chart for Tigers:
http://www.geocities.com/toothycritters/size_chart.html |
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| Under favorable conditions a 3rd year July musky here in Michigan should probably be in the 26-30 inch range. 35-40 inches I think is out there a bit even under the best conditions. The eggs are hatched in early spring and grow to that 10-12" size in the hatchery ponds by October when they are released. They grow about that much again in their 2nd year, getting 18-24", and midway through their 3rd growing season would have put on several more inches. We have been watching a couple DNR lakes as well that got started with muskies in '98 and we kind of decided to give them one more year before going to conduct our unofficial population surveys! But hey, tie on a thin strand wire leader while bass fishing there and get the best of both worlds eh?!
Have you checked out our Muskies Inc. chapter/website based here in Lansing? http://www.geocities.com/michiganmuskiealliance
We have some great speakers lined up in the coming meetings, including the folks from the DNR musky hatchery. Very interesting very cool stuff!! See ya and good luck! |
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