A Short Look at Manitoba’s Muskie History
SURPRISE SURPRISE
In the early 90’s I was tasked to look after fish populations in the Western Region of Manitoba. I realized that this part of Manitoba was in the ‘Stocked Trout Belt’ and had seen tens of thousands of trout stocked into area lakes, many without follow-up. Therefore, I asked the veteran biologist of the area to give me a list of all the lakes they had stocked with specific objectives for each waterbody. Things like; “we stocked 2000 fingerling Rainbow trout in X Lake and we’d like to know their status” and, ‘X Creek has received 1000 Brook trout every year for five years. Go see if they’ve established yet.’
About two years later after completing most of my investigations, I came across one for Twin Lakes (yes, the same Twin Lakes that now is a trophy catch and release only Tiger trout fishery). The data request listed some brown trout stockings in the late 80’s but I wanted an update on this lake. With my friend and colleague NRO Glen Vandoorne (AKA Wolf), we accessed the lake off an old trail and pushed out a little 12’ tinner, loaded with nets and various tools of the trade to kick-start our gig. As we drifted across the milfoil, all ying and yang like, I spotted what looked like to be about a 24” pike hovering, looking extra sleek and steel in the gin clear water not even eight feet off the stern.
“Look at that Wolf”, I hushed. “It’s a slough shark…Those trout are toast. Wait a minute…vertical bars, wha-?”. I had never seen a Muskie in real life.
Sure enough, Twin Lakes was full of 19 -25” Muskie. No trout. Just Muskie, Brook sticklebacks and Fathead minnows. Seems they were stocked a couple years before the Brown trout. Imagine that. Those little Browns must have disappeared faster than a 24 of Blue at an old timer’s hockey game. Regardless, we had a unique fishery to tend with and we were both super pumped. There was a problem though. Twin Lakes data historically showed marginal winter dissolved oxygen readings and further monitoring showed the same. In the mean time I found a suitable lake to move these fish to that had nothing in it but stunted Yellow perch, approximately two miles north. The plan was to move them the following spring but Mother Nature had a different plan. All those Muskie, now averaging 30”, sadly did not make it through the winter.
DISTRIBUTION AND BIOLOGY
The Muskellunge (Esox masquinomgy) is one of Canada’s largest freshwater fish. The original geographic range is eastern North America and in Canada the western range restricted to a few areas in NW Ontario. Muskellunge generally spawn when water is between 9 and 15 Celsius, usually over heavily vegetated and flooded areas in about 1 – 2 meters of water. Egg incubation and hatching occurs in 8 – 14 days depending on water temperatures.
One of the Muskellunges biggest competitors from day one is the Northern pike. Pike spawn about a week before Muskie. This puts them at an advantage. Both species utilize very similar spawning habitats which have very low dissolved oxygen at the bottom associated with the muck and detritus. Pike have adapted with a specialized sucker type membrane on the top of their heads which allows them to attach to vegetation and therefore avoidance of poorly oxygenated habitat at the bottom. Muskellunge do not have this special ‘membrane’, however they have adapted in another way.
Likely as an effort to avoid predation by more advanced pike fry, musky eggs drop right to the bottom and have adapted to the normally extreme low dissolved oxygen levels at this location. This was pointed out to me by Mike Dombeck, whom I had the chance to take fly fishing in our Parkland area. Mike at the time was the Chief of the US Forest Service under the Clinton Administration who completed his Masters Thesis on the early life history of Muskellunge in Minnesota. I find that a little more than ironic.
Muskellunge have counteracted pike interactions in other ways. Tom Mosindy, longtime head of the Lake of the Woods Fisheries Unit and recently retired, told me Muskie have segregated themselves spatially from pike for the most part by utilizing spawning and feeding areas adjacent to the larger islands off the mainland versus pike which tend to occupy the mainland shoreline matrix. I have to assume that these adaptations took hundreds if not thousands of years.
MANITOBA AND THE MUSKELLUNGE
Manitoba’s Muskie stocking history is interesting to say the least. There were two time periods when most of it took place and I believe these were Muskie fry given to Manitoba from the Minnesota DNR. During the 60’s, Muskie were predominantly stocked in the eastern region of Manitoba. From 1965 to 1970 approximately 255,000 Muskellunge fry were stocked in various locations in the Winnipeg River including Lac du Bonnet, the Whiteshell and Rennie Rivers and Barren Lake. To the best of my knowledge none of these waterbodies yielded Muskie to anglers.
During the mid-1980’s the western region of Manitoba received muskellunge from Minnesota and these fish were again stocked in various locations which included these lakes; Beautiful, Line, Perch, Pleasant Valley Reservoir, Shallow, Singush, Tees, Twin, Wahtopanah, Mallard, Nora and Lake of the Prairies. Most certainly there are some odd choices here. Definitely hit and miss. But there were a few success stories that lasted into the 90’s, albeit some quite brief. Four of these lakes returned Muskie to the anglers’ creel. Beautiful and Mallard lasted a few short years and succumbed to winter kill. Line Lake lasted until it produced 40+” fish until pike encroachment and winterkill ended the run. Twin Lakes history I describe above.
There was one stocking of Muskellunge in Manitoba thanks to our Whiteshell Fish Hatchery and the folks at Swan Valley Sport Fishing Enhancement (SVSFE). In 1999 Manitoba Fish Culture received 170,000 fertilized musky eggs from Minnesota originating from the infamous Leech Lake strain. SVSFE would supply expenses to raise and transport these fish to about two inches in length. However, of the 170,000 fertilized eggs, 70,000 hatched. Of these only 12,000 survived due to the cannibalistic behaviour they exhibited once their used yolk sacs were depleted. All of these fish were stocked in Line Lake. Our hatchery was simply not equipped with enough staff or specialized feed or rearing space for raising these fish larger than an inch or two. It was a good try. There was never any proven successful natural reproduction in any of the ‘successful’ stockings in Manitoba.
SO WHY DID SOME STOCKINGS WORK?
Certainly some of these choices are marginal at best. The lakes that did support musky for a few years did have a common thread and that was there was no predatory competition and there was sufficient forage available for survival and growth. Ultimately all lakes eventually succumbed to winter kill which is probably why there was no large species to compete with in the first place.
Manitoba’s closest musky water is Lake of the Woods. It is a huge lake and has all musky need to grow and reproduce. They have space and quality habitat, and they have been in that system for a long time in order to evolve and co-exist with the other species in the lake. The strict regulations on harvest help a lot too.
We know what they need. For some reason, they have not migrated and successfully populated the Winnipeg River downstream of the Whitedog Dam. There must be some gap in the linkage between critical habitat and instream flow and/or large water level fluctuations. But that is another story, worth analysis.
THE FUTURE IS NOW
Fast forward 17 years from that bad news on the loss of the Twin Lakes Muskie by winterkill. It seems my old files were perused by SVSFE Fisheries staff Holly Urban and company. Seems that potential transfer had some teeth, and the recipient lake looked good. It is relatively small but full of stunted perch and hadn’t winterkilled in at least 30 years. SVSFE worked with Fisheries Branch and decided to purchase certified disease free muskellunge up to 12 inches long. These will then be moved to the recipient lake and a no-kill regulation will apply.
SIDEBAR: MUSKIE UPDATE FROM SWAN VALLEY
By Holly Urban
In regards to the musky, we are still on track to receive the final shipment of approximately 300-400 musky this fall. Musky are coming from Minnesota Musky Farm in Alexandria Minnesota. The group has some ideas for improving the lake access but plans won’t take place till stocking has proven successful. At this time logging activities are still fairly active in the area and anglers are encouraged to give the fishery an chance to establish.
Our supplier lost the stock he had for us last year but we still stocked the remaining fish as we were in the city at the time, met him at the border and brought them back. This would of been late June of last year. It was a good thing as there was more permitting required on his end then first thought and provided us a test run for moving fish across the border.