Tiger Muskie in Lake Merwin ?

wootersen · 10-24-2005, 01:39 PM

Saw this on Katu's website. Had no idea these were around here.

Katu Fish Tales

Perhaps a little internet Tomfoolery ? :whazzup:

yankemnbankem · 10-24-2005, 01:42 PM

Yup, they fish for em up around the green bridge and farther. They have also been caught in the NFL

RiverMan · 10-24-2005, 01:48 PM

Cool! Wish we had more of them around here!

RM
www.bikinibaitcompany.com

dcgrav · 10-24-2005, 01:50 PM

I have a cbin out there and i have personally been able to catch em there. Target near SPELEI bay or under the bridge on the east side of the lake. I like the big wire spinner baits and I catch some small squaw fish near the docks and cook em on the spinners and keep casting. Best day ive had out there is 2 in 7 hours. One woulda made it great 2 was even better. GOOD LUCK!

Fshklr · 10-24-2005, 02:04 PM

thats right Woot!!! KF85 has been in em plenty..seen a few caught at the NFL Log hole to (Hatchery side) during springer/winter steel months..one was about 40 inches in length!

Two Fister · 10-24-2005, 02:07 PM

Woot,
I think they were stocked in Merwin by WDFW in an attempt to increase the size of the kokanee or some such lunacy. Nothing like letting a nasty non-native predatory fish loose in the ecosystem. Tiger Muskies are supposed to be have been sterilized, but hormonally induced sterility is not 100% effective.

Maybe they'll start stocking pirana in the Willamette soon so that the bass will get bigger. Wait, I guess the pirana are already there...

TF

wootersen · 10-24-2005, 02:07 PM

How do they eat ?

yankemnbankem · 10-24-2005, 02:08 PM

with their teeth

FallRiverGuy · 10-24-2005, 02:09 PM

I think they usually try to grab other fish with their mouth then swallow (sorry too good of an opening to pass this one by).

Traskmilemrk11 · 10-24-2005, 02:11 PM

When I was in the service and stationed at Ft. Lewis not so long ago there were tiger muskie in the resiovor at Mossy Rock. A fair number of them too as some of the guys back on the fort who were from the WI area were anxious to get out there and target them.

wootersen · 10-24-2005, 02:15 PM

CATCH AND EAT · 10-24-2005, 02:20 PM

One Tiger Muskie was caught a few years back on the Willie and documented. Had to be an escapee from Merwin. Way to go WDFW.

These are the same folks that think 6% stealhead impacts are okay. :tongue:

snowball · 10-24-2005, 02:30 PM

i heard tiger muskie prefer to eat native stock versus hatchery.. anyone have any info on this?

Uncle Milty · 10-24-2005, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Tiger Muskies are supposed to be have been sterilized, but hormonally induced sterility is not 100% effective.

I believe that tigers are a hybrid between muskies and northern pike and are naturally sterile (like mules).

-Milty

King Fisher · 10-24-2005, 02:47 PM

I've got an idea. When we lose our salmon runs due to politics and nets, we can target MUSKIES. :grin:

Two Fister · 10-24-2005, 03:12 PM

Quote:

Tiger muskie do not normally reproduce and so their numbers can be controlled directly by regulating stocking and harvest.
Utah Department of Fish and Wildlife Website

Milty,
You are correct in that they tiger muskie is a hybrid. They can reproduce but are not all that successful at it. When enough of a species that can infrequently reproduce get together eventually a few pairs will be successful. The spawn from that pairing will likely be able to reproduce with a much greater success rate. And so on and so on. It's a snowball effect that can be very dangerous.

From my experience in the fisheries industry, mistakes happen on a pretty regular basis. Things like the wrong tank of smolts being picked up in the pre-dawn hours by a driver that had a few too many cocktails the night before. My personal experience with this was watching a tanker full of brook trout getting dumped into saltwater netpens. They didn't like the experience all that much. I know that hatcheries that produce both tiger muskies likely also have hatchery programs for Northern Pike and pure strain Muskies. After all the Tiger is a cross between a male Northern Pike and a female Muskie. It can be very difficult to tell these fish apart at the fry/smolt stage. Imagine the damage that would be caused by dumping 10,000 Northern Pike that could reproduce into the NFL system.

The dams on the NFL do not have great downstream fish screens/barriers so those fish are going to be washed through on a pretty regular basis. Take a flood year like 1996 when all of the spillways are running and you have lots of downstream migration. These are northern climate fish so a bit of cold water doesn't bother them a bit.

We have a predatory fish that is native to the Pacific Northwest: Bull Trout. They require a bit of clean water, but they are thriving in Lake Billy Chinook so why not in the NFL system? I think it's mostly state agencies trying to figure out a way to drum up more revenue from fishing licenses sales by bringing other people in to buy licenses instead of protecting the fish and wildlife that they are supposed to be responsible for.

That's my 2 cents at least.

TF

CARTMAN · 10-24-2005, 03:30 PM

OK, I saw 2 tigers this spring. a 4 footer had a smaller 3 footer by the head. a guy had picked them up to seperate them. both were big and fat. they eat the northernpike minnow. And I can honestly say there are alot of them up there. Ugly fish with big teeth. not sure I want them around my toes. They might think they are little snacks.

cartman

dcgrav · 10-24-2005, 03:41 PM

They are a cross between a northern and a muskie, but if you catch em take a picture and let them go. They are there to eat the Sqwa fish. Plus they taste horrible, ive had some when I live in minnesota and it wasnt good. If you want eaters catch the kakanee there

Fast Water · 10-24-2005, 04:48 PM

[quote]

Quote:

Imagine the damage that would be caused by dumping 10,000 Northern Pike that could reproduce into the NFL system.

ummm... it would be bad.

As one one of many who lives by the river and fishes it regularly, I can say that we have seen a bazillion fish trapped, caught, snagged and whatever and yet there have only been a few Tigers caught in the few years that I have been here. (river side)

NFL hatcheries do not produce Tigers. (just to let you know)

And the good people who work there are sober when they drive.

RiverMan · 10-24-2005, 06:36 PM

King Fisher,

You might not be too far off. Hey in the Columbia we already have bass, walleye, catfish, crappie, bluegill, shad, and a number of other non-native species so why not musky too? At least musky get big and are fun to catch!! These things are animals and will eat anything! I think it's great they are planting a few hybrids in surrounding lakes.

RM

mrgamby · 10-24-2005, 10:45 PM

I too have a cabin up there, and have targeted them out of my kayak numerous times... I had a BIG (aroung 40") one follow my lure back to the kayak one day, and just stayed right next to my kayak, looking at me, as if to say, "what, are you stupid or something?"
:smile:

pretty freaky beasts... next year, I am using my 7wt.

:smile:

jvp · 10-25-2005, 06:15 AM

Quote:

Tiger Muskies are supposed to be have been sterilized, but hormonally induced sterility is not 100% effective.

I believe that tigers are a hybrid between muskies and northern pike and are naturally sterile (like mules).

-Milty

mules have reproduced so much for that theory

Uncle Milty · 10-25-2005, 07:45 AM

Two Fister,
Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of the idea of muskies or pike being planted around here. I've fished pike all my life in Michigan and Alaska, and don't want to see what would happen if they were allowed to ravage smolts along with every other native and non-native predator. I agree with your post, was just correcting the hormonally-induced sterility issue.

-Milty

175 · 10-25-2005, 08:31 AM

They are there to eat Squaw fish. If you want to catch em and they follow your lure to your boat, do a figure 8 with your rod tip in the water a number of times and make lots of swishing noise with it and they will usually bite. Use steel leader. They are quite the fighters!

Bill Monroe · 10-25-2005, 08:37 AM

Quote:

I too have a cabin up there, and have targeted them out of my kayak numerous times... I had a BIG (aroung 40") one follow my lure back to the kayak one day, and just stayed right next to my kayak, looking at me, as if to say, "what, are you stupid or something?"
:smile:

It was probably sizing you up...

mrgamby · 10-25-2005, 09:36 AM

It was totally sizing me up!!!

I even tried the "figure 8" but my hands were shaking so bad. :smile:
It looked more like a "squiggly 5" :smile:

when you are right on the waterline with those beasts, its a little intimidating...

fishboys · 10-25-2005, 09:53 AM

Ceder oak Island, on the willie is where i believe one was caught a few years back

Beamerfish · 10-25-2005, 10:24 AM

Here's a photo of that tiger muskie from the Willamette a few years back.

Two Fister · 10-25-2005, 10:34 AM

Uncle Milty,
I hear you on the logic (or lack thereof) of planting these things in our waters. States where they have gotten out of control are spending millions of dollars to try to eradicate them because of the damage they do. Ask the folks down in California about how much they've spent trying to get Northern Pike out of Lake Davis. The first go round cost more than $13 million because of an unintended impact to drinking water wells in the area around the lake. And they didn't even get the job done as the pike were back the next year. That's money that could have been spent doing something useful like fisheries enhancement.

And don't fool yourselves, about them being on a selective ********* diet. Tiger muskies will eat any small fish that they can take whole: trout, kokanee, juvenille bass (actually that one is OK with me) salmon/steelhead smolts are all the perfect size for tiger muskies to eat. The last thing we need is another non-native species eating smolts as they try to dodge all of the other non-native species that are out to make lunch out of them.

If ********* are a problem in Lake Merwin, something is out of whack with the water quality at the reservoir. Fix the problem with the water quality at the reservoir instead of adding a non-native predatory fish that could damage the whole NFL ecosystem.

TF

Two Fister · 10-25-2005, 10:44 AM

Beamerfish,
That looks kind of like a Chain Pickerel to me. The vertical bars on it's flanks are more interconnected than I think they are on a Tiger Muskie. I also can see a big pointy recurved tooth sticking out of it's mouth. I think the Tiger Muskies teeth are a bit shorter and denser. I'm by no means an expert on these things and I haven't caught either since I was a kid, but I think that looks more like this:

Then again, it looks like the tail and fins on yours is more heavily spotted. Here's a picture of a Tiger Muskie:

In either case I'm glad to see it hanging on a hook in front of your garage!

TF

Beamerfish · 10-25-2005, 10:48 AM

Yea, they look real similar but the colors of the spots patterns are reversed. Wish I could claim credit for the kill but they brought it in to the ODFW office and the pictures got circulated around.

wwjetboater · 10-25-2005, 01:48 PM

Rember the Tiger Muskie is a steral spechies interduced to control the Squaw Fish or the (nothern pike minnow for you political corect foke) I think the WDFW did good job Introducing these fish to do this job its cheaper than paying $4.00 a fish. this is money that can be used to help our fisheries. Mabe they should introduce grass carp in some of the weed infested lakes to thak care of that problem as well.

Two Fister · 10-25-2005, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Mabe they should introduce grass carp in some of the weed infested lakes to thak care of that problem as well.

And then they can spend millions of dollars trying to get rid of them like they are doing in California, Montana, Colorado, and a bunch of other states where they have gotten out of control.

If they want to take the time to surgically sterilize Tiger Muskies that would be one thing. They do not want to spend the time and money so they either assume, incorrectly, that they are sterile as noted above, or they use a hormonal process that is not 100% effective. There is a good chance that these fish are reproducing on their own and escaping into the NFL system. That's a disaster.

So the WDFW is introducing a non-native predatory fish to try to increase the size of the Kokanee and stocker trout in Lake Merwin at the risk of some amazing salmon and steelhead in the Lewis River system. How about just increasing the size of the fish that are stocked so that they are not as easy prey for the *********?

TF over and out

mcdaib · 10-25-2005, 06:51 PM

Some non native species have a great reception by fisherpeople and some don't I suppose. The two I can remember both had a great reception in Oregon. One was the accidental release of smallmouth (white) bass in the Umpqua. I recall that they were accidentally released in a major flood in the 1960's. Seems a rancher up near Riddle had some in a pond and they escaped during a flood. The rest is history! A really world class fishery in the Umpqua system

The other release was intentional and planned. In Tenmile Lake the ODFW decided to try a hybrid between lake bass and striped bass. They were not supposed to reproduce and they were not supposed to migrate out of Tenmile Lake. Wrong on both counts. There was some of the best fishing imaginable for a number of years after that for about 50 miles in either direction of Tenmile. I lived in Coos Bay during the 80's and early 90's and we caught some mighty fine hybrids down there. They were real scrappers. Didn't catch many over 15 pounds, but they fought like a 30 pound striper.
I'm for more mistakes like that, but not more zebra mussels or gold fish.