Well I spent the beginning of this week trapping Muskies at Spring Lake near Manito, Illinois with Justin and a couple of the Illinois DNR biologists.

Here is a link to the video we made: Muskie Trapnetting Video
For those of you who don't care for online videos, here some pictures of some of the 94 muskies we caught and transferred over to the Jake Wolf State Fish Hatchery.


These Muskies will supply the entire state of Illinois with Muskie fingerlings for stocking this fall.

Hey Nate, that's what I call fishin, great video, what did you guys bait the traps with ?

Were you supprised with the number of fish you caught? or was it expected?

Some nice musky there... Those net surveys are fun to watch and when they let you, help out with! Almost as fun as electroshocking! Do they take the fish back to Spring Lake when they have harvested the eggs?

Here in VA they used to do much the same thing at Burke Lake. Every year they would trap net gravid females and the males to use for stocking all the lakes and rivers of the state. They stopped doing that about 5 years ago though. Now VA just trades striped bass eggs with PA for their musky and northern pike eggs.

Nothing. The fish will hit the lead line that is connected to shore then start heading out towards the middle of the lake along the lead line and then they end up right in nets.

About half of the muskies we caught were tagged with little micro chips. All the fish are returned to the lake after they finish their duty and some of them are on record as being caught up to 9 different times in the nets!

It was expected.

Altogether we caught 94 muskies, 1500 bluegill, 1000 crappie, 40 bass, 12 bullhead, 3 catfish, a spotted gar, some nasty greenish colored sunfish with big mouths, and an otter. The water was 49.5 degrees. When it warms up, we can catch 5x that many fish when we check the trapnets.

Was the otter dead due to no O2?

Outstanding job on the video, n8ly!

I guess no one seemed to be concerned about being bit by one of those muskie?

Uh oh! N8LY now you are now in big trouble with the green sunfish assocation!

What a great video Natester, thanks for posting it.

Oh and as an also and besides. Natester is on good graces with the GSA for two reasons. First he removed 94 nasty GSF eating Muskies and second he made it possible for me to catch the largest catfish I've ever caught in my life at Lusk Lodge last year so I cut him a lot of slack.

But they're putting them back!

Ooooh -- aren't muskies cool??

I wonder if the fish heckled him while he was suffocating.

So sad...RIP otter.

Is he sleeping?

Aren't you guys trained in mouth to mouth?

They're so cute when they're sleeping.

NICE MUSKIES NATE! Thanks for sharing...can't wait for muskie season opener!!!

I know they're a tough fish, but seems like pretty rough handling. Tell us about the water in the tub. Near 40 degrees? Was there a sedative in it?

The air temps were in the 40's and the water in the tanks was 49.5 degree lake water filled with a heavy supply of pure oxygen. No sedative. About half of those fish were tagged with microchips from previous years and a couple of them have been caught, spawned, and released 9 different times!

If the water temps would be like in the 70's or 80's all of those fish would pretty much be dead in just a few minutes if they would be handled like that.

Muskies are hardier than most people give credit. In colder high DO water, most fish can take a pretty good beating and still be just fine.

N8ly I know that you are using the fact that the same fish was caught 9 times as a way to show their hardiness but I have to think that this shows the incredible pressure that these fish are under (These fish are being stocked because more and more people want to catch them). These are the top of the food chain and as such are a low density fish. Catching the same fish 9 times, using them for reproduction and shipping the fry all over the state is also robbing the local area of this survivors' genes for those 9 years. Unless a certain number of the offspring get released back into these waters? I tend to have a soft spot for these beautiful predators, just don't go wiggling your toes in the water off the dock...

Most of the lakes that are used for collecting parental fish for hatching fingerlings do not support natural reproduction. So if you do not collect these fish and spawn them out in a hatchery environment, there wouldn't be any musky in them.

CJBS is indeed correct.

I might be wrong, but I don't think there has ever been a documented case of successful Muskie reproduction anywhere in the state of Illinois.

Muskie in Illinois private lakes are stocked from hatched from hatcheries in Minnesota.

Muskie in the public lakes all come from Jake Wolf State Hatchery or from other midwestern states hatcheries if Jake Wolf has a bad year.

Musky require VERY specific spawning conditions for a successful spawn. These conditions rarely if ever occur in man made lakes. They only occur a slight bit more commonly in natural lakes and rivers.

Just recently they found that musky were naturally reproducing in the upper Potomac River on the MD/WV line. No one has a clue how the pure musky got there and biologists were happily surprised at the natural reproduction.

Species like musky, walleye and striped bass which have very specific needs to have a successful spawn rarely produce strong enough year classes consistently(particularly in man made lakes). This means they fail to produce the numbers of fish needed to support the amount of fishing pressure public lakes often receive. This is why state agencies must collect adult fish to spawn them out.