The
fish was purchased by the Upper Great Plains chapter of Muskies Inc. in 1991
and stocked into West Okoboji Lake in April 1992 at an average length of 12.7
inches.
“Every
muskellunge stocked in the Iowa Great Lakes was batched marked with a freeze
brand so we know what year and lake it was stocked,” said Larscheid.
A few
years after being stocked, the muskies grow large enough to be caught in the
gill nets set out by fisheries staff at night in the spring. All muskies
caught during the gill netting season are tagged with a Passive Integrated
Transponder (PIT) tag which uniquely identifies these fish for life. “Every
time this fish is caught we record all information in our database which allows
us to look up the individual recapture histories of each fish over time,” added
Larscheid.
This
41.6 inch, 17.5 pound fish was originally tagged in 1994 and was recaptured in
1998, 2000 and 2006. It is one of the first groups of muskies held over the
winter at the hatchery then stocked in the Iowa Great Lakes in the spring. “Based
on the success of these fish we switched all of our musky stockings to spring
yearlings which dramatically improved the survival and health of our musky populations
in Iowa,” Larscheid said.
“To my
knowledge, this fish is the oldest known-age muskellunge ever recaptured by
fisheries crews in the Midwest,” said Jonathan Meerbeek, DNR fisheries research
biologist. Last year’s crews were
impressed with their recapture of a 21 year-old, 41 inch male muskellunge. “Recapturing
a 25 year-old fish of known age is almost unheard of,” Meerbeek said.
The
anal fin and right pelvic fin taken from this fish will be used in a known-age
muskellunge research project that will assist managers interested in estimating
muskellunge age across the country.
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