The E. J. Crossman Muskie Symposium, sponsored by Muskies Inc. and Gander Mountain, was held the last weekend of October, 2005. It was in Indianapolis hosted by the Hoosier Muskie Hunters. It was held at a top-notch conference center, was packed with information and discussions, extremely educational for me – I have a lot to learn-and inspiring because, across the range of the muskie world, there is a lot being done. This symposium brought together, biologists, sate DNR staff, and fisherman in an atmosphere of mutual camaraderie and respect.

        Taking two years to put on. from the call for papers to the organization of a thorough conference, it honored Dr. Crossman, the foremost scientist to ever study the Esocids. He was the keynote speaker at the first Muskie Symposium in 1984 where he gave a speech honoring the muskellunge as a noble beast. At that time he stated that the muskie was noble because nobility is associated with; grandeur, titles, folklore, controversy, names, stature and stamina.”

His widow and Dr Casselman, his research partner and heir, gave the keynote address on Friday night. 

        Dr. Crossman spent his boyhood haunting the lower Niagara River on the Ontario side. As the muskie is a fish of two countries, so are the devotees of the fish. Dr Casselman said of him, “A true philosopher, he always sought the truth and, yes, challenged you if need be. He was often the conscience of his junior colleagues, encouraging them to do what they truly knew they should.  He taught many things, including the importance of mutual associations and interests.  He had a true love of fish and fish resources and picked a species and devoted his time and energy to the well-being of it and those associated with it.  He had stamina and stature, he was six foot eight inches tall, and could always seine longer and deeper than others.”

        Numerous presenters and speakers stated that Dr. Crossman always had time to talk to those dedicated to the enhancement of the muskellunge.  He was truly committed to the association of fishermen and scientists and believed that we are all in this together and working together we can, have, and will make a difference. This man was eminent, published voluminously, and was a mentor to many. As the weekend progressed it was obvious that his spirit and leadership lived on in the many scientists who presented papers that were a direct legacy of the work of Dr. Crossman.

        After a tribute to Dr. Crossman, Casselman talked about two studies he worked on with Crossman; the study of ultimate length from Ontario water bodies and the Cleithrum project (ongoing).

        In their study of ultimate length they showed that trophy size has a lot to do with the conditions on a body of water. Not all lakes or rivers can produce fifty-six or even fifty inch fish.  The work shows that a 56 on Lac Seul is larger than 99% of all other females in the lake, a true trophy. Interestingly, a 51 in the Niagara River– excluding the Buffalo Harbor-is also greater than 99% of all other females. The angler skill, effort, and luck to get a 51 on the Niagara are exactly equal to that to get a 56 on Lac Seul. At some point fish stop growing longer though they do continue to put on weight.

        To illustrate the differences that can take place, Casselman described two fish from which he got the Cleithra. These fish were both from Georgian Bay and both weighed sixty plus pounds. The O’Brien fish was caught in 1988 and its age was determined, it was born in 1956. A thirty two year old fish!!! It grew through the cold water years of the 1960s at a slow rate.  The Michaelson fish caught in 2000 was also 60 pounds. It was born in 1983, a seventeen year old fish!  This fish grew through the warm water years of the eighties at a much faster rate.  That fantastic year class of 1983 still swims and some may still be growing in 2013!

        There was much more to Casselman’s presentation but those are some highlights.

        Jim Saric spoke last on the first evening and it was revealed that in addition to being a publisher and author he is a marine biologist and works for the EPA. He emphasized that the momentum of the muskie industry, better knowledge, better equipment, better lures, better minds, are at a high level now and to continue to develop the future he saw the need to do seven things; Develop New waters, Protect Spawning Habitat, Stock the Appropriate Strain, Obtain Consensus on Mutual Goals, Increase Communication, Continue Education, and Engage Youth. Jim is a good speaker and an engaging person who is easy to approach.  Several of his points would be discussed in scientific papers on Saturday.

        Larry Ramsell addressed the group at breakfast on Saturday and he gave what amounted to a pep talk to the fisherman.  He did spend some time of the strains of muskies to stock in various waters.  It is generally agreed that there are three strains of muskellunge with almost infinite variations within them. The Mississippi River Strain, sometimes called the Leech Lake Strain, the Ohio River Strain, those from the Prendergast Hatchery in Chautauqua are Ohio River Strain, and the Great Lakes Strain are the three varieties.  The reason this is controversial can be seen in discussing later papers. Suffice to say there are controversies about these facts from Wisconsin and Illinois, and Minnesota.

        The first paper on Saturday had Dr. John Farrell, he has addressed the NMA, explaining St. Lawrence River Management of Muskies. By 1977 the fishery in the Larry had collapsed – over harvest, habitat destruction and dirty water were all to blame.  The clean water act of 1972 had just begun to show effect and its growing effect parallels the improvement in muskiedom.  The Esocid working group was form by the USA and Canada and Casselman, Crossman, Farrell and LaPan are some of the names associated with this group.

        The protection of spawning habitat quickly became a focus of this group as they identified over 100 nurseries in the St. Lawrence. If you have seen the area or a map or picture of the area you will realize what a huge task this was.  Over time, through radio tracking and other tagging studies, the working group was able to prove spawning site fidelity.  The females return to the same bays to spawn year to year.  Sometimes a female will spawn in two bays in one year and return to the same two in subsequent years.  During these studies the group determined that over 50% of the spawning fish exhibit migratory behavior.  They swim past tons of food in the river to feed in Lake Ontario. No one knows why. By determining where they were spawning the first steps toward habitat protection were taken.

        Kevin Kapuscinski of the Wisconsin DNR gave a paper on the reintroduction of the Great Lakes Strain of Muskellunge into Green Bay.  Wiped out by pollution -paper mills- the fish were able to be reintroduced in the feeder rivers after the water got cleaner.  They used the Great Lakes Strain and in the last few years, they have experienced the huge sizes these fish can obtain. The reintroduction of Walleye in the Bay in the eighties was wildly successful and the muskie project was begun in 1989.

        They located an egg source – typically eggs and milt are harvested in a brood stock lake, taken to a hatchery, and raised to fry and/or fingerling size and released into streams and bays that represent acceptable nursery conditions.  The development of good broodstock has become a key part of these programs.  The long-term goal is to develop a self-sustaining population in Green Bay.  That is not easy to determine since the fish are not easy to find. Angler caught fish without the hatchery mark could be; escapees from the tagging (typically fin clips), migrants from elsewhere (Michigan, Ontario), or natural born denizens of Green Bay.

        They have had significant success but continue to work despite PCB pollution and difficult adult recaptures.  They have found spent females but have not proved successful spawning.  They are working towards a genetic inventory. They have found the return of fry to be around 0.71% and the return of fingerlings to be 10.4%. Remember yearlings take a lot of hatchery space and expense. Some expense can be saved by feeding muskies the surplus spawners of other species, (walleye?). A lot of money has been contributed toward this project by Wisconsin Muskie Clubs, a lot of work remains to do.  Bottom line, Green Bay has large, fast growing muskies and will probably be the Buffalo Harbor of the next ten years.  If they can do it why can’t we?

        The next paper was about Minnesota Muskie Waters. The interest here is that a commitment to expanding the number of muskie lakes in Minnesota was undertaken and because of input from anglers. It has been successful beyond the dreams of anglers. The Minn. DNR had been stocking for years using a pure strain from an isolated lake called Shoepac lake, no road or boat access, they were thought to be genetically pure. The fish were milked, eggs and milt transferred to hatcheries and fry and fingerlings stocked in an expanding program.  It was thought that since these were the great lakes strain they would grow big.

        Anglers reported increasing catches in these new lakes but disappointing size. It was finally realized in 1993 that the isolated Shoepac fish were pygmies rarely growing above 35 inches even though they were a remnant population of the Great Lakes Strain of Giants. When the DNR stopped using Shoepac and began using Leech Lake (Mississippi River Strain) the sizes skyrocketed.  It was the communication with anglers that made the DNR change where they got their eggs. The Shoepac fish were one of those infinite varieties that are out there.

        Today, Minnesota is the best muskie fishing state in the USA, no challengers need apply.  Even though they have a limited resource pursued by an increasing number of anglers, the future is bright. They plan to make a large portion of the Mississippi River Catch and Release only.  This is a state with 80,000 anglers who fish for muskies.

        We went into breakout sessions at this point.  There was so much information that the groups had to be broken up and at least a dozen presentations were on poster boards in the hall to be read separately from the presentations.

        I attended a presentation on Pewaukee Lake, a high quality fishery virtually in Milwaukee, with attendant problems of habitat destruction and over development. Though it was possible to keep this lake as a numbers lake it’s trophy potential was non-existent.  Remember, Casselman said all lakes are not equal.  A couple of interesting points; studies of home range in Peewaukee showed that the home range of fish in the spring is double what it is in the summer, and the Eurasian Milfoil is mowed regularly in the growing season with little affect on the production of this numbers lake.

        The next presentation was on Riverine Muskellunge. The study was done on Middle Island Creek in West, By God, Virginia, a tributary of the Ohio River.  This creek has a C&R only section but the good fishing is in other areas. A couple of salient points; males are easier to capture than females as they are ripe longer during the spawning period and they roam more, post capture fish move both up and down stream, males move farther than females. Fish spawn in home pools.

        The final presentation of the first breakout session was on muskie as an invasive species. Some fish had escaped from Quebec, come down through the St. John River in New Brunswick through the turbines of four hydroelectric dams and ended up munching on a remnant population of Atlantic Salmon.  The Salmon population at the area below the last dam had fallen from 100,000 to roughly 2,000 – due to overharvest in the Ocean, not skies.  The question was if the muskies would wipe out the smolts (salmon ready to go to sea) and kill off the fishery completely.

        It turns out that while the muskies did eat smolts they ate more yellow perch and other fish and because the perch were harder on the smolts than the muskies, the muskies might have been helpful or neutral. Does that sound similar to the affect on Walleyes in the Niagara?

        The breakout sessions were shorter than the general sessions. After lunch Rob Kimm of Esox Angler magazine and Russ Warye gave angler friendly presentations concerning respectively; reaching out to educate and engage anglers for other species, and top waters of North America.

        Kimm stressed the need to continually engage other anglers. There is an organization of bass fishermen in Wisconsin called No More Muskies. Ouch! He also mentioned other non-angling groups that have to be engaged. Resort owners allied with the Chambers of Commerce have kept the size minimum for muskies low in Wisconsin for years. It is often as low as 30 inches and only in a few places as high as 40.

        Warye, a participant in the 1984 symposium, the editor of Premier Muskie Waters of North America, a Wisconsin guide, and an editor of Fishing Hot Spots, stressed the importance of the 1972 clean water act and its provisions to the quality and variety of muskie waters in the US and Ontario. He waxed rhapsodic about many places like LOTW and Georgian Bay, but saved his highest kudos for Lake Webster in Indiana, an 880 acre lake averaging 6.6 muskies over 30 inches per acre. Normally, a lake is doing well to average one such fish.

        The second breakout session brought me to Steve LaPan’s investigation of spawning behaviors in the St. Lawrence.  His presentation showed; half of the fish migrate, going to Lake Ontario in June and returning between October and January, they exhibit reproductive homing usually to a suite of bays, radio transmitters only work to a depth of thirty feet, of 35 fish tagged at Grindstone Island, 23 went upstream to the lake, 7 stayed home, 5 went downstream.  Why they pass up food to head for the lake is unknown perhaps a remnant behavior from the past.

        One female and one male were tagged together in a spawning bay. The female moved a few miles upstream, the male followed a week later. The next time the female was found she was in a lake bay fifteen miles away. The male showed up ten days later.  They spent summer and fall in the same bay of the lake. The next spring they were in the same spawning bay together again. Is this muskie marriage?

        Jerry Younk of Minnesota DNR presented a paper on expulsion of transmitters. They found gravid females, inserted a transmitter in the oviduct, and watched to see where the eggs were laid.  Even though it is logical to us that the eggs would be laid where the gravid females were captured, the scientist needs data to prove it. Though they could never find the transmitters after they were expelled, they did determine the areas in need of habitat protection. The shoreline development in spawning areas, if not prevented, can often be altered. Something as simple as not mowing to the water’s edge can save the spawning areas.

        The third paper involved one of Steve LaPan’s graduate students studying a way to quantify muskie habitat.  There is a lot of knowledge about eggs and spawning and fishermen know where the adult fish are, but little information exists about where they are for year one. Brent Murray studied this and found them in areas adjacent to the spawning habitat. They are well adjusted to the changes in habitat.  In July when they are two inches long the thin leaved weeds dominate and look like yellow sticks lying in the water. Coincidentally the muskies have a yellow stripe down their backs.

        In August, when the young have reached six inches, the broad leafed weeds, cabbage, dominate and the muskies use their spots to hide. These were scientists and they tended to use some dry statistics and scientific classifications. Hence weeds were called macrophages and it was determined that at six inches the muskies ate Cyprinids –er, minnows.

        The habitat quantification is an ongoing study.

        After a break, Jim Diana of Michigan University presented a paper on natural spawning habitat. Unsurprisingly, shoreline development is detrimental to habitat. He presented the proposal that the muskie needs to be a keystone species, important for tourism – that dreaded chamber of commerce again-that entails the alteration from soft rayed fish to spiny rayed (game) fish.

        Curtis Wagner from Illinois discussed planting the appropriate strain – that one adapted to local conditions – in lakes. The Illinois DNR had found that in the southern part of their state –more like Kentucky than Minnesota – the Ohio River Strain grew fastest and over wintered best. Meanwhile in the northern part of Illinois the reverse obtained, the Leech Lake Strain did best. Illinois and Indiana have mixed strain fish as a result of stocking in a haphazard way in the past based on whatever fish were available. Indiana has fish from, New York, Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota all happily creating little muskies of an indeterminate strain in Lake Webster.

        Jack Wingate of Minnesota DNR laid out some of the things they have learned in their very successful program. One of the reasons they used Shoepac Lake fish for broodstock was their ease of capture. It wasn’t until they learned that the Leech Lake fish spawned on off shore reefs in six to fifteen feet of water that they were able to net the ripe fish for egg capture.

        They took ten years to develop their program. The sequence was as follows;

        1. Anglers told them the program was not working.

        2. They investigated genetics

        3. They did a growth comparison study

        4. They changed the stocking program.

        5. They evaluated the new program.

        Over time they found that it costs $8 to bring a fingerling to 12-14 inches.  The cost to stock an angler-caught fish is nearly $100.

        Steve Heiting talked last on Saturday night and aimed his presentation at fishermen. He is enthusiastic and funny while being informative as well.

        On Sunday Morning one of the last presentations was about an angler diary study done by Ontario on the Lake of The Woods.

I was getting tired of taking notes so I’ll mention just a few points.

95% of anglers on LOTW are from the USA the rest are Canadians. Most people fish in July but the CPUE (catch per unit effort) is better in October. There are more skillful anglers fishing in the fall. Pike are a significant by catch in LOTW.

        Terry Margenau of the Wisconsin DNR gave the last formal presentation on the effect of single hook sucker rigs on muskies.

We all know the bad news here but let me reiterate.

        40% of Wisconsin anglers use live suckers in the fall (remember they often cannot legally troll and it is too cold to cast) and 88% believe the single hook rig increases mortality. Anyone sense a disconnect from reality here?

        The idea that the 10/0 hook and wire leader will dissolve in a week is wrong.  They don’t dissolve in a year.

        The 24 hour mortality of the fish swimming with that hook in esophagus or stomach is zero.

        The sucker is grabbed sideways, turned, and swallowed endwise.  This can take as long as forty minutes.

        In his experiment, in a lined pond, the muskies would chase the suckers right out of the water and sometimes pursue them onto land. One muskie was found dead after launching himself up on the bank and being there overnight.

        The short term (5-48 days) mortality was 22%. This was when the pond iced over.

        The long term mortality was 77% this was over winter. 30% of the control fish died over winter – these hadn’t been hooked, had been well fed with fat suckers, they just died. The fish did spawn in the lined control pond and they were successful. When they drained the pond the following summer there were fingerlings present.

        One year cumulative mortality was 83%.

        Some tears in the stomach were 4-5 inches long causing suckers to miss the stomach all together and decay within the body cavity.

        The hook corrosion after 30 days was 9%.

        The hook corrosion after 210 days was 29%

        After one year the hook started to break into pieces but was still there.

        Conclusion, the single hook sucker rig causes an unacceptable mortality in released fish.

        This was a hot topic with the Wisconsin contingent, a large part of those present, and one old guy said he lands six out of ten muskies on sucker rigs using no hook at all. The muskie refuses to give up that meal all the way into the net.

        In order to make my flight the next day I missed the panel discussion at the end. That was probably interesting.

        I learned a lot at the symposium, I hope that I can attend the next one – sooner than twenty years. We should take heart that we are not alone in our concern for the muskie fish. As long as we can stay engaged, not be isolated, or arrogant we should be able to change practices and improve the fishery in the hope that we can enjoy the Good Old Days Today.

        Thanks for the opportunity to share.