Statewide
posted
Sep 6, 2012
The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department gave its
recently-established Lake Champlain muskellunge restoration effort
a boost when it stocked 8,800 five-month old fish in the Missisquoi
River and Missisquoi Bay in August.
The muskie is native to this area of Lake Champlain, but the
population that last existed upstream of the Swanton Dam was
apparently lost in the late 1970s following a chemical spill.
"The muskie has a unique role as Lake Champlain's apex aquatic
predator," said Fish & Wildlife Commissioner Patrick
Berry. "On the lower Missisquoi River muskies were
historically important as a large mythical fish that was present
but very difficult to catch. Successful anglers are members of
a very small and fortunate club."
The six-inch fish stocked in the river were donated by the New
York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which also
stocks the Great Chazy River on the New York side of the lake with
the same strain of muskie.
The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department has done a genetic
assessment of a very small number of muskellunge caught since 2005
in the Lake Champlain Basin.
"In recent years, anglers have reported catching and releasing
an occasional muskie in the lower Missisquoi River and Missisquoi
Bay," said Shawn Good, Chair of the department's Muskie Team and
the fisheries biologist leading the restoration
efforts. "Through a very successful outreach effort, we were
able to work with anglers in the Swanton area to obtain tissue
samples from a number of these muskie that were
released. Genetic analysis of these tissue samples reveals the
muskellunge anglers have been catching in the area are not from the
original native strain."
"The muskie that anglers have been catching in the Missisquoi
came from the Great Chazy River in New York, as their genetic
makeup is identical to the Lake Chautauqua-strain muskie the New
York DEC have stocked there for many years," said Good.
Good says they now know some of those fish make their way down the
Chazy and out into Lake Champlain to the Missisquoi Bay and
River.
The department's genetic work also showed that the state record
muskellunge, a 38.22 lb. fish caught in the Missisquoi River in
September of 2005 by Chris Beebe, came from fish stocked by the
State of New York in the Chazy River.
Vermont regulations allow fishing for muskie with artificial
lures or flies, and any muskie caught must be immediately released
where it was caught.
Vermont has stocked nearly 25,000 muskie into the Missisquoi
River and Missisquoi Bay in the last four years.
"I have high hopes for these little guys," said Good. "With
pretty much unlimited habitat and food resources, I expect these
fish to grow fast and get pretty big. It's not unreasonable
to think that in the next few years, anglers could be frequently
catching muskie in the 50-inch range from Lake Champlain."
