This article originally appeared in the Fishing Wire on Feb 19, 2024
By Craig Springer
Sport Fish Restoration dollars help inform hatchery management.
“Will lurk for food.” That’s how muskellunge and northern pike make a living. Their bodies are built for quick bursts of speed, torpedoes that ambush their unsuspecting prey, mostly other fishes. Their penchant for piscivory is legend. They are meat eaters, starting at an early age. Their toothy chops should be evidence enough.
Pike and muskie get the attention of anglers and fisheries managers at state fish and wildlife agencies particularly over of much of the upper Midwest, Great Lakes, and the Northeast where they naturally occur. Their hybrid offspring, commonly known as tiger muskie, possess the similar traits and likability. But they grow faster that either parent, and they also grow big—up to 50 pounds. They take an angler’s offering such as a big plug or a fat streamer and lend themselves to the joyful pursuit just as much as a northern or a muskellunge. But they possess a trait their parents do not: they are sterile.
Tiger muskie occur occasionally in nature where the two species overlap, such upper Great Lakes states, where they spawn in weedy shallows shortly after ice-out. The hybrid offspring lose the ability to reproduce and for that reason the tiger muskie afford two things: the potential to increase angling opportunities and a predatory fish useful for fishery managers.
“We use sterile fish to improve angling opportunities, as biological control measures such as to rid waters of unwanted fish, and limit establishment of populations through illegal fish introductions,” said Robert Shields, Research Coordinator with the Utah Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife Resources. “Stocking sterile fish protects native species in drainages connected to our reservoirs.”
Shields and his colleagues recently took a deeper look into how to best produce sterile tiger muskie at the agency’s hatcheries. Using federal excise tax dollars paid by tackle manufacturers as well as motorboat fuel tax through the Dingell-Johnson Act, the Utah biologists confirmed through a controlled experiment that the hybrid offspring of female northern pike bred with male muskellunge produced young that were much less cannibalistic in the confined setting of hatchery runways or ponds, than were the offspring of the reciprocal cross of female muskellunge to male pike.
Shields and his colleagues recently published their research findings. And while what they learned is certainly applicable to angling and fisheries management in Utah, the information has utility in the more than 25 states that have tiger muskie fisheries.
