This post is meant to answer CPrince's inquiries, not reflect on Matt's outing idea.
cprince wrote:HEX wrote:Sorry, but I'm with horsehunter on this one. It's a cash tournament any way you slice it. In my opinion, muskies don't deserve that kind of pressure.
"This is the post that got me thinking... Why?!
What makes a muskie more special than a bass or a trout or a pike?
Are they THAT unique? That rare?"
Of the popular gamefish in North America - bass (smallmouth and largemouth), walleye, pike, sunfish and panfish, etc. - muskies are amongst the rarest fish in a system. They have very low densities compared to other fish, perhaps some exceptions being sturgeon and salmonids (e.g., Atlantic salmon). Healthy populations often have less than one individual per acre of water.
"They are stocked... right?"
In this area? No. The Ottawa, St. Larry, Rideau, Kawarthas, etc. are sustained via natural reproduction. To my knowledge there is no supplementary stocking occurring. Areas in the States (like my homestate of Illinois), however, stocking sustains all of the lakes with muskies in them.
"Is their habitat disappearing any more than that of a pike or trout?"
Perhaps not, but muskies are highly susceptible to habitat degradation, moreso than pike.
What other freshwater fish (not anadromous salmon) in Canada grows larger than muskies? The answer? Sturgeon. Do sturgeon follow your lures to the boat and strike them at your feet in the figure 8? Do they cause cardiac arrest when obliterating a topwater bait in glass calm conditions? Do they possess teeth that could shred your hands in the blink of an eye? I'm pretty sure the answers are no (but if they are "yes" to any of the above questions... I guess I need to move to the Fraser!). In a nutshell, muskies are apex predators that, for many people, command the utmost respect largely because of their size and odd behaviours, and they signify the most difficult gamefish for many people to tackle.
I just watched four kids today COMPLETELY ENTHRALLED with a big fish we electroshocked. None of them had ever seen anything that large before. Their eyes were as big as a doe's in a set of high-beams (mine were, too). The kids recounted their largest fish as we recorded data from the muskie, and every one of them seemed disappointed that they had not caught something as big as what we were releasing. I'm not sure those kids are hooked for life on muskie fishing, but I know for sure that what they witnessed made a truly lasting impression on them. Personally, every muskie that I catch and photograph makes a lasting impression on me. When they filter through on my screen saver I can recount incredibly minute details of the catch. I cannot with my bass photos.
Hopefully I helped paint a picture of how specialized muskie anglers view the species (via personal experience and through my research), and hopefully I clarified a few things from your original post. Every fish is a blessing, right down to the Johnny Darters, but muskies appear to have "it" that other species don't (call them charismatic megafauna if you want to).
