Fast facts:

• Musks can live up to 30 years
• Maximum length of a Muskie: 6 feet
• Maximum weight of a Muskie: around 70 pounds
• Trophy length: over 4 feet
• Trophy Weight: Over 40lbs
• Mature females tend to be larger than males, but mature and grow at a slower rate.

Musks are predatory fish that do not school and generally tend to stay out of sight of each other.

They typically lurk near rocky drop-offs or sandbanks in the middle of lakes, along beds of brush or other vegetation, and in murky waters near shorelines that are lined with overhanging trees. They prefer larger lakes with deep and shallow basins and large beds of aquatic plants.

They have a typical ambush predator design, elongated body, flat head, and tail fins set far back on the body.

The stealthy muskie hunts waiting motionless. When a fish swims past (any fish, including other muskrats), it attacks, impaling the prey with its large canine teeth, spinning it around and swallowing it headfirst. Interestingly, the size of the fish a muskie eats seems to be related to the final size it can reach. As the fish grows, the size of its prey naturally varies more. Even if there are plenty of small fish available, a muskie may not be able to grow without large fish to eat. Muskrats, ducks, shrews, mice and frogs also appear from time to time in the stomach of muskrats.

A varied diet:

Muskellunges are known to have a varied diet. They will eat other musks and any fish they see, as well as ducklings, smaller muskrats, shrews, mice and frogs, and larger muskrats have been known to eat whole adult ducks. There is a report from a Wisconsin man in 1999 that he was dangling his feet in the water (not fishing), when a medium sized muskie swooped in and tried to swallow his toe. He ended up pulling the muskie out of the water and removing it from his foot. The foot required 66 stitches and he was eventually allowed to keep the fish, despite the illegal size and illegal fishing method.

This not recommended to use toes as bait.

Other facts about Muskelunges

Muskies and Pikes (or “Northers”) look very similar. The surefire way to tell a muskie from a northerner is to count the pores on the underside of the jaw: a muskie has six or more. A northerner has five or fewer.

The musk tiger (E. masquinongy x lucius or E. lucius x masquinongy) is a hybrid of the muskie and the northern pike. Hybrid males are almost invariably sterile, although females are sometimes fertile. Some hybrids are artificially produced and planted so that angles catch them. Tiger musks tend to be smaller than non-hybrid musks, but grow faster. The body is usually quite silvery and largely or entirely unspotted, but with indistinct longitudinal banding.

Although interbreeding with other pike species can complicate the classification of some individuals, zoologists typically recognize zero to three subspecies of muskellunge.

• The Great Lakes (spotted) muskellunge (Esox masquinongy masquinongy) is the most common variety in and around the Great Lakes basin. The spots on the body form oblique rows.
• The Chautauqua muskellunge (E. m. ohioensis) is known from the Ohio River system, Chautauqua Lake, Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence River.
• The clear or barred muskellunge (E. m. immaculatus) is most common in the inland lakes of Wisconsin, Minnesota, northwestern Ontario, and southeastern Manitoba.

Catch the Muskie:

If you want to catch a muskie, you’ll need a heavy baitcasting rod, a sizable level wind reel, 20 to 35 pound test line, a variety of artificial lures or live bait, and a lot of patience. Allow at least 20 minutes at each location before continuing; large fish are generally not very active.

It takes the average angler anywhere from 20 to 80 hours to catch a legal musk!

Musks are not generally food fish. As predatory fish, if the food fish in your region have small amounts of toxic substances in their systems, they will accumulate in much larger amounts in the muskellunges that feed on them. Before you eat a muskellunge, pay attention to the fishing advisories for the lake or state in which you’re fishing.

Threats to the Muskie:

The health and success of the muskellunge is highly dependent on the health and availability of the aquatic plants in its environment. Minnesota anglers are beginning to notice that some of their favorite “weed beds” seem to be disappearing, thus reducing the spawning grounds and hunting grounds of the muskrats they like to catch. Measures are being proposed, including greatly reducing the number of docks allowed on a lake shore, thereby reducing the human footprint on lakes.

The Muskie and Northern Pike are considered sport and trophy fish in Minnesota and are therefore valuable to the sport fishing community and the tourism economy, but overfishing harms the population of this reclusive fish.

So fish carefully and catch and release this fish to preserve its continued abundance in all of the Great Lakes.