Northwest Fishing Reports

There still seems to be a lot of misinformation and unwarranted hate towards Tigers floating around#-o

http://hunting-washington.com/smf/index ... 586.0.html

Is there anywhere I can find more studies done on Tiger Muskies such as diet, habitat, survivability? New Mexicos DFW? Michigans?

That's unfortunate that people feel that way... You've got about a half million lakes in the state with trout and bass, and maybe 6 with muskies. good grief. ( I don't even Muskie fish)

I'd like to try muskies. Looks like next year it might happen, but I'm so stuck on Bass and only Bass.

Thats a shame :/ I've wanted to do it for a while but haven't had the chance.

Its rather unfortunate that a few anglers still have this misinformed attitude.
The reality is tigers and trout would rarely cross paths but its easier for someone to blame poor
fishing on a top end predator. There are many diet studies done by WDFW that muskies are doing there job and eating the rough fish such as pikeminnows and tench. If I honestly thought that tigers were destroying trout and bass fisheries,then I to would probably have a pretty negative view but this just isn't the case. Tigers have done an excellent job of putting the pikeminnows in check while still providing a great fishing opportunity.
Its an uphill battle to inform and educate the general community but its getting better. There will always be a select few that will never get it and ignore the facts presented to them,since we can't legally smack some sense into them
or fix stupid,we are left with a response that might sound something like "Stay dumb and please don't reproduce"
Appreciate the info Teal

I Suppose I can understand the Tiger Hate. They are hard to catch when you want to, tear up tackle when you are not fishing for them.

On occasion, they may eat a precious trout, especially if it is injured and on the end of your line, or stringer.

They look scary.

They are new.

It is true that Newman and Silver don't get trout plants, in part due to the number of competing warm water species. Still, in most lakes, the trout do fine with Tigers, and I expect that when the rough fish are thinned down the trout may be planted again in Silver and Newman.

In Silver, the perch are larger then in many many years, and growing, mostly due to the Tigers. In Newman, the Bass, Crappie, and Perch are all starting to get larger, and the Carp fewer.

What so many people do not understand it the bio-mass concept of fisheries biology. You can have only so many pounds of fish in a lake. You can have a few very large fish, a lot of very small fish, a moderate amount of moderate sized fish, or, if you are lucky, a good distribution of sizes. No where does this model discriminate against species? And the overall poundage or bio-mass of a fisheries depends on how fertile the water system is.

With that in mind, do you want your alloted "poundage" in rough fish or game fish? If you want your poundage in game fish, which ones, stunted Bass and Perch or a few large Tigers and a distribution of Bass and Perch sizes.

Rainbow trout (Bow River California is there home) are no more native to our waters then are Bass. Sure, in some waters, there was Steelhead (no migrating Steelhead are now considered Rainbows), but these were in rivers and streams, not lakes. You had Red Bands that look like Rainbows, but they too are river or stream fish, not lakes. You had some West Slope Cutts, but again............ Getting old.

So, what did we have? Squawfish (or is that Northern Pikeminnows?), suckers, sculpin, and that is it for our Lakes. The exception was the Lakes that had rivers with unobstructed access to the ocean, and they had transient populations of the ocean running fish.

So, the question is, how do we educate fishermen? Time, effort, teach the young, and realize that some are just too old, too dump, and too stubborn to learn.

Wow, there are people in Washington that complain about Tiger Muskies because they might somehow effect the freaking trout population? Especially weird that a guy from Lake Stevens (which has both good trout and bass populations, not to mention Kokanee) cares so much about a lake 4 hours away.

Nicely done, Teal101.
Besides donating to the WDFW, having fun fishing for tigers and meeting other esox fans, one of the biggest things Chapter #57 does is maintain a booth at the Puyallup Sportsman Show every year. (Look for it in 2012!).
The booth volunteers have a great time giving good information and dispelling misinformation.

WA. Tiger Muskie Program: http://nwtigermuskies.com/app/download/ ... ogram+.doc