Northwest Fishing Reports

I made some inquiries to a group called "Friends of Greenlake" regarding Muskies in Green Lake (King County). Told Muskiehunter I would let all know the answers when I got them..

From Ellen at Friends of Greenlake:
"Hi Mark, I forwarded your request to the officers of Friends of Green Lake, and they forwarded the request for information to Bruce Bolding of the Washington Fish and Wildlife Service. Bruce doubted there were any muskies left, although about a year ago I saw a huge one from the dock at East Green Lake Beach...
Best regards, Ellen"

From Bruce at DFW:
"The only planted fish are rainbow trout... There are no tiger muskies left in the lake and probably very few channel catfish. WDFW has not been able to obtain any catfish from our past supplier for two years.
Bruce"

That's no good. I know they dump in a ridiculous amount of rainbows in it, so those muskies would have such a great food supply...

Hey Sam,
From what I understood from what Bruce Boldin has said.The reason for putting Musky in Green Lake 6 years ago was to try to eliminate the carp population. Apparently the last time it was shocked no Muskies were brought up. But seeing Gringo's carp he has caught there are still some carp in the lake. And yes, the trout are plentiful in Green lake from what I hear and have seen on this website that is good for the folks around the Seattle metro area to catch. But I would not be suprised if there are a few Muskies in the lake that just got missed by the shock. The other thing I don't understand is this catfish fettish around here...uhm...If some one does see a Musky get a picture or if one is caught please photo and release it please..don't kill it!! See yah! Thanks for the info Gringo..now go catch a carp!!

Yea well the folks at Green Lake are pretty much all catch and keep. Not to be racist but a lot of non-english fishermen there that would keep and eat anything really...Which is too bad that they can't keep a good population of tigers...

WDFW planted 150 tiger muskie fingerlings in Green Lake in 2000 to eat the carp. They didn't like the carp and ate the trout instead, so there were no more plants. WDFW biologists estimate mortality at 65% in the first year and then 35% annually. This rule of thumb calculation produces a figure of 4 survivors at the present time. Of course, that's only a back-of-the-hand estimate and doesn't tell you how many muskies are actually in the lake. My guess is none, although there might be a couple still there. Good luck finding them. It's a waste of time, effort, and expense to fish Green Lake for muskies because your odds of catching one are nil. The same situation exists at Red Rock Lake in Grant County and Fazon Lake in Whatcom County, both of which received tiger muskie plants more than 5 years ago; it's improbable any still live in those waters, and there's certainly not a fishable population. I put Green Lake in the same category.

Sam Kafelafish wrote:Yea well the folks at Green Lake are pretty much all catch and keep. Not to be racist but a lot of non-english fishermen there that would keep and eat anything really...Which is too bad that they can't keep a good population of tigers...

I hear ya man. Pine Lake and Beaver Lake have tons of those guys. I see them keeping three and four inch bass and perch.

Of course I can't (and won't) speak for all, but many of those non-english fishermen are fishing for food and or custom. In many countries, fishing for sport is unheard of.

Whenever I am fishing, I try to at aleast say "HI" if not make conversation with people around me, and in doing so have learned alot, and not all about fishing. I have met quite a few who are literally fishing for their family's (or their own) dinner because they cannot afford to buy fish in the store. I have met as many or more that in their country of origin, fishing is for survival either in food directly to their table or to trade or sell for $$. Because of this, they have no concept of "resource management". For instance, a friend of my wife's is from Belguim (I think), anyway, they were walking in a park and she commented on how she cannot believe all the ducks, she said "in my country, they would have all been caught and cooked".

Now if say I am fishing Greenlake, and I catch a Trout or Muskie, it is going right back into the water - no matter who is around, if someone doesn't understand my logic, I will gladly tell em why I threw it back and hope that some of my logic rubs off or at least gets them thinking. But if I catch a Carp, which I know there are many, and I know they are a problem, then I will offer it up to anyone around.

This post is not to try and start a debate. I am not saying anybody is right or wrong, just relating a little of what I learned saying hello to my neighbors. Sometimes things (and people) are not what they seem.

Yes I agree with what you said Gringo. They do fish for sustenance and because of that, they take more then they should. I see guys all the times at small Lake Washington docks with a 5 gallon bucket just jammed full of perch. Most are just a few inches, leading me to wonder if there is even a bite's worth of meat on those fish. I understand they are fishing for food for their families, but it's still breaking the law and I think that it does have a significant impact on our fisheries.

Sam Kafelafish wrote:Yes I agree with what you said Gringo. They do fish for sustenance and because of that, they take more then they should. I see guys all the times at small Lake Washington docks with a 5 gallon bucket just jammed full of perch. Most are just a few inches, leading me to wonder if there is even a bite's worth of meat on those fish. I understand they are fishing for food for their families, but it's still breaking the law and I think that it does have a significant impact on our fisheries.

There isnt a size/daily limit on perch in Lake WA...

I know about the size limit on perch. I am just amazed at the size of the fish they keep...

people from other states use to go to minnesota and catch tons of bullheads, perch, and other panfish, to bring them back home filling their freezers. that was back in the 70's and the limits were high, now due to the over fishing the limits have been drastically limited to what they once were. as with all resources humans seem to use to much!

gpc wrote:

Sam Kafelafish wrote:Yes I agree with what you said Gringo. They do fish for sustenance and because of that, they take more then they should. I see guys all the times at small Lake Washington docks with a 5 gallon bucket just jammed full of perch. Most are just a few inches, leading me to wonder if there is even a bite's worth of meat on those fish. I understand they are fishing for food for their families, but it's still breaking the law and I think that it does have a significant impact on our fisheries.

There isnt a size/daily limit on perch in Lake WA...

Maybe if you see these guys catching the buckets of perch send them down towards American Lake. It could use a good cleansing of the bazillions of 5 inch perch there..I certainly would not be offended.

Or maybe for you musky guys sake they could be devoured up by some tigers if the WDFW would stick them in there???

[quote="Don Wittenberger"]WDFW planted 150 tiger muskie fingerlings in Green Lake in 2000 to eat the carp. They didn't like the carp and ate the trout instead, so there were no more plants. WDFW biologists estimate mortality at 65% in the first year and then 35% annually. This rule of thumb calculation produces a figure of 4 survivors at the present time. Of course, that's only a back-of-the-hand estimate and doesn't tell you how many muskies are actually in the lake. My guess is none, although there might be a couple still there. Good luck finding them. It's a waste of time, effort, and expense to fish Green Lake for muskies because your odds of catching one are nil. The same situation exists at Red Rock Lake in Grant County and Fazon Lake in Whatcom County, both of which received tiger muskie plants more than 5 years ago]

Don, I would agree with you on what the numbers MAY indicate.But then too, sometimes you can't screw with mother nature. I bet though that if all of a sudden a few Musky were caught at Green Lake then that would move the scientific numbers asque. I guess we will just have to see. I used to believe the 1 fish per 25 acre theory until I saw 4 Muskies in the same inlet at Tapps which was alot smaller than 25 acres. I am not trying to argue, just saying that at times...scientific numbers do not always add up...nature just takes over and blows those numbers away. And all it takes is one.. Todd:cheers:

Sam Kafelafish wrote:Or maybe for you musky guys sake they could be devoured up by some tigers if the WDFW would stick them in there???

Hi Sam,
I kinda agree with you...But a few hundred walleye would take care of the perch faster!! :bball:

Well I figured since you were a "muskyhunter" you would prefer that fish to target but if walleye works for you then thats good also!!

MH, it's important to understand what numbers like "X muskies per acre" and mortality percentages mean, and don't mean, before trying to apply them to real-world situations. These are statistical estimates based on a large number of observations in a great many different waters that provide a "typical" or "average" benchmark to use in deducing what may be going on where you're fishing. As in buying mutual funds, "past results are no guarantee of future performance," and like EPA mileage stickers on new cars, "your own results may vary."

I can't tell you how slippery these numbers are. The WDFW guys pretty consistently throw out "1/2 fish per acre" and I've pretty consistently told them I don't believe it's that high, I think it's closer to 1/4 fish per acre, based on what I see as a fisherman. But unless someone seines the whole lake and counts fins, nobody knows for sure. The statistical tools developed and refined by scientists have their place and are reasonably reliable for the purposes they're intended to be used for.

In any case, density or population estimates should never be interpreted to mean the fish are evenly distributed in the lake. They're not. As I pointed out in my article "Tiger Musky Strategies" written for washingtonlakes.com last year, a muskie angler needs to learn how to identify higher concentration and lower concentration areas. There is no reason why you can't have a bunch of muskies in one spot. I once saw two dozen stacked up in a small cove on a Minnesota lake. There was another time when I was bank fishing at North Twin Lake in Vilas County, Wisconsin -- a famous muskie lake known for its submerged bars and weedbeds. It was a windy day and all the guides and their clients fishing the bars and weed edges from boats were getting skunked. Meanwhile, I sat on a picnic table reeling in muskies like perch. The bank at that spot dropped off into 30 feet of water about 10 feet from shore, and it so happened all the muskies in the lake were feeding on that dropoff. All I had to do was bait up a live sucker, throw it into the water, let it swim to the bottom, and read a book until another customer swam into my store, which usually didn't take very long. I didn't tell those skunked guides or their clients how many muskies I caught that day. I didn't want them to feel bad.

But enough of anecdotes. Muskies like some areas better than others. That's a given. So, let's say Tapps is a 2,300-acre lake with a density of 1/4 fish per acre which yields an estimated 575 muskies. It's very possible 75% of them will be in 25% of the lake. There's no reason why 10 of them can't be on the same log or weedbed. As I said above, part of a muskie angler's education is learning how to identify these high-percentage areas, and knowing which areas to skip over. You'll definitely catch more muskies if you concentrate your efforts on the areas most likely to hold muskies. If you put in your time, chances are you'll experience a few days when you run into concentrations of them and rack up multiple-fish days of the unbelievable sort like that day I had on North Twin years ago.

So, when we toss around numbers like 1/4 fish per acre and 575 muskies in the lake, those are just rough parameters to help us analyze a lake's potential and give us a starting point for figuring out where the muskies may be right now. Then you plug in factors like weather, time of day, feeding windows, boat traffic, water clarity and depth, temperature, time of year, etc. and make educated guesses about what lures to use, how deep and fast you should fish them, and where you should fish them.

Of course, as you already know, nothing beats that feeling of satisfaction you get when a fish tells you by slamming your lure that you put the puzzle together correctly!