Musky Adoption News
Now is a great time to adopt a Chippewa Flowage musky. Why? Because the 2016-year class has grown up but still has many orphans available to adopt.
Up until this point adoptive parents have had to be patient. Few adopted musky have been recaptured. Young, immature muskies are just too spread out to be taken in large numbers in DNR surveys.
“Things are different now”, said Larry Damman, Chair of the Friends Into Spooner Hatchery (FISH). “Their carefree days of childhood are over,” As adults they gather each spring to spawn and perpetuate the species. DNR can easily capture them in nets set in their spawning habitats. Fish adopted in the past are going to start showing up. Musky adopted from this point on may already have a capture history ready report.
This year Chippewa Flowage will supply all the musky eggs for the Governor Thompson Hatchery. Hatchery crews will capture a lot of musky. They only take a few eggs from each fish to maintain good genetic diversity in the lakes to be stocked.
If they catch your fish”, Damman said, ”we can tell you how much it has grown, if it’s a boy or a girl and estimate how many grand babies you’ll have swimming in lakes all over northwest Wisconsin.
In addition, DNR fish management begins a muskie population estimate this spring. Getting a good estimate requires catching a lot more muskies than the hatchery needs for spawn, thus increasing the chances of having your adoptee found.
Don’t be too disappointed if you adopted a younger fish from the 2019 age class. Some of the boys are adults now and more importantly the population estimate is a 2 year process. Fish management crews will be back in 2024 to catch as many musky as possible to complete the population estimate. All of the 2019 class will be adults by then.
Now you can adopt your own musky that was released into the Chippewa Flowage during the fall of either 2016 or 2019. The Dept. of Natural Resources (DNR) fisheries teams and others, regularly sample/survey the Chippewa Flowage fish populations. Once muskies are captured by nets or electrofishing, the fish are scanned for PIT tags that may have been inserted into the fish on previous surveys or upon stocking. Other data is collected like sex and lengths. If adopted fish are recaptured, we will reach out to the adoptee with the collected information. Results are found below:
If your fish is among those captured, you can view its progress by looking up its PIT tag when we post it online each year. Learn more about Chippewa Flowage muskies.
To print your form go here: Adoption Form
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