Pictured above: A close-up of a muskellunge fingerling. About 4,300 muskie fingerlings will be stocked into Lake Champlain and the Missisquoi River on Monday evening by Vermont Fish & Wildlife.
The six-inch long muskie fingerlings are being provided through a cooperative effort by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. The fish are raised at NYDEC’s Prendergast Hatchery on Chautauqua Lake in western New York.
The stocking work is part of the Department’s ongoing Lake Champlain muskellunge restoration initiative, which began in 2008.
Muskellunge are native to Lake Champlain and once played an important role as the top predatory species in the lake.
Although the native Lake Champlain muskie population was once widespread, it began to decline in the 1970’s and is thought to have been extirpated completely from the lake following a paper mill spill in the Missisquoi River in the late 1970’s.
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Putting a piranhas in a fish tank. If you look at places were they were illegally. Introduced they wiped out all the salmon and trout. Johns river in newfoundland for example. So, it doesn’t look good for chaplains salmon and trout population who already have tough time competing with pike and bass.
That always seems to be the way… They introduce a non-native fish, which eats all the native fish. They try to restore the native fish by adding in a predator to eat the non-native fish. Instead, it eats the native fish because they are less aggressive. I knew someone who had a farm pond with sunfish. For some reason, he dropped a few goldfish in. They out-competed the sunfish. So he added a predatory fish (some kind of pike) that he caught elsewhere, expecting it to eat the goldfish. Instead, it developed a taste for sunfish. So he spent months trying to catch the predator fish.
Muskie we’re native to Lake Champlain unlike the Landlocked salmon, Brown trout and Rainbow trout, Browns and rainbows came from Europe.
Rainbow Trout are from Western US…
When will we learn to stop stocking fish that can reproduce that are not native to a water. Tiger Muskie, a cross between pike and muskellunge will do everything fisheries managers want the Muskie to do but never get overpopulated because they are sterile. If you put 1,000 in, that’s what you have. Same with other stocking, Tiger trout are a sterile cross between a brookie and a Brown, Splake between a Brookie and a Laker, Wipers are White Bass and Striped Bass…all sterile, all great sportfish and all useful for forage control. The best thing is that when their usefulness has passed, you simply stop stocking them and they die off.
Wow restocking a native YES NATIVE FISH! Good job!
Yes native fish that fell victim to mans carelessness great job I read the article lol when my kids are older I will take them there for a fish of a life time ?
I think this is great. I also think that some of these people can’t read. This was a native fish something people did wiped them out and now they are trying to put them back.
Many of the points made by the above commenters are valid in some instances and situations. However, they don’t apply here in this casse, and there’s no cause for concern. The masculine stocking program in Lake Champlain is a native species restoration effort. Lake Champlain, the site of the muskellunge stocking activities in Vermont, is the only New England water to which muskellunge are native. Look up Zaddock Thompson’s book a natural history of Vermont 1896-1856, published in the 1800s. Muskellunge have been described in Lake Champlain since at least the late 1700s. The native muskellunge population is thought to have been severely depressed and nearly lost around 1979 due to habitat loss and riverine pollution in the spawnimg grounds of the Missisquoi bay area. This is an important native species restoration program and is not similar to the St. Johns River situation that you’ve described in Maine. Muskellunge are part of this native fish community and has a role as an apex predator in that system. I’m the fisheries biologist responsible for this restoration program, and if you have any further questions I invite you to contact me at Shawn.good@vermont.gov.
I realized that writing that comment on the phone wasn’t the best thing as I couldn’t see the comment box too well, and I made a number of typos. Here’s a corrected version:
Many of the points made by the above commenters are valid in some instances and situations. However, they don’t apply here in this case, and there’s no cause for concern. The muskellunge stocking program in Lake Champlain is a native species restoration effort. Lake Champlain, the site of the muskellunge stocking activities in Vermont, is the only New England water to which muskellunge are native. Look up Zaddock Thompson’s book a natural history of Vermont 1796-1856, published in the 1800s. Muskellunge have been described in Lake Champlain since at least the late 1700s. The native muskellunge population is thought to have been severely depressed and nearly lost around 1979 due to habitat loss and riverine pollution in the spawning grounds of the Missisquoi bay and river area. This is an important native species restoration program and is not similar to the St. Johns River situation in Maine. Muskellunge are part of Lake Champlain’s native fish community and the species has a role as an apex predator in that system. I’m the fisheries biologist responsible for this restoration program, and if you have any further questions I invite you to contact me at shawn.good@vermont.gov.
Good Shawn Good. ??? that’s what high fives are made of. Good work
I read someplace on line that either NY or VT allows people to shoot pike and muskie with a gun from the shore. Is that true?
Yes Ray L, you can shoot all the fish you want from the shoreline in VT. Shoot away my friend. Shoot away.