Page 68 - 2022 Lake St Clair Guide

look forward to a
full report by 2023 Jan-Michael Hessenauer, Ph.D.
on the findings! Lake St. Clair Fisheries Research
This season, he Station Michigan
said they plan on DNR
“James” Swims Detroit River tagging perch.
to Buffalo NY and Back! Jan-Michael
along with sever-
More and more fish tagging is taking place al other biologists
around the Great Lakes including Lake wrote a very detailed scientific re-
St. Clair. Since 2016, the DNR, along port on the Muskie tagging findings.
with other federal agencies have been You may read the full report by
monitoring Muskie movement on both the emailing Jan-Michael (info end of
U.S. and Canadian side. The Muskie are article) which includes much more
data and maps.
I summarized a few nug-
Brad Ultrup gets of information I thought
Michigan DNR would be interesting to
Fisheries share on the Muskie move-
ments.
58 Muskie were tracked
from 3 months to 42 months.
Data showed from 1/4 mile
to 8/10ths of mile average
daily travel with a high and quently returned to their original tag-

low of 1.7 miles and only 138’. ging area regardless of the season.
Most movement was in the Fall One fish, nicknamed James be-
with least in the Winter. cause of his tag number 007, amaz-
Muskie tagged in southern ingly traveled from his original tagging
Lake St. Clair Canadian wa- location in the Detroit River all the way
ters mostly stayed in their area to Buffalo, NY during the summer of
(Thames River / Belle River), 2016. By January 2017, James was
Note the incision in the belly. however a low percent of the back in the Michigan waters of Lake
Belle River Erie, and in May 2017 was only a few
Muskie did Receivers planted to
surgically implanted with an travel the monitor tagged fish
acoustic transmitter that pings Rozen Detroit Riv-
a unique code. As you can from Ohio er into Lake
see from the map, there are in July Erie.
hundreds of receiving locations Musk-
around the Great Lakes. ie tagged in
According to our local DNR Anchor Bay
Biologist, Jan-Michael Hes- spent 70% of
senauer, Ph.D. at the Lake their time in
St. Clair Fisheries Research Lake St. Clair
Station, there has been an with a 50/50
increase in Lake St. Clair split between
receivers since 2020 from Michigan &
12 to 40! They are in a grid Ontario wa-
pattern roughly 3 miles apart ters. All the
throughout the U.S. and Ca- Muskie fre- hundred yards from where he had been
nadian waters. captured the year before by Belle Isle
Besides Muskie, the DNR – a stealthy round trip of at least 620
tagged 46 Smallmouth Bass miles! Remarkably, James has done
last season, a split between this three times! and he is still providing
Anchor Bay and our Mile scientists with data on his movements.
Roads area. Data is collect- The DNR would also like to thank
ed and reported on roughly every 15 the Muskie clubs on both the U.S.
months. Jan-Michael
reported the Small-
mouth population the
last 5+ years has
been stable. We will
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