PIT TAGGING:

Our 2020 PIT Tagging program went extremely well. We added several new  bodies of water and couple more people to our PIT Tagging crew of anglers. In total for 2020 alone we  tagged 86 Muskies and we recaptured an additional 21 fish that had already been tagged either this year  or past years. Which is kind of an eye opener in and of itself right, 1 of every 5 fish caught by these  anglers this year have already been caught by someone with Pit tagging capabilities. Keep in mind this is  the very first year our Pit taggers have been able to Tag bodies of water like: Sand, Island, Round, Long,  Chain, Mccann, Amacoy, Potato, Clear, Dairyland, and Fireside. Joe Heil has completed data entry for all  of this year’s tagging and forwarded the information to Joseph Gerbyshak.

PIT tagging research

HABITAT IMPROVEMENTS:

The club is attempting to get approval to install Danger Shallow  Water Buoys on Lake Wissota’s Yellow River bar as well as Larson’s Point. We feel this will be money  well spent to increase the safety of all boaters on the water. I am sure most of you have seen the big  wakeboard boats, pleasure boaters, and pontoons motor half-plane across these extremely shallow  water areas and hit bottom or have seen all the skeg marks on the bottom with your Side Imaging units.  We also hope that by warning these boaters of these shallow water areas and deterring traffic across  them that it will also give weeds a better chance at coming back and providing much needed fish habitat  in these areas.

If we can get approval by the townships and the DNR we would purchase the buoys and hardware and  be responsible for putting them in out in the spring and taking them out in the fall. We have already spoken with the DNR rec warden and are now in the process of reaching out to the townships involved  to try to move things forward.

STOCKING:

We are still running the gauntlet contacting every Fish Hatchery we can get on the phone  trying to convince them that growing musky for us through the DNR’s Aquaculture bill. Aquaculture Bill  Muskies are the only Genetically verified Muskies that the DNR will allow to be stocked North of hwy 10  in Wisconsin, currently there are zero hatcheries on board and willing to work with this DNR program to  grow these fish. We have approval right now to purchase 2000 of these fish to stock in our waters if we  can find a hatchery willing to grow them. We are going to continue to circle the wagon in hopes we can  get one of these hatcheries on board in time to grow fish to stock in 2021. Fingers crossed.

RESEARCH:

Local Biologists now have our additional Pit Tagged Fish database to better evaluate growth  rates and travel of muskies on a far wider range of our local area than they have in years past. Along  with recapture data on several DNR Tagged muskies our Pit Tag anglers have recaptured. The second  time a muskie is handled and identified via PIT Tag is where most of the valuable information is obtained  like growth rate from A to B capture etc.

Lake Wissota was mentioned in Feb/March 2021 Musky Hunter Article written by Jordan Weeks about  Leech Lake strain success rates on various bodies of water in Wisconsin and worth checking out if you  haven’t yet.