Michigan Muskie Alliance

With a couple new lakes on the western lake shore, I figured I'd help inform what is going on around these lakes, and maybe start some dialogue about how MMA can get involved in the future with these fisheries. With the right habitat I feel these new lakes can thrive, and will have nearly enough natural fish to eventually reduce the burden on the hatchery, freeing up resources for even more population restoration projects.

First is Mona Lake, they even put a helpful little blurb on their site about muskies (including a pic of one of our more outspoken old members )
Also check out the links throughout their site under the threats to the watershed, and special projects

http://www.monalakewatershed.org/index. ... l-projects

Muskegon Lake's website isn't that great, but there are numerous areas of concern they are working on. There is a little info on what they have done and what they want to do under the "Our Work" heading. Ill also throw out the Wild Rice plan, and how that went. It started as a failure in somewhat humorous fashion, but from the people I have talked to, is something they aggressively want to succeed in restoring to the watershed.

http://muskegonlake.org/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=29

http://www.mrwa.org/project-wildrice.htm

White lake. It seems as though they are nearly finished with the cleanup of White Lake, but there is certainly some shoreline restoration that can still be done. This past year there was some major dredging and removal of excessive and contaminated sediment near the mouth of the river. The new focus is cleaning the name/image of the lake, now that the cleaning of the lake is nearly complete.

http://www.epa.gov/grtlakes/aoc/whitelake/index.html

With the new opportunities for us to fish, these are also some excellent opportunities for the MMA to get involved. With the new regulations this year, the preservation of fish populations is in place, and maybe this is an opportunity for us to put the restoration and education parts of the mission statement into action?!?!

vano397 wrote:and maybe this is an opportunity for us to put the restoration and education parts of the mission statement into action?!?!

JP - Can you make some contacts and see if we can provide help as well as provide information for their websites concerning the restoration of muskellunge in these waters?

Would it make sense to put some Know the Difference signs on all of these rivermouth lakes? I can see them being caught on J-plugs each fall.

tundrawalker00 wrote:Would it make sense to put some Know the Difference signs on all of these rivermouth lakes? I can see them being caught on J-plugs each fall.

Absolutely makes sense......although they may not be needed just quite yet for the new additions, there are the roamers and natives. I'd be willing to make rounds and help figure out where they will be seen by the most anglers. There are several launches for most of these waters.

All of them will be done.

After trying to contact most of these groups, the muskegon lake watershed partnership is the only one that ever responded, She was pretty interested in our stake in Muskegon Lake. Anyhow, it's been a while and haven't heard anything from her, and then I saw this article today: http://www.9and10news.com/story/3098504 ... sh-habitat
I'll contact her and find out the specifics of the plan to see if it is something which will be of benefit to recruitment of muskies. Either way it might be something interesting to follow in case there is something we can help with.

Here is a response from a while back about what this funding is going to accomplish:
"By the way, I was involved in a wild rice planting that began in Muskegon Lake in 2000. It was a cool project. The rice grew, but the waterfowl ate it up before a self-sustaining population could establish. We are continuing to soften the shoreline, and will be hydrologically reconnecting Bear Creek to Bear Lake and Muskegon River to the lagoons in Veterans Memorial Park in the coming year or two. We are also coordinating a Muskegon Lake "sawmill debris/marine debris" habitat investigation and restoration project."
We had discussed the wild rice planting, and its connection with muskies in other parts of the state. Unfortunately not enough people shoot Geese I guess!