Is this place easy to find? I've never been there…

FF was cool as always,and the kids had a pretty good time.Met some people and had a fair amount of interest in the muskies.
I do have a question. If those muskies in the show pond are tigers,which
they appear to be,where did they come from? Or,..are they just that old(1991?).

Well, Saturday afternoon it rained like Noah's Flood, and still there were a fair number of people there. I can't imagine what it might be like with good weather!

MMA needs to make some new display boards, since the ones we were using got quite soggy and sad looking in the wetness. I can help with this when the time comes. We have a 36" plotter at work we can put to use when no one's looking, and some graphics skillz… I suggest laminating them. 🙄

The Wolf Lake Hatchery was extremely interesting; I talked to a few DNR people and learned about their fancy boom-shocker rig (a Smith-Root I think?) and how it worked; a Fyke net, and how it worked; saw the trucks they use to deliver fish to the lakes they're stocking (did you know they use the boil-off from a liquid oxygen dewar to aerate the big truck's tank while in transit?), and we (Jim tenHaaf, Ken Murray's nephew, and I) got a Blue Ribbon tour of the muskie hatchery from Scott (something? I've forgotten his last name) who was extraordinarily nice, and patiently answered all my dumb questions. We spent quite a long time in there. Did you know that a low concentration of salt added to their water can reduce a muskie fingerling's stress level? Or that they can and do predate on each other when they're all about the same size, and the one's that do get larger significantly faster than the ones' that don't? We could readily find ones with one of their sibling's caudal fins sticking out of their mouth! And even though they were mostly 2.5-3.5" long and about as thick as a pencil (or so) now, by this fall when they're released they'll be 11-16" long! 😯 They were going to be released into a pond with some fathead minnows in it for them to munch on fairly soon, Scott said. I could spend days there just looking around, asking questions, and being a pain… 😀

They also have a "pond" which they were allowing kids to try C&R fishing in, and even though it was raining and hard to see, I could easily spot plenty of 1-2 foot trout, several 30-odd-inch pike and muskies suspending about 3' down, and one which looked like an almost completely black tiger… Very odd! Reportedly they have a 7-foot sturgeon in there too, but it was not visible given the weather conditions.

Ken's nephew took some pics of the hatchery with Ken's camera, and I hope he posts them soon… (hint, hint!).

Good job, men!
Glad to hear the little toothies are doing well!

So what about the tigers(show pond)?? Any thoughts? Anyone??

"kid coulson" said:

I do have a question. If those muskies in the show pond are tigers,which
they appear to be,where did they come from? Or,..are they just that old(1991?).

I think they got those in 99, I'm not sure from where though (Iowa maybe). They had too many in the show pond and transferred most (18) to Thornapple, in 2001. Angler reports started coming back about tigers in Thornapple and only then did the DNR realize they weren't pure muskies they put into Thornapple – oops!!