Just wondering how often you think an Individual fish will get caught in one season by anglers. Do we have any mark and recapture data on this? How often were the floy tagged fish in Ovid reported? I ask because I was listening to an interview with Mark Lijewski, who is obviously not a biologist, but has caught more muskies the I ever will and has a ton of experience on smaller WI lakes. Anyways, he said something to the effect that when a fish gets caught it is essentially done for the year, and that it is "very rare" for a fish to get caught multiple times in a season. I thought this was really strange because I would assume they get caught often, sometimes several times in a season. What do you think?
I don't believe a Muskie would be "done for the year," but I do think they would remember a negative experience/negative food reward enough to make them harder to catch for several months. I have read about studies done on other fish, especially bass at the Berkley Fish Research lab and they showed that bass could remember lures for up to three months and perhaps much longer. Fish see many different lures throughout the season and I could see a fish remembering a negative experience when it was hooked on say a double 10, but what would it think about a dawg, topraider, suick, etc? I'm sure all those lures stimulate a Muskie's prey response differently. The bass from the Berkley study only saw the same lure repeatedly so perhaps they learned it more quickly. I also read where they did a study on the learning curves of popular gamefish and determined that striped bass, carp, & channel cats were the smartest, with smallies & largies in the middle. Bluegill & pike were near the bottom, with perch being deemed to be untrainable. Another interesting study that was done was that bass allowed to freely strike a standardized minnow crankbait painted white, black, or one of the colors of the rainbow showed slightly less inclination to strike red and orange lures but otherwise displayed little variation in color preference. However, a two-toned silver & black lure scored markedly higher with nearly double the strikes versus any other color. I know you can't compare one species of fish directly to another, but some interesting studies nonetheless.
That's a pretty bold statement by Mark. Knowing that I've caught the same fish just weeks apart on several occasions would lead me to believe that not all fish have the same response… maybe the fish are just smarter in WI.
I don't have all the recapture data from Ovid but some were caught more than once in the same year and if I remember right there was one caught three times within two years after tagging.
I can't comment on muskies, but I do know from experience bass will remain in the same area and can be caught again if the weather stays stable. I remember two days in a row where I found the bass bunched up and caught many of them twice. I could see the hook marks in their mouths from the previous day.
Good thing mark isn't a biologist.. like will said there has been a lot of pics floating around over time with people that have caught the same fish weeks apart.
If his theory would be correct, most of our inland lakes would be horrific in the fall because of the good amount of fish that are caught in the previous 6 months. Yet fall is some of the best fishing we have typically.
Muskies often eat out of reaction strikes so I don't know how his theory can hold any water
I remember a study on a controlled small pike lake in Europe where they caught nearly all of them once on a certain lure, then only a couple again on the same lure with the rest never going for it again, at least through the rest of whatever length of time this was monitored. They caught them repeatedly on live bait not surprisingly, showing no conditioning to that. My gut feeling is a predator fish can be caught again on a different lure before long after a good release, but not on the same lure for a very long time if ever, and on the same live bait multiple times though I'd think a musky released after taking a sucker may not go for a sucker of the same approximate size and presentation for a while afterwards, who knows how long.
I think Michigan fish are smarter than anywhere based on scientific studies I conduct on fishing vacations out of state, including in Wisconsin.
I caught a Muskie on Austin almost a dozen times in one year on a a GPS mark point ( called him Fish 240 for the gps marker). It is the same spot that produced fish on it since 2010. I think it was 2012 when I caught a fish on a separate mark 173-this fish hit a wabul and kinda missed. The rear 2 hooks were imbedded in the top of the fish, right side resulting in a 6-8 inch gash- it was deep enough to the point I thought it would not live. I clipped the fin and let him go. Less than a week later it shows up with the gash at 240. I caught that fish multiple times, sometimes several times a week until 2014. His mouth was getting pretty beat up but it was definitely a mean SOB, if you threw anything in its area,it was going to hit it. I am pretty sure Adam and a few others here have caught that fish when out with me. On a positive note, I have been hammering a few different fresh ones close to 240, several slightly larger than that old boy who never grew past 39" or so, but he was the fish that made me look like I knew what I was doing to those I fished with :-).
Austin and the area lakes are 82 + lately, now that baseball is done, cant wait to start my fishing season!
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