Why smaller muskies are a good thing
Anglers encouraged about the future of the big fish

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By ERIC SHARP • FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER 313-222-2511 or ** you do not have permission to see this link **.

The first week of the muskellunge season has seen a lot of muskies caught in the Detroit area, including a 55-inch, 40-pounder taken from the Detroit River by an angler using a giant jig.

And although guide Jon Bondy's huge fish was impressive, what made a lot of anglers happy was seeing large numbers of 24- to 30-inch juveniles whose absence over the past couple of years had worried musky fanatics.

Mike Pittiglio, a charter guide who specializes in trolling for muskellunge on Lake St. Clair, said that though musky anglers still are taking many 25 pounds and up, "most of the fish we're getting now are smaller, and a lot are the 24- to 30-inch fish that we haven't seen many of in the past couple of years."

"A lot of us were a little worried about that because if you don't see small fish now, you won't see big ones in the future. But now it looks like we got a couple of good spawning years and Lake St. Clair will keep producing like it always has," he said.

Scott D'Eath, a member of the Michigan Ontario Musky Club, said that during the opening tournament last weekend, "We had 140 boats that were averaging about 12-15 fish a day. The biggest weighed in was 34.95 pounds, then an hour after the tournament ended one of the members got one that went 35.5. But it was really good to see the rebound in all the little guys they caught. That's our future."

The biggest fish I've heard of so far is the 55-incher that Bondy caught and released while jigging in the Detroit River with the big Bondybaits that he makes for this specialized form of angling. With a girth of 24 inches, its weight was estimated at 40-45 pounds. By fall that fish will near the 50-pound mark.

Unlike most Detroit-area anglers who troll Lake St. Clair for muskellunge, Bondy specializes in casting and jigging. And he said that although the average daily number of fish is smaller, "It's a lot more fun to catch them because you're holding the rod when the fish strikes and it feels like a truck hit it."

The average number of fish caught and released by trollers is six to 10 out of 10 to 15 that strike. For Bondy it's two to four caught and released for twice that number of strikes.

"Today, we hooked four and landed two," he said last week. "The day I caught the big one, we hooked nine and landed seven. That's a very good day when you're casting and jigging."

Bondy said his success rate increased markedly as he learned more about how muskellunge use the Detroit River, which is deeper than Lake St. Clair with a much more irregular bottom.

"We find a lot of fish drop back down into deeper water after spawning," he said. "What you want to locate is a drop-off near a spawning area. And I like the drops to be at an angle to the main river channel, like at the head of an island.

"The bottom also has to have a lot of clutter on the (fish-finder) screen. You want to see a mixture of fish like walleyes, drum and white bass. If the bottom is barren of (prey) fish, don't waste your time," he said. "Casting big plugs and bucktails is best when there's a chop on the water. Jigging with Bondybaits works best on flat calm days when you can't get them to hit a cast lure."

Bondy said muskellunge use the river below the Ambassador Bridge until about the middle of July, when they move back up into Lake St. Clair, probably because their prey base also has moved on.

Bondy has sold a number of his huge jigs, about the size of a yearling bass, to anglers who fish for big lake trout in northern Canadian lakes like Athabaska, Great Bear and Wollaston, and is getting interest from saltwater anglers around the world.

"It started a couple of years ago when one of my musky customers took some Bondybaits to Wollaston Lake and really did well on the lake trout. They were jigging in deep water, 90 feet or better, for fish that mostly feed on whitefish and burbot," he said.

"The whitefish mostly feed nose-down on the bottom, and the weighted Bondybaits looked just like them. Then the word started getting out, and since then I've sold hundreds of them to lodges all over northern Canada," he said.

Mike Thomas, a research biologist at the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Lake St. Clair laboratory, said that excellent numbers of muskellunge were caught, examined and released during trapping sessions aboard the RV Channel Catfish this spring.

And though a lot of big fish were examined, "We also saw that smaller groups in larger numbers than we've seen for a while, fish in the 24- to 30-inch range, fish that are four, five years old. That's a very good sign."