People are catching more muskies over time in the Chippewa Flowage!
People are catching more muskies over time in the Chippewa Flowage. This is demonstrated by the trend lines (black lines) for both the Muskies Inc. and Musky Hunt data going upward. These types of comparisons are always a little tricky because it’s tough to figure out how many anglers are actually fishing the Chip each year, particularly in the Muskies Inc. event. But we do know that the overall number of anglers is decreasing in the Muskies Inc. event over time, meaning that we have less anglers, and we’re still having more fish caught. So the catch rates are encouraging, but we’d like to see some more anglers coming back to that event! From what Cheryl has said, the Musky Hunt numbers have been pretty stable after the first few years, and we see a pretty strong increase in catch for that event. I found it to be interesting how the numbers caught tracked with each other over the last few years. When catch goes up in one event we often see the same increase in the other, same with when it dips.
We can also compare size, both average and maximum, over time for the two events. These also show the same pattern of increase over time (black trend lines), with maximum size increasing faster than the average. Combine all these trends and it paints a pretty positive picture of the future of this musky fishery. We’re catching more fish in these tournaments AND they are getting bigger. Catch and release probably plays a big role in both the size and numbers trends.
