Musky Research

Fish Study Goes High Tech April 13, 2011 Reporter: Patrick McMurtry Videographer: Brad Rice

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EYEWITNESS ONLINE WEBCAST VIDEO

No matter where you go on North Bend Lake, there's a good chance there's a big ol' musky swimming somewhere in the general vicinity. Thanks to an ongoing research project by the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, you're about to get a lot better idea of where these magnificent fish might be.

Scott Morrison, a DNR fisheries biologist, heads up a musky research project on the lake. "This is the receiver and it will record any of the musky that we have tagged that come close to this and currently we have 18 musky that have internal tags in them and this will record the date and time the fish comes close to it."

The DNR has 6 receivers spread out across this lake and each can pick up musky swimming between 100 yards and half a mile away. So far they've picked up 300 thousand hits on the receivers.

"This is a three year old male and it's in great shape. We're going to put this guy back in the lake and pretty soon it will contribute to the musky research."

This is pretty interesting. These monitors are tied to cables on the bottom of the lake. Scott picks them up, plugs them into a USB cable, and the data goes straight to his computer.

"We have a couple of reasons we're doing this study, to find out what parts of the lake the musky prefer, and we're monitoring to see if any get through the dam. We're also finding out where the musky are spawning." says Morrison.

Although they've only been doing this study for about a year, Scott says they've already got crucial information, information you'll want if you like to fish for musky.

"When the lake turns over in October, when the oxygen levels dropped, all the fish moved upstream, some other interesting things we've found, in the spring they move to the upper two thirds of the lake, and in the summer and winter they're in the lower third." says Morrison.

So get your gear ready and your boat to the launch, now you know where these elusive fish, the fish of 10,000 casts, might just be waiting for your lure.

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