Researcher Bernard LeBeau prepares to insert a radio transmitter into one of his research subjects.
September 11, 2024
By Steve Ryan
During the early 1990s, In-Fisherman published two notable articles authored by avid muskie angler and historian Larry Ramsell . The articles appeared in the November 1991 and February 1992 magazine issues. They contained a host of novel observations regarding 20 large muskies that ranged in size from 18 to 45 pounds and were implanted with radio telemetry transmitters on the renowned muskie fisheries of Eagle Lake and Lake Wabigoon.
The project was conducted as part of Bernard LeBeau’s doctorate degree program at the University of Toronto. Based on Ramsell’s involvement with the study, he offered findings regarding the home-range feeding and digestion ranges of muskies, along with the size and characteristics of those ranges, the aggregation habits of large muskies, and how location affects catchability.
While so much valuable fishing information is currently available online, there are occasions—such as the present—where valuable data are limited to print publications, ripe to be revisited with new perspectives based on today’s knowledge and technology. By revisiting Ramsell’s works, today’s muskie anglers can break from past misconceptions and become more efficient in their pursuit of trophy muskies.
Ramsell cautioned in the first article: “Scientists will tell you that different people may interpret the same facts differently.” As such, to maximize that effect and allow readers to formulate their own conclusions regarding Ramsell’s findings, large portions of the articles are restated here.
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Setting the basis for his findings, Ramsell started his discussion by noting his standing in the project:
“I’m not a scientist, nor am I writing a scientific paper. In this case, I helped gather information and analyze results. Based on my experience and background, I’ll suggest what I felt was happening as we gathered data and made observations throughout my months of tracking. My experience adds the angler’s viewpoint to the scientist’s, not just after the fact, but during the course of the study.
“As an angler, my objectives during the tracking work were to determine home ranges, preferred habitat, effects of weather, and where, when, and what muskies eat. I had the most fun following Connie, one of the biggest fish, a 54½-inch 40-pound-plus female. I’ll mostly describe the activity of the largest muskies tracked,” Ramsell wrote. What follows next are excerpts from portions of his November 1991 article.
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Larry Ramsell hoists a 44-pound 4-ounce beauty caught near a small offshore island on the edge of a deep basin. Home Range Ramsell: Several studies have documented that muskies use a preferred home range during summer. Bodies of water studied have ranged in size from 87 to 9,204 acres:
Nogies Creek and Stony Lake, Ontario—small shallow, weedy waters. Home range varied from 1 to 18 acres, as described by John Minor and Dr. Crossman (1978). Moose Lake and Black Lake, Wisconsin—small stained-water lakes where home ranges encompassed 1/2 to 68½ acres, according to Dr. Mike Dombeck (1979). Okoboji Lake, Iowa—deep, clear, weedy natural lake with suspended forage. Home ranges varied from 96 to 1,095 acres, averaging 360, based on a study by Marlyn Miller and Dr. Bruce Menzel (1986). Larger bodies of water have been studied, with somewhat different results. Leech Lake, Minnesota—a 112,000-acre lake with deep-water habitat and many shallow flats. During summer, home ranges averaged 1,630 acres and varied from 494 to 2,324 acres (one home range of 8,405 acres was excluded from the mean). (Bob Strand, 1986). Lake St. Clair, Michigan—274,281 acres of shallow, relatively flat basin. Seasonal movements of 25 miles were not uncommon. (Robert Hass, 1978). These results suggest that the larger the lake, the larger the home range. Baitfish size, species, and quantity could also affect the size of home ranges. If forage is abundant, home ranges could theoretically be smaller because fish wouldn’t have to travel to find food.
BOMBSHELL #1 —While this theory makes sense, I found something quite different. I believe the large muskies in Eagle and Wabigoon lakes (excluding the smaller males) established two summer home ranges. This itself isn’t new. A 1979 In-Fisherman article reported that according to a paper by Crossman and Minor, two fish in their Stony Lake study (Kawartha Lakes region of central Ontario) each had two home ranges during summer.
Some of the fish we studied displayed a different strategy. One of their two home ranges was a deep feeding area, proportionally larger with the increasing size of the fish. Not earthshaking. It’s widely recognized that muskies sometimes feed in deep water. But I discovered that deep water was the primary feeding area for big muskies during summer.
BOMBSHELL #2 —Muskies use their second home range, a shallow and considerably smaller one, for digestion. I’ll explain these conclusions shortly.
Connie’s Eagle Lake deep home range was approximately 1,030 acres, with depths to 60 feet. The areas she used most extensively averaged 30 feet in depth and were above the thermocline. The deep home ranges for the bigger muskies in our study were larger than most muskie lakes in Wisconsin. For Connie, a lap around her deep range required a 6-mile swim. Add her wanderings of 4 miles and a 4-mile round trip between home ranges, and you have a 14-mile trip. Also, from the far end of her shallow range to the far end of her deep range was 5 miles. And she covered these distances quickly.
BOMBSHELL #3 —Big Bertha, one of Lake Wabigoon’s resident hawgs, traveled 6 miles between ranges. For several weeks, she did it every day. Each morning she left a connected smaller lake and moved to her deep-water home range in Wabigoon. Then each afternoon she returned again to the smaller lake.
The 1979 In-Fisherman article I referred to earlier asked the question, “Why do female muskies choose different summer home areas than males?” The article suggested that females might have different physiological needs than males, and that deeper water offered more protection, ensuring next year’s spawn and species survival.
Larry Ramsell at the helm, locating radio-tagged muskies. BOMBSHELL #4 —Contrasting this, I found that larger males (20-28 pounds) acted exactly like big females. They had two home ranges, and the size of the deep one was proportionate to fish size. This suggests that fish size and food requirements, not the sex of fish, may determine home range size. I found many instances of overlapping home ranges with both transmitter and nontransmitter fish. And I often found several larger muskies close to suspended baitfish. I’ve observed several muskies in the same digesting spots as well as feeding areas.
Preferred Habitat Ramsell: Past studies have indicated that muskies have varied habitat preferences. These observations are undoubtably accurate for the variety of waters studied. My observations suggest that when all factors are considered, habitat preference isn’t hard to define.
BOMBSHELL #5 —In most of my deep-water observations, muskies were either moving or near forage. In-Fisherman’s 1979 article defined home range as an area that satisfied the needs of a fish at a particular time. Movements or migrations are related to this home range. The article suggested that any feeding movement is more likely related to forage than to a break or breakline. I’ve found this analysis to be true. I often followed Connie to spots within her deep home range that were vast flat areas without breaklines. On several occasions, she moved steadily across water up to 60 feet deep, from one feeding station to another.
In her shallow-water home range of approximately 109 acres, Connie commonly used only 23 acres. Shallow home range depth was to 15 feet deep, but generally 10 feet or less. Preferred weedcover was usually “muskie cabbage,” but sometimes coontail and shallow tobacco, sawgrass, or even lily pads. Occasionally, shallow rock reefs lay in shallow home range, but they weren’t frequently used. While perch and suckers are often abundant in these areas, I don’t believe that big muskies prefer them as forage. More on this later. I’ll explain my theory that shallow home ranges are used for digesting by using 40-pound-plus Connie as an example.
BOMBSHELL #6 —The first time I tracked Connie after I had identified her two distinct home ranges was a classic muskie day—heavily overcast sky with a nice chop on the water. As a typical thinking muskie angler, I was sure I’d find her in her shallow, weedy home range. She wasn’t there. Instead, she was in her deep range. But this was only one observation. When it happened several times, the pattern became clear.
BOMBSHELL #7 —During the summer on overcast days, Connie was always in deep water. Although she was occasionally deep on sunny days, some of these days she was heading toward her shallow home range. I never found her shallow on an overcast day.
BOMBSHELL #8 —As I mentioned, whenever Connie was shallow, the day was sunny. In addition, she was in the warmest water in that part of the lake. While the transmitter fish were never all deep or all shallow at the same time, many of the other large females also followed Connie’s pattern.
BOMBSHELL #9 —I feel the primary reason Connie made regular visits to her shallow home range was to warm her body, increasing her metabolism to speed the digestive process.
Forage Ramsell: Forage preference? Early in our netting operations, LeBeau figured that one of the best ways to determine preferred muskie forage was to check their stomach contents. He devised a “barf board” consisting of a V-shaped trough to hold the fish while a long tube connected to a pump was inserted into its stomach. The pump filled the stomach with water and harmlessly flushed all stomach contents into a container.
Ciscoes and whitefish were the perennial forage of females and big males, while small males that stayed shallow throughout the summer fed primarily on perch, minnows, and suckers.
Movements of Connie, a 54.5-inch 40-pounder, during July. Weather Ramsell: In the tracking data, I found no correlations between muskie movement and wind speed or direction. Cold fronts, however, were another matter. Post-cold-front conditions can mean tough fishing. Yet, on occasion, post-frontal conditions and related east or northeast winds have not hurt fishing.” [Author note: Ramsell then listed several specific examples of good fishing under these conditions and noted little feeding behavior when fish were in the warmest water, and during the hottest days, muskies fed in colder depths.] Muskies in shallow water were always in the warmest available water. All females and larger males apparently fed deep where the average summer temperature was 63.4°F and ranged from 60°F to 67°F. Conversely, the average temperature in the shallows was 70°F and ranged from 68°F to 73°F.
These effects of water temperature are contrary to popular belief. The predictable pattern throughout the Summer Period was that most big muskies fed deep on cloudy days and lay dormant in the shallows on sunny days.
Ramsell concluded the first article with these observations: “Time to re-evaluate summer muskie fishing strategies. Spend more time fishing in deep water? Definitely. Deep trolling as an alternative to casting? Obviously. Change your perception on big fish location and activity on sunny and cloudy days? Absolutely.”
Looking back 35 years after the fact, most anglers running today’s side-imaging and forward-facing sonar can attest to the open-water feeding behavior of trophy muskies in large fisheries. At a cruising speed of 5 to 6 mph and with multiple transducers positioned at staggered angles, today’s muskie anglers can quickly locate muskies anywhere in the water column and anywhere throughout a fishery. Many of the top muskie anglers are catching scores of open-basin muskies in their deep summer feeding home ranges, as Ramsell predicted.
In his second article, Radio Tracked Muskies, appearing in the February 1992 issue of In-Fisherman , Ramsell focused on location and depth preferences of trophy muskies. He noted: “I located muskies at depths from the surface to 36 feet. Connie used various depths, often with no apparent relationship to breaklines. Once she was traveling 15 feet down in 25 feet of water.
“One day in early season, I followed her for an hour from a 6-foot-deep weedbed and swam a quarter mile along a shoreline on the outside edge of a 7-to 8-foot-deep weedbed. Another day, she followed a rocky shoreline, traveling along a 16- to 20-foot drop-off. One day I checked her movement four times. At 8:50 a.m. she was in 36 feet of water. At 8:55 a.m. she was nearby on a 20-foot-deep hump. At 2:00 p.m. she was in 28 feet of water. By 3:50 p.m. she’d moved another half-mile over a seemingly featureless 36-foot-deep flat.
“On my last observation of the summer, Connie was in 50 feet of water at 5:05 p.m. moving toward an island where she eventually stopped. At 5:45 p.m., I found her just off the island in 15 feet of water. Later, after her summer home range pattern changed, I found her wandering 7 feet down in 15 feet of water.”
Handling Muskies In an article in 1979, In-Fisherman asked, concerning the results of tracking studies, “Does occupying a home area make muskies more or less vulnerable?” The answer was, “If you’re a knowledgeable In-Fisherman and you know where a particular home area is, they’re more vulnerable.” This concern becomes amplified today with the increased use of forward-facing sonar. Ramsell’s observations and concerns follow.
Ramsell: “The key is whether the angler knows the location of the home area. I believe big muskies feed in or over deep water most of the time, based on radio-tracking and graphing studies in large lakes where muskies coexist with pike. Since muskies are difficult to locate in vast areas of open water, especially when they’re moving, where to start the search?” Today, the search increasingly begins and ends with forward-facing sonar.
Vulnerability Ramsell: “The tracking study also showed how vulnerable muskies are to angling pressure. Eagle Lake covers about 68,000 acres. We placed transmitters in 10 fish. Two angler-caught fish were implanted in the fall of 1985. One, which weighed 23 pounds in the fall of 1985, was hooked once, then caught and released again in the summer of 1986. It weighed 28 pounds when it was caught again and killed in the summer of 1987. Of the other eight implanted fish in the spring of 1986, two were caught on spawning grounds and killed by walleye anglers before the muskie season opened.
Big critters near clouds of ciscoes and whitefish in deep water. Food for thought—and big muskies! “Two more transmitter fish were caught and killed in the summer of 1987; one of them had been recaptured and released in 1986. From 10 transmitter fish, two were angler-caught in the first place. Four of the remaining eight were caught and killed in one year. I caught and released two of the remaining four while sampling during 1986. Both were in popular fishing areas where they could have been caught by other anglers. In less than two years (fall 1985 through summer 1987), anglers caught 8 of the 10 transmitter fish. Careful catch and release is one important key to sustaining muskie fishing.”
While not every conclusion drawn by Ramsell’s observations during LeBeau’s radio transmitter study can be proven to be accurate in all settings, the vulnerability of muskie populations is self-evident, especially once knowledgeable anglers are able to pinpoint their locations and observe their every movement and reaction. The next question becomes how will anglers manage this knowledge and will they act as good stewards toward a limited resource or exploit it for their own self-interest?
Winston Churchill: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Longtime In-Fisherman Field Editor Steve Ryan fishes across North America and indeed around the world for all manner of predatory fish.
