TIGER MUSKIE QUESTION

[hogstalker]

So ,i've been hearing alot about damage done to fish after bringing them up from deep water . What about tiger muskie , or are they so big that decompression doesn't affect them as much?

ICE FISH BABY!!!
[signature]

[fish_fear_me2]

Muskie arent usually that deep.
[signature]

[RyanCreek]

Tiger musky, like many other predatory fish that must make dramatic vertical movements in the water column to chase prey have evolved with physotomous swim bladders. This means that their swim bladder is "vented" and will not blow up like a balloon during rapid decompression as it does in other fish. This gives them an edge over their quarry.

So short answer - you don't run into those kinds of difficulties if you catch a musky at depth. The fact that musky, pike, and tiger musky all have this type of swim bladder should give you an idea about their feeding habits. They go from deep to shallow and back again repeatedly.

The swim bladder organ holds gas and fish use it to control buoyancy - like a submarine. Bass (including striped bass), walleye, and perch do not have a vented swim bladder and cannot change depth too dramatically. Strangely, carp can. Also, all species of trout can too.
[signature]

[SmokeOnTheWater]

I've only hooked one tiger under the hard deck at the Pineview Narrows several years ago. I kept seeing this big dark image on my sonar passing through at about 10-15'. I was fishing the bottom for perch and was wondering if this image was a school of suspended crappie so I dropped a lure and let it freefall toward the image the next time through. When I hooked up I knew immediately that it was no crappie. I was able to get it right to the hole and saw the ~30" tiger through the clear ice. What a RUSH! We were wondering how we were going to get this fish up through the hole when it answered the question for us. He wasn't! He/she rocketed off stripping my 2# perch line and it snapped off. Don't know if it broke the line on the bottom of the hole or at the fish's mouth. Eventhough I didn't get a picture, the image will forever last in my memory. I think the key was that this fish, like most, picked the lure up on the fall as an easy meal. I've tried to repeat the technique with more perch like immitations sinking to the bottom like a released perch to no avail. And yes, I've seen similar images on my sonar every year since that day. Muskie, the fish of 10,000 casts. Maybe again someday?
[signature]

[MichiganAngler]

I am fairly certain that I was marking one on my sonar in the narrows yesterday. I had been pulling up dink perch all day and a big fish started hanging out about halfway down the water column. The perch bit turned OFF for quite a few minutes! I couldn't coax it into my Genz worm though.
[signature]

[MMDon]

Tiger musky, like many other predatory fish that must make dramatic vertical movements in the water column to chase prey have evolved with physotomous swim bladders. This means that their swim bladder is "vented" and will not blow up like a balloon during rapid decompression as it does in other fish. This gives them an edge over their quarry.

Your quote oversimplifies the overall equation. What kills fish that are caught deep is a condition similar to the bends that divers get from rapid accents. Gas bubbles form in the blood vessels and block the flow of blood to the tissues. The faster a fish comes up from deep water and the longer the time they spend out of the water or near the surface, the greater the damage to their organs, according to a noted fish biologist.
[signature]

[Fishrmn]

Okay, I'll bite. Which biologist? Fish don't breathe air. They do not experience the bends in the same way that divers do. Mammals breathe air. In order to breathe at depth, we compress air and breathe it at ambient pressure for the given depth. Fish take dissolved oxygen out of the water. It is not even in a gaseous form. How are they going to get the bends?

The problem for fish is the increase in size of their swim bladders, caused by the decrease in the ambient pressure. If you decrease the pressure by half, a given volume of gas will double in size. (Boyles law) When you bring a fish up from roughly 30 feet, their swim bladder will double unless they have the ability to vent the increased volume. The increased size of a swim bladder either smashes their internal organs or causes the swim bladder to distend out of their mouths, or both.
[signature]

[MMDon]

Dr. Lee Weber, better known as Dr. Stressor. The biologist from Neveda/Reno that certifies many of the fish studies done by west coast universities including those in Hawaii, Alaska, Washington and our own Moscow.
[signature]