Delayed Musky Mortality Video (12 min.)

[Red Childress]

Here is a great (12 min.) video on musky mortality and signs of stress post-capture. Pete Maina leads the discussion on Joe Bucher's Musky 360 podcast.

This is part I.



https://www.musky360.com/videos/c/0/i/51483506/trolling-talk-why-fish-die-signs-delayed-mortality

[Pescatore]

I’ve fished one particular local body of water every summer for the last 20 years. Several other guys I know fish it as well during summer. We fish the shallow bays and don’t start seeing musky until mid July through mid September when they start to disappear. The best days of fishing are when it’s super hot. The fish are extremely active. We all catch these fish and property handle them. Most of the fish we catch have hook scars around there mouths, so they’ve obviously been caught before. I haven’t seen any floating fish in years. The only time we had several floaters was when a local musky club was putting a lot of new fisherman on the lake. Thankfully that club is no longer active. I personally don’t believe high temperature always causes delayed mortality in all bodies of water. I believe you can catch, properly handle and release as long as the fish are active. If the water is too warm to fish, then why are the fish so active? With this said, I always follow the rule that a fish cannot survive out of water any longer than you can survive under water. I leave them in the net, prepare my camera and don’t hold them out of water any longer than 15 seconds. That’s a good video, but to stop fishing because of water temps would mean on the body of water I fish, you wouldn’t catch very many fish.