Ontario Shore Fishing Forum

PIKE!!! SOON!!!!

(04-21-2015 07:40 PM)Eli Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah pike and muskies definitely cannot co-exist.
The Ottawa, Rideau, and St. Lawrence Rivers are prime examples of this. Like I said, folks at the MNR need to give their heads a shake.

The same people peddling this nonsense are the ones stocking the great lakes with four (five on some lakes) species of non-native Salmonids.

Sorry to resurrect a thread that's getting old, I just saw it now cause I haven't been reading the meetups forum. Just wanted to respond to Eli and say that just because two species can coexist in certain waterbodies where they're both native doesn't mean they can coexist in waterbodies where one is native and one is introduced. In many cases, local strains of species X in waterbodies with potentially dangerous competitor/predator Y have evolved to coexist by adapting the timing of their spawn, feeding locations, or other behaviours; in waterbodies where Y is not native, X doesn't have these adaptations and is vulnerable to introduction of Y.

A reasonably well-understood example of this is lake trout and rock bass. Fisheries researchers in Algonquin Park have documented negative impacts on lake trout caused by the introduction of rock bass in the south central part of the park, even though the two coexist as native species in the northwest part of the park. I'm pretty sure muskie and pike in the Kawarthas are another example. And with pike and muskie it's even more complicated because different strains have different spawning behaviour/timing such that in some areas its the muskie that outcompete the pike, some areas the other way around, some areas they coexist.

If male tiger muskie were fertile (females often are, males rarely are) you could see them become the dominant species, replacing the other two. They grow faster, and are generally healthier.