Lake Simcoe Muskellunge Restoration Project Hatchery

A sad farewell to one of the greats. Wil Wegman will be missed.

Hello Lake Simcoe Muskellunge Restoration Project friends, fans and supporters.
We're sure many of you are wondering about the lack of updates and posts on this page for 2019.
Well, the sad news is that our little project has ended. We had hoped that we'd proceed through 2019 but unfortunately circumstances have conspired together to create an environment where the decision was made to end funding for the project.
It's a tough time, especially now when we'd be waiting on the edge of our seat for this year's egg batches.
We want to thank everyone who supported us over the years, especially Muskies Canada Inc., and the huge numbers of Fleming College student volunteers. It has been an honour and privilege working with all of you.

Lined up and actively feeding. Lots of happy bulging bellies!

Intense times. We are in a challenging spot... can we hit our target this year starting with only one-third of our planned number of eggs? Everything must go right, no room for mistakes!
Here are half of our early rearing units, feeders set up, fish in the very delicate initial stages of feed training. If this stage doesn't go really well we are done for.

Just to provide a counter-point perspective to the previous picture... here's a shot of one of our early rearing units with (mostly) good quality fry in it. Lots!

Our female donor Muskellunge this year was a prime specimen. At 55 inches she has been around for a good number of years. One characteristic we have noticed about eggs from older fish like this one (apart from the sheer number of eggs that we get from a single fish) is there can be an elevated proportion of deformed or challenged fry that hatch out.

Here is a partial collection of the stunted, bent, twisted or otherwise poorly developed newly hatched sac fry that we found in this batch after hatch was complete. In the red circle is a single "normal" appearing sac-fry for comparison.

On balance though, we do end up with more good quality fry because what may be lost from the small percentage of poor quality fry is more than made up for by the higher number of total fry we get.

We have hatch! Full blast popping out of their egg shells today!

Our first sign of real fish on the way, we see an eye and some skeletal features!

This was in posted in the comments of the last post, but we wanted to put at the top level in a post of its own so everyone has a chance to see it.

Restoring the muskie population in Lake Simcoe Their numbers have been in decline since the 1930s, but a mission to restore muskies in Lake Simcoe is in full swing. CTV Barrie's Roger Klein has more.

Thanks to the diligent work of Wil and Arunas and crew, we have a great looking first family of eggs! Hatchery student stalwart, Leroy, is busy picking the dead eggs to keep fungus problems away!

Spring has sprung, the ice is gone, the hatchery sits empty and ready. Next step, eggs!