Anderson: On anniversary of Leech Lake’s ‘Muskie Rampage,’ mystery remains — and a study begins

Seventy years ago this month, Leech Lake muskies went crazy.

Until that time, the big silvery fish barely gained notice from most of the lake’s anglers. Instead, walleyes were the lake’s major attraction.

But a stifling heat wave that settled over northern Minnesota in early July 1955 changed everything. Walleye action shut down, and Leech Lake muskies bit on everything anglers threw at them.

And didn’t throw at them: Reports of muskies tail-walking on the lake’s surface with jaws agape were common.

Jeff Arnold of Walker, Minn., which lies hard by the shores of Leech Lake, was 6 years old when the lake’s muskies began a feeding rampage that had never been seen before — or since.

“I think most of Leech’s tullibees, which are a primary food source for muskies, were killed by the heat wave,” Arnold said, “prompting the lake’s legendary muskie bite.”

Leech Lake fishing guide Warren Bridge was among the first to reap the spectacle’s rewards. Trolling a 6800-series jointed Creek Chub Pikie lure on Sunday morning, July 17, 1955, he quickly caught four big muskies.

Anglers in boats around him were similarly reeling in one toothy critter after another — so many that bait shops, wanting to ring their cash registers as often as possible, rented big lures by the hour, rather than selling them outright.

Returning to shore with his writhing haul, Bridge scrounged a long section of well-driller’s pipe from which he and other Leech Lake guides and launch operators swung 25 very dead muskies weighing between 18 and 40 pounds.

Photographed by Allen Rossman of the Grand Rapids Herald-Review, the image is among the most famous — and infamous — fishing photos ever taken.

Infamous because, today, muskies are among Minnesota’s most revered fish, and are almost never killed by anglers.

In fact, by law, Minnesota muskies must be 54 inches or longer— weighing about 40 pounds — before they can be kept.

These and other conservation measures aside, muskies in many ways remain as mysterious today as they were in 1955.

No one knows, for example, whether muskies spend most of their time in shallow water or deep. Nor how far in a lake they will swim, searching for food. Or how often they eat. Or how vulnerable they might be to anglers armed with forward facing sonar, a fairly new gadget that in many instances can pinpoint a muskie’s exact location.

Now 76 years old and a lifelong Leech Lake fisheries advocate, Arnold wants answers to these and other questions. So do Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe fisheries biologists, and fisheries professors at Bemidji State.

Baylor Short is curious, too.

The 23-year-old will spend nearly every day this summer in a boat on Leech Lake, a laptop in hand, following muskies that send electronic signals from transmitters implanted beneath their skin.

DNR Walker area fisheries supervisor Wade Massure heard rumors last summer of muskies floating dead on Leech Lake.

“We weren’t able to determine how many of these fish there were, but the Leech Lake muskie-fishing community was concerned,” Massure said.

One theory was that anglers were using forward facing sonar to locate and catch muskies in a roughly 2-mile-long by 1-mile-wide deep-water area of Leech called “the trench.”

Historically, muskies that retreat to that part of the lake are difficult for anglers to find.

“But what if those fish no longer could find refuge in the trench, and could now be caught relatively easily using forward facing sonar?” Arnold said. “If those fish aren’t handled properly, they could die after being caught and released, particularly in hot weather.”

A board member of the group MN-FISH, a member of the Minnesota Fishing Hall of Fame and the longtime owner with his wife, Kay, of Reeds Family Outdoor Outfitters in Walker, Arnold said Leech Lake’s particular type of muskies make them a valuable state resource.

“Those are Mississippi strain muskies, and eggs collected and fertilized from them are stocked in lakes around the state,” he said.

Some anglers proposed protecting Leech Lake muskies by prohibiting deep-water angling for them.

“We thought about a regulation,” Massure said. “But how would we enforce a regulation that kept muskie fishermen from fishing in more than 20 feet of water?”

Arnold and other MN-FISH board members had a better idea. Using money from the Reeds business foundation, and with support from the DNR, the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and nearby Bemidji State, they proposed implanting transmitters into a sample of the lake’s muskies to more definitively learn the fish’s habits, vulnerabilities and fates, and to recommend management decisions accordingly.

“We wanted especially to find out how many muskies actually swim in Leech Lake,” Arnold said.

The proposal’s timing was good.

“Every four years, we collect eggs from Leech Lake muskies that are hatched out in two different DNR hatcheries, and this spring was our fourth year,” Massure said.

Short, the graduate student, was working for the Ojibwe Band as a fisheries technician this spring when a former Bemidji State professor said he had a master’s degree opportunity for him following muskies on Leech Lake.

“It was a nice surprise when I got that call,” he said.

When the DNR trapped muskies this spring to collect and fertilize eggs, they also inserted acoustic transmitters in 12 females and three males. In the months since, more muskies have been similarly outfitted and more are planned.

Electronic receivers are anchored to the bottom of Leech Lake to collect the transmitters’ signals.

“One question we have is whether muskies go to the trench for prolonged periods, or whether they hang out in vegetation or along underwater structure, where they’re often more difficult for anglers to find,” Short said. “When the implanted fish send signals, we’ll be able to record the depths and locations they’re at and the water temperature and other data.”

The study will last three years.

“We know what happened in 1955 on Leech Lake, but we don’t definitively know why it happened,” Arnold said. “To be good stewards of the lake’s muskies ... we need more information.

“We’ve seen what happened on Mille Lacs, which once was one of the state’s top muskie lakes but today has relatively few of these fish. We don’t want that repeated on Leech Lake.”