By Louie Stout

The Indiana DNR collected all of the muskie eggs needed from Lake Webster recently to provide stockings in the future.

The crazy spring weather had them scrambling. While the massive egg-taking project usually begins after April 1, staffers hit the lake a week earlier but still got 95 adults to meet stocking demands. The eggs were stripped from females and milt taken from males before the fish were released back in the lake.

“This was the earliest I can recall when we found ripe muskies,” said Tyler Delauder, lead biologist on the project. “We would have liked to have seen more fish, but we did the best we could and got what the hatchery needed.”

The fish captured in nets averaged 38½ inches with the biggest being a hair below 49 inches.

“We saw quite a few fish in the 40s,” said Delauder. “We got 1.2 million eggs fertilized and off to the hatchery.”

It’s noteworthy that 84 percent of adults had tags, placed there by the DNR in previous egg-taking projects. They inserted tags in those that didn’t have them.

“We do that to monitor fish and their movements,” the biologist said. “A lot of the muskie anglers, especially the guides, keep us supplied with info.”

The tiny tags are beneath the skin and not visible but guides carry inexpensive scanners that read and copy the info. That’s passed along to the DNR.

Nets were set shallow, and one net set off the Backwaters boat ramp produced a few muskie and a lot of crappie and bluegill. The most productive net for muskies was set on the northeast end of the lake.