What is lake trout

Adults have very few predators because they live in deep waters. Their major predator, besides humans, is the sea lamprey, which has contributed greatly to the decline of lake trout populations in the Great Lakes. How Do They Reproduce? They spawn over boulder beds where water currents keep the rocks clear of silt. Lake trout do not dig nests, but the early arriving males clear away algae, slime, and any other debris by fanning the rocks with their fins and scraping them with their bodies.

Males are not territorial and they do not fight over females. Spawning takes place over the rock as males press along side of females. Sometimes two males and one female are involved.

Sometimes several males and females form a spawning group. Each fish will repeat the spawning act many times over a period of days or weeks. The fertilized eggs sink to the rock bottom and fall into the protective crevices. Here the current of the passing water keeps the eggs oxygenated and silt free.

A single female may lay 2,, eggs depending on her size. The embryos develop for 4 to 5 months and hatch into alevins free swimming embryos then in February and March. The alevins live in the rock crevices for another few weeks while they finish their fin development.

Then they disperse into the lake. Conservation and Management Lake trout used to be a very important commercial fish in the Great Lakes. A combination of predation by the sea lamprey, declines in the cisco populations their main food , and overfishing caused their populations to go way down.

Today they are recovering in Lake Superior, but they probably will never return to their previous numbers. The lake now has exotic competitors, like coho and chinook salmon, as well as exotic forage fish like smelt and alewives. The ecosystem is a very different one from what it was when the lake trout was king.

They do this by using poisons that selectively kill larval sea lampreys. Permission is granted for the non-commercial educational or scientific use of the text and images on this Web document. Please credit the author or authors listed below.

For the most part, lakers are caught by trolling anglers using spoons, flashers and flies or cowbells and minnows, often near bottom. Lake trout spawn in the fall, often on shoals and reefs but some migrate upstream creating angling opportunities on piers, where anglers fishing with spawn, smelt or minnows on the bottom or casting with spoons can sometimes connect.

Similarly, short-term fisheries are created in the drowned river mouths just inshore of the Great Lakes and in rivers, where lake trout often are caught incidentally by steelhead fishermen. In the winter months, anglers fishing deep water in Great Lakes bays with spoons or jigs tipped with cut bait take lake trout through the ice. A number of inland lakes have been stocked with lake trout or have natural populations that produce excellent fishing all year long, typically for those who are adept at Great Lakes tactics.

Higgins, Elk, Torch and Crystal Lakes are among of the better-known inland lake trout waters. The lake trout, as adults, feed primarily on other fish. The native prey includes ciscoes and sculpin, but when available lake trout will take advantage of alewives, smelt, gobies or other fish and sometimes take crustaceans, terrestrial insects, plankton, even small birds and mammals.

Lake trout are fall season broadcast spawning fish on shoals or shallow reefs. They do show homing behavior and will return each year to the same spawning area. The eggs are deposited after dark, among the cobble and gravel of the lake bottom. Young lake trout will hatch from the egg and stay among the cobble substrate as sac fry. As swim-up fry stage occurs in early spring, they will emerge from the protective rocky substrate to feed on their own.

Lake trout become sexually mature at 6 or 7 years of age. The average adult weighs 9 to 10 pounds but some individuals weigh up to 50 pounds state record is 61 pounds, 8 ounces. Their life-span may exceed 25 years.

It can be found in all five of the Great Lakes and many large, deep, cold water inland lakes of Michigan. The lake trout prefers water temperatures between degrees Fahrenheit. In the fall, winter and spring seasons this fish may be found in shallow water areas of the lake, 10 to 30 feet deep. As near shore waters warm in the summer, it follows the cold water temperatures to depths of to feet or more.

In the Great Lakes environment lake trout will often range many miles in search of prey.