11-10-2002, 11:39 AM
For the benefit of those who wonder what the heck is a splake, it is a cross between a female lake trout (mack) and a male brook trout. They have been produced in hatcheries since 1870, and are found in cold water lakes across the northern United States.
Like wipers, or any fish, growth rates and ultimate size are determined by how much it gets to eat. Most of the biggest splake recorded come from large bodies of water with large forage bases. The world record came from Lake Huron, in Ontario in 1987 and weighed 20# 11 oz.
It acts and feeds like the brookie until it gets bigger. Then it assumes the characteristics of the mack. It wants meat. Small fish eat bugs, snails and minnows. Bigger ones eat almost any fish of any species they can get down...including perch. An abundance of soft rayed forage species, like alewives or shad, help produce the largest splake.
There are quite a few websites on Splake. One of the better ones is at: [url "http://www.dto.com/fwfishing/species/generalprofile.jsp?speciesid=333"][#800080]http://www.dto.com/fwfishing/species/generalprofile.jsp?speciesid=333[/#800080][/url]
On the subject of fertility and spawning, this is an excerpt from that website: Spawning Habits
Unlike most hybrids, splake are capable of reproducing. However, though they have reproduced in hatcheries, and have successfully back-crossed (splake breeding with one of the parent species) in hatcheries, there are no documented cases of splake actually reproducing in either fashion in the wild.
Regardless, even though splake are presumed sterile in the wild, they still make a spawning run. Spawning takes place in the fall, usually in October, when they migrate to shallow, rocky reefs that are often near the lake’s tributaries.
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Like wipers, or any fish, growth rates and ultimate size are determined by how much it gets to eat. Most of the biggest splake recorded come from large bodies of water with large forage bases. The world record came from Lake Huron, in Ontario in 1987 and weighed 20# 11 oz.
It acts and feeds like the brookie until it gets bigger. Then it assumes the characteristics of the mack. It wants meat. Small fish eat bugs, snails and minnows. Bigger ones eat almost any fish of any species they can get down...including perch. An abundance of soft rayed forage species, like alewives or shad, help produce the largest splake.
There are quite a few websites on Splake. One of the better ones is at: [url "http://www.dto.com/fwfishing/species/generalprofile.jsp?speciesid=333"][#800080]http://www.dto.com/fwfishing/species/generalprofile.jsp?speciesid=333[/#800080][/url]
On the subject of fertility and spawning, this is an excerpt from that website: Spawning Habits
Unlike most hybrids, splake are capable of reproducing. However, though they have reproduced in hatcheries, and have successfully back-crossed (splake breeding with one of the parent species) in hatcheries, there are no documented cases of splake actually reproducing in either fashion in the wild.
Regardless, even though splake are presumed sterile in the wild, they still make a spawning run. Spawning takes place in the fall, usually in October, when they migrate to shallow, rocky reefs that are often near the lake’s tributaries.
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