You got them in lakes outside of the BW and Quetico but I never heard of anyone catching any inside the parks. What causes this? Just imagine if you hooked into something like this....

more sterile lakes? well established pike populations? just two guesses.

Interesting question that I don't know the answer to. What's really weird is that about the only lake in the area that has a native pop of muskies that I know of is Shoepack on the Kabetogama Peninsula. They have been successfully introduced to a number of lakes, so it doesn't seem competition is an issue.

there are muskies in Cresent lake just off the Sawbill trail and also Kinogami!!

I once heard East Pike has Muskies in it.

A couple of years back a guy caught a Muskie out of Shagawa. Seems that some time in the past (70's or 80's?) the MNDNR was rearing Muskies at the now defunct rearing ponds on Burntside River. After a heavy rain, the ponds overflowed into the river.

If they're in Shagawa, I would imagine they're in Fall, Newton, Basswood, etc... although in extremely limited numbers.

My guess is that they simply were never stocked either accidentally or on purpose.

I could picture my mother in-law swimming with that thing. That picture almost looks like it wasn't photo-shopped.

I've cought muskies on east and west pike. Nothing over about 20".

yea my dad's friend caught a few muskies on east pike lake(shouldnt it be east muskie?)

It would be fun to have one lake deep in the interior of Quetico that is stocked with muskies. Maybe PooBah. It's difficult to get to but oh what fun that would be, catching big muskies in the Q.

Muskies are not native to any of the BWCAW lakes. Their original distribution in Minnesota were the lakes and rivers of the upper Mississippi River watershed. East Pike Lake once had muskies due to an introduction, but these have since almost disappeared.

I have also heard of muskie in east pike.

I remember reading something about pike/muskie competition. In many waters, muskie and pike attempt to occupy the same niche. In those cases, pike have an edge in competition because they hatch out earlier than the muskies and the younger species becomes food for the older one. Pike eventually occupy those waters to the exculsion of muskies.
In some waters, pike and muskies co-exist. That is because they have found separate niches within the same lake.

I believe that some were also stocked in Farm Lake at one time.

i'm pretty sure i had a musky on in east pike-hardest fighting fish i ever hooked-muskies fight differently than pike-more savagely-i didn't get a good look at him though-he broke me off-i had stayed at a lodge on west fowl years before & the helper/guide told me there were "kahunas" in east pike-i believe him-plus i think the report on lakefinder mention them being stocked at one time-this area is sweet-i love to go there on sept trips

Muskies are INSANE!

I go up to East Pike every year because I'm a musky nut and love the bw and there are in there, just not a lot of them. The dnr stocked them back in 77 before stopping because they weren't a native fish so only a few have survived