Outdoors
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Wild lake trout can live more than 30 years, with some reaching 40 years or older. These fish, known as togue in Maine, are scattered throughout most regions of the state, with populations that exist from either naturally occurring beginnings or early state and federal plantings.
Today, only a handful of waters statewide are stocked annually with lake trout, as we rely mostly on naturally produced populations to provide fisheries.
Fishery managers are judicious about where to stock lakers due to their capacity to live a long time and persist in a lake, and put constant pressure on a limited forage base. Stocked lake trout generally have a much shorter lifespan than wild fish. Most stocked lake trout have an average life expectancy of eight years, with a few living more than 20.
When I was a fish biologist for the state, I extracted many lake trout otoliths, or ear bones, from togue in lakes in the Down East region to age them and see how fast they grew. That helped determine how long it would take them to reach the legal length limit in each water. I wrote a paper documenting what I found. Here is a snippet of that information.
Typically, wild togue in Hancock and Washington County lakes average around 3 to 4 years old at 12 inches. To grow to an average of 18 inches, wild togue were 8 to 9 years old. Fish that made it to 21 to 23 inches were, on average, 12 to 15 years old. The fish I aged that were more than 30 inches were generally older than 25 years, including one togue from Tunk Lake that was 36 inches and 16 pounds and aged out at 33 years old.
Age data from wild lake trout in the Canadian provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories showed similar growth rates and ages of young togue as Maine fish. They typically show accelerated growth as they get older.
Lake trout in Canada commonly grow to more than 50 pounds and occasionally exceed 100 pounds. The largest known lake trout in North America was caught in a gill net in Lake Athabasca, Saskatchewan, in 1961. The trout weighed 102 pounds and measured 49.5 inches long.
It is widely understood that remote waters in these provinces have unaltered native species compositions, which leads to faster growth than in Maine lakes due to less human manipulation and the absence of invasive species.
After hatching under the ice in March, juvenile togue retreat to the deepest waters of the lake to escape inshore and mid-depth predators, including their parents and any other species looking for an easy meal. As lakers get larger, they generally move into shallower water while still staying in temperatures around 50 degrees or less, looking for larger prey.
Fast growth rates depend on finding large amounts of available forage. Lake trout are opportunists, feeding on whatever is most available seasonally.
I found togue stomachs in midsummer full of plankton when other forage was so scarce that the lakers were relegated to feeding on these meager meals.
In lakes in Canada and Maine that produce trophy togue, they are feeding heavily on schooling fish such as cisco, alewives, smelt and white perch.
When Maine fishery managers evaluate the potential of togue waters to produce trophy fish, they analyze the amount of forage in the lake and the water’s track record for producing large fish. If they believe a lake has the potential to produce big fish on a more regular basis, they ask anglers if they are willing to make the sacrifice of releasing smaller and mid-sized fish to allow togue to grow to larger sizes and older ages.
If the majority of anglers agree, managers propose restrictive regulations such as one-fish limits and 23-inch minimum length limits, or selective harvest regulations like a no-kill slot limit of 23 to 33 inches.
Several Down East lake trout waters have these management regulations in place, allowing a portion of the population to reach large sizes and older ages. Places like Green Lake in Ellsworth, which produced a togue over 20 pounds a few years ago, Tunk Lake in T10 SD, which gave up a 25-pounder about a decade ago, and West Grand Lake, which regularly produces fish over 15 pounds.
We Mainers are lucky to have lakes with the ability to produce large togue, like the record fish caught in Lower Richardson Lake several years ago.
