A meat eating, tiger-striped predator with a mouthful of sharp teeth has been released in a remote Arizona lake. On purpose.

The Arizona Department of Game and Fish introduced about 450 tiny tiger muskies May 16 into Horsethief Basin Lake, a small reservoir 6,000 feet high in the mountains west of the Sunset Point rest area near Crown King.

While they are sardine-sized now, the long, spear-like fish grow quickly and are known among anglers for their feisty nature.

They can grow up to three feet long or more. The survivors should be a foot long in about a year, said Curt Gill, an aquatic wildlife program manager for the game and fish department.

“They should be catchable next summer,” he said. “They are pretty fast growers.”

Even though releasing them in the wild when they are so small runs the risk that larger fish will eat them, the young tiger muskie can’t be kept in captivity any longer.

“Once they get to 2 inches, if there are so many in the area, they start eating each other,” Gill said.

The department hopes the voracious fish will grow and eat many of the small bass in Horsethief Basin, allowing the remaining bass to grow larger. Surveys of bass in the lake show that 80% are smaller than 8 inches.

If the plan works, anglers will have larger bass to catch as well as tiger muskie, though anglers must release any muskie they catch, according to the department.

Fish donated by state of Utah

The Utah Division of Wildlife Services donated the tiger muskies to Arizona.

Tiger muskie are unable to reproduce. They are a hybrid between muskellunge and northern pike, neither of which are native to Arizona. They are more common in the Midwest and Northeast.

Arizona officials said that Horsethief Basin is an isolated body of water so there is no threat of the fish spreading to other waterways.

“Even if they did escape, it’s quite a long journey down a typically dry steam channel to Lake Pleasant,” Gill said, adding that Lake Pleasant and other desert water bodies are too warm for muskie to survive.

And even if anglers catch tiger muskie and relocate them to other waters, and they somehow survive, they won’t be able to reproduce and cause problems the way some other species have in the state, he said.

One of the reasons the fish grow fast is because they don’t expend any energy spawning.

“The tiger muskie is a ‘lie-in-wait’ predator that will often stay hidden in weed beds until a fish or other prey item moves into range,” according to the Utah Division of Wildlife Services. “The tiger muskie then lunges out of its hiding place to grab and devour its prey.”

The record tiger muskie ever caught in Utah was 49 inches long and weighed 33 pounds and 9 ounces. It was caught in 2006 at Pineview Reservoir, according to the Utah Division of Wildlife Services.

It’s unclear how large they might get in Horsethief Basin, which is only about 4 acres.

“I wouldn’t expect many of them to (grow that large) because they would eat themselves out of house and home,” Gill said.

No other lake in Arizona has tiger muskie, though a few have northern pike.

Arizona’s past experiments with fish

Gill said Arizona experimented with muskie in the past but the fish did not survive in the state.

The state planted muskellunge into Kinnikinick Lake near Flagstaff in 1932, according to a story in The Arizona Republic archives. Then in 1973 more than 30,000 tiny muskellunge were planted in Mormon Lake, also near Flagstaff. That lake dries up from time to time.

Arizona anglers a few years ago launched a petition for AGFD to bring muskie back to Arizona. It has gathered about 300 people in support over the years. 

“We’ll evaluate this population annually and determine if it’s wise to stock more,” AGFD said in a news release.

Reach reporter Ryan Randazzo at ryan.randazzo@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4331. Follow him on Twitter @UtilityReporter.

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