A muck bottom covered with detritus and dead vegetation, or sometimes woody debris is the usual spawning site. Females deposit eggs randomly over several hundred yards of shoreline. There is no parental care of the eggs. The time it takes for the eggs to incubate varies with water temperature. Eggs hatch in 8 to 14 days with rising water temperatures ranging from 54-62 degrees Fahrenheit.
Numerous factors can cause reproductive failures, however.
Excessively cold water temperatures, fluctuating water levels during spawning, predation, the shortage of suitable food for newly hatched fry, and suffocation of eggs in bottom muck often seriously limit reproduction. Sediments in runoff flowing into streams, from such things as construction and development, can also settle over fertilized eggs, causing them to suffocate. The danger of mortality from predation is ever-present from the egg to adult. Surprisingly, the most significant predators of muskellunge fry and small fingerling are relatively small fish such as bluegills, perch, rock bass and crappies. Even insect larvae sometimes destroy large numbers of muskellunge fry and fingerling.