Ask a fisheries biologist: How old do fish get?

Many people ask how old different fish species get. Here are a couple of examples.

Brook and brown trout are relatively short-lived and typically do not get older than 5 or 6 years. Bluegills occasionally reach 10 years old, but most that you see in a lake would be 2 to 6 years old.

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Walleye can live to 20 years old. Muskellunge take 18 to 19 years to get to 50 inches and can live to more than 30 years. The lake sturgeon can be over 100 years old and often don’t even mature until their late teens!

And those fathead minnows in your bait bucket? They get to be a whopping 2 years old and can become sexually mature a few months after they hatch.