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Steps taken to prevent muskie attacks at Jean Doré Beach, report says
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The artificial lake and beach at Jean Drapeau Park are set to reopen to the public this Saturday, nearly a year after a boy was attacked by what park officials believe was a muskellunge, a large, predatory freshwater fish, The Gazette has learned.
Park management has ignored repeated requests by The Gazette for information about the June 2024 attack that resulted in an eight-year-old boy being taken to a hospital with deep gashes to his leg.
But according to internal reports and emails obtained by The Gazette under access to information legislation, the Société du Parc Jean Drapeau (PJD), the paramunicipal agency that manages the park, now believes the boy was indeed injured by a muskellunge — more commonly known as a muskie — and that park officials have taken some steps to prevent a similar attack.
On the afternoon of June 26, 2024, eight-year-old Max Mandl was playing on an inflatable structure called 'Aquazilla,' which floats in the middle of the lake at Jean Doré Beach, part of Jean Drapeau Park. The boy had just jumped off the structure when he felt something jabbing and slashing at his leg, and he started screaming. When lifeguards pulled him from the water, blood gushed from his knee, calf and thigh. He was taken to the Montreal Children's Hospital with several deep gashes to his leg that required stitches.
Park management has ignored The Gazette's requests for interviews about its response, releasing a brief statement in September noting DNA samplings in the lake weeks after the incident proved nothing.
'The results do not reveal the presence of muskellunge DNA, and none of the species identified could have caused the injuries observed,' the media team said.
But an internal briefing note obtained recently by The Gazette reveals how the incident was investigated and what measures have been taken to avoid a repeat.
'Following the incident that occurred on June 26, 2024 when a young boy was bitten near the Aquazilla structure in the Lac des Régates, a process was undertaken to determine the cause of the incident and avoid it happening again,' says the document on park letterhead, dated April 24, sender's name redacted. 'Even though the PJD has no confirmation, exchanges with different experts indicate the incident would have been caused by a muskellunge, a fish that has already been observed in the Lac des Régates in 2018.'
An internal email message, also obtained by The Gazette, confirms that a muskellunge was found on Jean Doré Beach in July 2018.
Park officials consulted with experts from Quebec's wildlife department (MELCCFP), who qualified the attack as a 'unique, unfortunate, rare and isolated incident.' The document notes muskie attacks on humans are exceedingly rare, even though muskies are common in Quebec's waterways.
Muskies are native to the St. Lawrence River, the body of water that surrounds Notre-Dame Island and feeds into the artificial lake. A muskie can live 20 to 30 years and grow up to 122 centimetres (over four feet) long and weigh up to 6.3 kilograms (over 13 pounds), and there are records of much longer and heavier muskies caught in Canada.
The internal document describes one measure the park has taken in response to the incident. There are several water intakes that are used to partially drain the lake every fall and bring river water back in come springtime. The deepest part, where the Aquazilla structure is located, is more than 16 metres deep and cannot be fully emptied.
Experts advised park management that the openings in the grates of these intakes should be less than two inches in order to block adult muskies and other wildlife from entering. In March 2025, the grates between the Olympic rowing basin and the lake were replaced with grates with smaller openings 'in order to reduce the possibility of fish moving between the two waterways,' the document says.
While the grates on water intakes from the river into the beach area and from the river into the Olympic Basin were judged adequate (less than two-inch openings), another water intake from the river still needed to be evaluated and possibly replaced, the document said.
'If the latter can be changed to reduce the spacing, it will considerably reduce the possibility of a muskellunge entering onto the islands. In fact, according to the MELCCFP, the surrounding sector where water is pumped from the river is not typical habitat for young muskellunge, but more for adults. Thus, the reduction of the spacing of the grates that has already been done, as well as additional reductions would reduce to almost zero the risks of a muskellunge entering our waterways again.'
The note goes on to detail other measures considered, such as mandating a fishing expedition to remove the muskies, draining the lake completely or using a toxic compound like rotenone to poison the fish.
The two latter measures were rejected because they would affect other fish and wildlife in the lake. While the fishing expedition idea was judged least harmful, ministry officials advised this method would require 'significant and repeated efforts and might not lead to the successful catching of muskellunge.'
'It is important to remember that it is currently forbidden to fish in our internal waterways, and this kind of fishing could create a precedent,' the document says.
The document ends with a recommendation: 'Considering the above, it is recommended not to take any additional steps, as those taken are considered sufficient.'
But muskellunge experts and those familiar with the design of the lake say these measures are not at all sufficient if the goal is to reduce the population of muskellunge already there.
Anglers offer to catch muskies
Nicolas Perrier, president of the Montreal chapter of Muskies Canada, an anglers' group working to preserve the overfished muskie population, has contacted the management of Jean Drapeau Park several times since the incident. He offered to bring in members of his group, all professional anglers who specialize in muskie fishing, to catch as many muskies as possible at the site and release them into the river.
He said his group would happily conduct the operation for free, annually or biannually, in the off-season, discretely or publicly. He has had no response from park management, apart from acknowledgment they received his correspondence.
Perrier said there are probably a 'good amount' of adult muskies in the lake, where fishing is forbidden, and adult fish can't get out and have no predators. This means the chances of an incident there may be slightly higher than in other similar-sized swimming spots in Quebec's natural waterways.
'I think there is a concentration of healthy muskie population due to the fact that they are protected and they've grown to be pretty big,' he said. 'It does seem like an accident waiting to happen. But at the same time ... that ecosystem is very well nourished, there is good vegetation and good prey, they are probably not that hungry.'
While he agrees with park management that chances of another muskie attack there are very low, he sees no down side to conducting a regular 'maintenance' fishing operation to reduce the risk.
'It would have to be repeated in a few years' because small fry can still get into the lake. 'Muskies grow about an inch a year, so if those specimens are maybe 25 or 30 inches now, they are going to be 45 inches in 10 years.'
Charles Giguère has been fishing at the Lac des Régates since 1984, the year the city of Montreal stocked the artificial lake with trout and held a trout fishing festival. He caught his first muskie in the lake in 1986. In good years, he said he has caught as many as 10 muskies in a single day, using specialized lures.
Giguère fishes there less often now, partly because it is forbidden. When he does sneak in, he is not after muskies, since he knows they are an overfished species. The lake has healthy supplies of many other fish, including sunfish, rock bass, alewife and round gobie, as recent DNA testing showed.
But he did catch a very large muskie, by accident, in the lake in September 2023, he said. He provided the Gazette with a photograph of himself standing on the dock behind the lake's welcome pavilion, holding a muskie in his arms that weighed in at close to 35 pounds.
Giguère says reducing grate openings won't stop muskie small fry from coming in or remove the adult muskies already there. He suggests textile netting around the Aquazilla structure and between that part of the lake and the shallower swimming area near the beach to keep fish out.
Max Mandl 'feeling way better'
The injured boy's father told The Gazette he is happy park management has at least done something to reduce the risk of more adult muskies getting into the lake.
'I'm glad they are doing something and that they have acknowledged, at least internally, that it was a muskie,' George Mandl said in a telephone interview from California, his home. 'They recognized that while not a massive threat to everyone who goes there, it is still a threat and they've taken some action.'
He understands the reluctance to take measures that harm wildlife, but the idea of sending in specialized experts to catch muskies in the lake and release them in the river makes sense to him. Increased security or better fencing could discourage the public from fishing there, he said.
'I understand you don't want to set a precedent, but if you send out specific fisher people in a controlled and measured way, not like inviting the public to do it … they would be doing it as volunteers for the safety of the community, I don't see that as a precedent-setting situation. '
Asked whether he had considered suing the park over the incident, Mandl said no because he understands there is no culture of litigiousness in Canada.
'It would have been nice if they had offered to refund our Aquazilla admission fee,' he said, chuckling. 'Twenty bucks or whatever that was. That would have been a nice gesture, but nobody did that.'
Mandl said he was impressed with the quick action by the lifeguarding team that day.
'I was awestruck by how quickly they reacted on the scene and how well they took care of us in the moment. It's disappointing that the administrative side' has been slower to act and to communicate with the public on the follow-up plan, he said.
Meanwhile, Max Mandl himself, now nine, says his leg is 'feeling way better.'
'One of the parts where it bit me, the mark is almost gone … It bit me and then it slashed me with its really sharp scales, and the biting part wasn't actually that bad, but then when it slashed me, that was the worst part.'
He said the incident has not put him off swimming in other natural waters.
'I'm OK with swimming, but I don't want to go too far out. I'm never going swim in that same lake again … I'm fine with swimming in other places.'
