Hello i was thinking of checking out this spot for muskrat trap
ping and im wondering if you guys think it would have many muskrats based off how the area looks?

Hard to tell from the photo, but they could be there. Spend some time looking for sign and swimming rats, then you'll know for sure. Good luck!

Heres a closer photo of the water meeting the banks

^^^^^ This! ^^^^^

They will start to build their huts soon, then you will know. And it sure looks like good habitat as long as it has had good water all year......jk

ok thanks for letting me know

anyone else have an opinion

I think they will be there.
My opinion is that it looks to me like what I call Parie grass , and rats will be smaller and not as good as rats from cattail ponds.
Reason being cattails produce tubers, bigger roots than that grass does.
More food for the rats.
IMHO That is one reason muskrat populations have become so low.
Many times I've trapped ponds like that , and caught low numbers where as when those ponds had cattails in them caught 4-5 times as many.
I've even found muskrat sign , in that grass and even houses, but no rats.
I really don't know, why just noticed years ago the rat population went down a lot , and ponds with cattails were few and far between.

45 Years ago , the only place I saw that grass was by driveways and patios .
It was a fad to have that tall grass in the yard.
Well it's very invasive and now it's everywhere.

If no huts this fall, look for feedbeds,toilets,and dens. Any chewed vegetation will tell you if rats are present. Good luck!

Water is a good start.

When you take that photo? Last spring?

Look for den holes along that road bed.

It really is about the food supply . They will show up in the oddest places if the food is there,,,, cattails, arrowhead, wild celery , etc.

Hang out there in the evening sometime and watch for them.

Looks good. Just go out at sundown and see if any swimming. If mink are around numbers will be down. Also look at waters edge for feedbeds and toilets.

Learn all you can about the quarry animal you want to harvest. Study their life history, what they eat there locally, their enemies (predators and competitors), your weather and what cover is attractive. And above all, get WET (SCOUT) looking for evidence of their presence. Muskrats (area populations) are cyclic, so even if you have plenty of food, water and cove (Habitat) they maybe in a down cycle for a ton of reasons. All that previous advice is very good but the more you know about a 'rat from the minute they are born to the next birthing season, the better you will be able to predict where and how to find a harvestable population. My Take........................... the mike

The rats are coming back, at least here in the southeast.

Ohio Wolverine, Thank you. that happened here too. We had a thousand acre swamp of all cat tails 15 years ago with a lot of rats and now the look-alike weed with no center stalk is almost 90% of the growth there. And it is slightly drying out too. The rats population has fallen a lot. You described it in you post......jk

Give us a picture of the GRASS you are referring to as there are lots of native wetland plants (including grasses) that can outcompete cattails in drier years. Marsh, swamp and wetland boundaries rarely stay the same and can expand or contract from year to year with plant densities changing due to water levels/availability. Happens all the time in prairie country. ......................the mike

Look at the OP's first and second posts.
I call it prairie grass , have no idea what it is.
I find patches of it in old farms that haven't been worked in years high and dry , and in almost every pond or lake now also.
It spreads through the root system , very much like crab grass or foxtail.