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Posts: 17
| Just wodnering what you all think would be Mr. Muskies main forage in a shallow lake ( 4 basins @ max 23ft.) Perch, Walleye, baby musky, rock bass, large or small mouth bass, suckers, carp, crappie, or sunfish. Do they seek out/follow a certain fish?
In fall, I regularly read about them following Ciscos to the shallows for the spawn but I dont have these in my lake.
Comments welcome.
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Posts: 86
Location: University of Hartford | I would say all of them to a certain degree, with perch and suckers being my top two, but when the eyes are bunched up on reefs or points then I would try them first. As for small mouth I have caught tons on my lake with teeth marks but never caught a ski in the same areas as the smallies live. I have no knowledge about carp so those are out in my book. Try fishing where skis could push the schools up against an edge to feed, thats what I do.
Alex | |
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Posts: 20269
Location: oswego, il | Whatever is most abundant is what will be eaten most often. Probably the perch and suckers | |
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Posts: 477
Location: Iowa | I too would say perch and suckers, but don't rule out the the walleye and bass. I too have seen teeth marks in some rather large bass. | |
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Posts: 17
| I have also seen a few walleye two weeks ago ripped in half and shreeded. He was floating. Some musky took him to town. The other looked like it had been in a knife fight. We must remeber the power and teeth these buggers have. One wrong hand placemnet in net getting hooks out and slicy-dicy. Anybody get really chewed yet? Had a few poke and close calls... | |
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Posts: 2024
| Most likely it is a function of density-dependence (i.e. whichever food source is the most abundant will get chomped on more frequently than anything else). It is also about resource/energy allocation and consumption. If it is more energetically costly to pursue a large, fast, quick turning bass than a relatively sedentary, slow moving sucker or a medium sized but found-in-large-schools perch then it will likely be the alternative that requires the least amount of energy to consume. By nature, muskies are ambush style predators which predisposes them to be opportunistic instead of creating "search images" and seeking out specific prey items while passing others up.
Bottom line: what is more plentiful in your lake? Bass, walleye, perch, suckers, etc? Whatever the answer is to that question is likely the answer to "which forage?"
For instance, my roommate and I had this very discussion tonight. One of our small bass in our aquarium gobbled down a feeder goldfish easily 1/3 to 1/2 its body length. Yesterday the other bass in the tank ate ALL the feeder guppies we put in, leaving this little guy with nothing going on a week now. Nevertheless, he ate a goldy tonight. Which begs the question. Why? Was it because he was STARVING? Would he have normally pursued a prey item that large? Sure the caloric intake is much greater per unit energy invested in hunting it down, but it will now have to use a lot of energy to break down the goldfish into digestable components. Fortunately for him, he doesn't have to move much and thus doesn't need to allocate much energy to movement. But had there been guppies in with the goldfish would he have gone after the big goldfish over the guppies? I suspect not (he attempted to eat the guppies yesterday when we had both in the tank, unfortunately he was unsuccessful). Or was the goldy attack out of sheer opportunity? His gape is just BARELY large enough to fit around a small goldfish. I suspect it was a combination of being REALLY hungry and having the opportunity, which might also hold true for muskies/pike that eat items 1/2 or more their body length.
Knowing the biology of a lake plus the biology of the fish you are after is a good way to get a leg up on your quarry.
Edited by esox50 10/1/2008 11:33 PM
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Posts: 8856
| Give them a bunch of choices, and they'll pick the easiest fattest oily thing they can find, and forgo the less filling, more difficult prey. If that fat oily easy thing isn't available, they'll choose the next best option. Limit their choices enough, and they will eat anything they can find.
Which, now that I think about it, is just like me.
Maybe I'm a musky?  | |
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Posts: 238
| Lake Scugog is loaded with black spot shiners,when you see large mumbers of terns diving on bait that is what there hammering on and the muskies are right there with them.
Perch are the next most abundant forage followed by bluegill,pimpkinseed and crappie.
Walleye are also there feeding with skies on the same blackspots so muskies would also eat them given the chance.
Brown bull head used to be a favorite of scugog muskies but there #s have declined drasticly in the past ten years.
Lake scugog does not support a healthy sucker population,very few.
Carp are also a favorite of scugog muskies when young.
The lakes supports a very large and diverse small minnow population that all the games fish feed on.
Emerald shiners,golden shiners,red belly dace,common dace and smooth and horned chub.
The really large schools that you see boiling off shore and the biggest of the minnow families that you see are almost allways blackspots and goldens.
Walleye patterned baits have produced really well for me when fishing around schools of bait in scugog. | |
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Posts: 621
Location: Seymour, WI | Remember, even if there is a dominant forage in the lake, not all of the muskies will be doing the same thing at the same time. Some could be deep, some could be shallow, that's what makes it tough.
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Posts: 371
Location: Dixon, IL | I would like to use natural color lures like sucker, perch or walleye! If the water is dark then I would start to try firetiger, hot orange blade/ black bucktail, etc. If not work then natural color!
If lake have lot of shad then I use white, light color and shad color! Superman color is also nice ( white with little light blue and red)
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Which forage?