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| I think there are two different things being discussed here. The tigers swimming with their heads "body surfing" and the regular muskies sticking their heads up.
My family has netted two different fish - a northern pike and one muskie that were fairly stationary, sticking their heads out of the water. Both were choking on large ciscos/tulibees. One was a 21 lb pike many years ago on Inguadona, blind in one eye, choking on a 2-3 lb cisco. The second was a muskie on the Indian Lake Chain, about a 12 lb fish, doing the same. One possibility is an inherent survival device to help swallow the stuck prey (using increased gravity out of the water). This happens when fighting muskies/hybrids on live bait, as well. Sometimes their first response is to stick their head out and "periscope."
My first time on LOTW in 1985, and I've never seen it so consistently since, was a July, 90-plus degree occurance... We worked our way into Burrow Bay and when we stopped to fish each mini-bay, fishing it from point to point, a muskie would stick its head out of the water in the pea-green soup conditions. The head would be out from 3-5 seconds or so. As soon as we would come off plane, wait a bit, we started to look around, almost expecting it. Sure enough, a head would come out, seemingly looking around to see what had entered their bay - never more than one fish per location. Weird. As 5:00 hit, we saw no more do this for the remainder of the trip. None of these fish followed or reacted to lures. I've never seen more than one fish do this at a time, since, in a day.
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