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Posts: 1188
Location: Iowa | I was just curious if muskies eat stuff like carp or bullhead...I fish a local lake that is cahlk full of carp in the 8-16 inch range...I mean thick...you will see schools or 30-50 up on the surface at times...you can see huge schools of them on the depth finder too out of 25-30 feet of water and there is usually a large arc rather close to the school...is this a muskie, do they feed on carp or not...just curious if anyone else knows what they feed on it lakes that have other species...another lake that I fish has giant schools of bullhead that roam out over open water and there is usually a large arc near these too...you can see these black schools just chillin on the surface...do muskies feed on these rough fish so to speak...just curious...both of these lakes have walleye, yellow bass, largemouth bass, and panfish...
Thanks
Big Perc
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Posts: 32958
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Muskies definitely eat bullheads and smaller carp, too. Certainly not enough to control the population of either, most cases, but bullheads are a common forage item on the Muskie dining card. |
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Posts: 20281
Location: oswego, il | I have read too, depending on the body of water and the numbers of bullheads they can be the main forage. I have read on the chip when bullhead numbers go way up, they switch from golden shiners to bullheads.
With that said, southern minnesota has quite a few areated dishpan lakes that would make tremendous musky lakes. You could have an earlier opener or no closed season if they don't spawn successful on them which I am sure they would not. I think they are missing the boat on this one. |
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Posts: 32958
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | A number of years back the taxidermists in Northern Wisconsin did an unscientific study on stomach contents of the muskies brought in to thier shops. Perch and bullheads were number 1 and number 2. |
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Posts: 24
| Do muskies eat panfish much other than perch? What other forage are there? I know they eat carp, at least little ones, because I've seen them messing up schools of little carp. |
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| In the TC metro I remember DNR muskie specialist Rod Ramsell saying in the dead muskies he has cut open
Bullheads number 1
Crappies number 2
and a mish match the rest of the way |
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| you used to see big 'rafts" of bullheads on tonka all the time,,,no more,, |
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Posts: 2361
| Larger carp can be a little hard to handle because of their power and the thickeness of their scales, but they all get eaten if the musky is big enough.
Muskies and bullheads is extremely well documented and usually accounts for very fat muskie if they are exclusive to this pattern and I felt on the chip historically some fish were very bullhead specific. They can also eat a relatively large bullhead comparative to their size.
Golden shiners on the Chip? Yeah, makes a good article.  |
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Posts: 8866
| They'll eat pretty much anything, but generally, the spinier it is and the thicker scales it has, the less likely it is to be a regular part of a muskies diet. Soft fish like bullheads probably get eaten more than bluegills for example... |
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