Big pike and muskies prefer long, thin baits. Here’s the skinny on why and how you should fish them

MUSKIE MENU

According to Glade’s research, perch were the most important food for muskies, accounting for approximately one quarter of their diet. Suckers and invertebrates then accounted for roughly 10 per cent each, while bullheads, pike, bass and sunfish each made up about five per cent. The remainder were unidentified fish. (Since the netting and electro-fishing for his study were conducted in areas of the lakes where ciscoes were not present, they did not factor in his findings.) Glade remembers one specific muskie—he calls it his poster child—that had 101 individual prey fish in its stomach when he captured it by electrofishing. Ninety-seven were yellow perch, along with the parts of two bullheads, a sucker and a sunfish.

What sticks out here is that walleye were nowhere to be found on Glade’s list of top muskie menu items, even though they were plentiful in the lakes he studied. Not only that, the walleye often mingled with the same yellow perch and white suckers the big toothy critters were wolfing down. So, are muskies purposefully avoiding walleye?

“I’m hesitant to say it has anything to do with location, because there were lots of times when we were electrofishing we’d go through a pod of walleye, scoop a bunch up and then not 10 yards down the weedbed or breakline, there would be a big muskie hanging out and we’d get it, too,” Glade says.

Instead, he suggests it could be the muskies are actively avoiding the walleye. “They have lots of sharp spines and scales, and their gills can be pretty sharp and rough,” Glade observes. “I know I’ve gotten poked and scratched many times, so I can’t imagine that’s a very pleasant experience for a muskie.”

Another possibility is the walleye are just better at avoiding being eaten than the other species. “Walleye are predators just like muskies,” Glade says. “They’re built a little bit differently, but in both cases, they’re built for really quick bursts of speed that help them capture their prey. And so that might be just enough to help them get away from muskies.”

So much for tying on chunky, walleye-shaped baits.

BONUS TIP: INSIDER INFORMATION

Fisheries researcher Kamden Glade is a keen muskie and pike angler, as well as a top-flight scientist, so how does he benefit from his findings when he heads out on the water? For starters, he avoids throwing big baits in part because of the many times he’s discovered the larger fish eating three-inch yellow perch, five-inch sunfish and even mayfly larvae (above). Plus, he says, the shoulder ache isn’t always worth it.

Secondly, he cautions that muskies, in particular, aren’t always the solitary predator that anglers believe them to be. With that in mind, he stays on structure he knows to hold big fish and is never in a rush to leave. Good spots, he says, often hold multiple fish. Finally, when he catches a memorable muskie, he looks for identical locations rather than bounce around to a variety of different spots, such as sand flats, weedbeds and offshore rocky structures and cover.