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

Slender and long beats short and fat when it comes to lure choices

LONG LOGIC

Glade’s study lakes included four different types of systems, including waterbodies with and without ciscoes. Those soft, silvery, oily, cold-water pelagic baitfish are typically associated with the thermocline, and they’re so nutritiously rich they produce big fish almost everywhere you find them in abundance.

In the lakes where there were no ciscoes at all, guess what Glade discovered was the most important muskie food item? Their northern pike cousins. I almost fell off my chair when he said that, because over the years the most observable thing I’ve seen sticking out of the mouths of the giant muskies and pike I’ve caught has been the tail of a smaller pike. Consider also the many images you’ve probably seen on social media of a gargantuan pike or muskie floating dead on water with an almost same-sized pike wedged in its throat.

“A 20-inch pike is kind of average for the sizes we saw,” says Glade. “If you think about it, it’s just a giant hot dog with fins that’s swimming around in the water. It’s one of those things that’s really easy to swallow. And in a lot of our lakes, they’re just really abundant. So, it just makes it all the more probable that a muskie is going to swim by and grab one.”

Did you catch the average size of the pike Glade found in the stomachs of the muskies he examined? Now ask yourself, when was the last time you threw or trolled a 20-inch-long lure? Probably never, right? But it confirms what the fisheries science literature has highlighted for years, and that is the maximum size prey eaten by northern pike and muskies typically ranges between 32 and 46 per cent of the predator’s total length.

A 20-inch pike is just a giant hot dog with fins that’s swimming in the water

I am certain—at least in part—that this is why anglers opt for bigger-is-better when it comes to lure selection for targeting giant size muskies and northern pike. But it doesn’t tell the whole story, because when we look at the median size of the prey eaten by the very same fish—not the biggest or smallest, but the size of the prey in the middle—it typically ranges between 10 and 20 per cent of the predator’s total length. So, for a 40-inch muskie or pike, the median-sized prey measures four to eight inches in length, while for memorable 50-inch fish, it is five to 10 inches.

What this diet research highlights is that the critical parameter is the length of the prey and its lean and spindly shape, which fisheries folk refer to as “fusiform.” So, while a giant muskie might think nothing of wolfing down a slender 20-inch pike, it might pass up a short, plump 12-inch drum or carp.

Indeed, let’s look again at those sleek slender ciscoes that are generally regarded as nature’s perfect food for muskies and northern pike, as well as for walleye and lake trout. When they are abundant and heavily predated, guess what they have been observed to do to avoid becoming dinner? They grow stouter and girthier so the predators have difficulty stretching their mouths open wide enough to swallow them.

“Our results indicate there may be a cap on the size of cisco that muskellunge can or will consume,” concluded a recent report from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. “Further, mean lengths of cisco generally ranged from six to 12 inches, suggesting that gape limitation and exceedance of preferred size [for muskies] was likely occurring.”