Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Crazy idea - pen raised tiger muskie....

Ok, I’m here to pick the brains of pond boss members. I’ve got 10 Tiger Muskie that are 13-16” long. I’m planning to divide them into 2 groups of five and put them into 2 different 4’ x 4’ x 4’ cages off my dock. My goal is to train them to feed on cut bait. I’ve got a trout farm up the road where I get fresh frozen trout remains every week. Plenty to feed a few Muskie. My questions are..... 1) will they eat cut bait? And 2) how do I go about feeding it to them?

In my mind I assume they will eat cut bait because I’ve heard of people catching both pike and pure Muskie on cut bait. So that puts me at question #2.... For a few days I plan to just throw the cut bait in and see if they’ll eat it off the bottom. When I began throwing trout remains to catfish, they were smashing it on the surface in days. Can I expect a similar response with Muskie? Or would I be better served to somehow suspend the cut bait in the cage as if I were fishing it under a bobber, but without a hook? And if I choose to suspend the bait for training purposes, does anyone have any ideas how to do such?

Anyway, I wanted to start this thread so I could chronicle my results and share with others that may attempt such a task.

Saturday was a warm, overcast, calm day. For whatever reason my Tiger Muskie were showing themselves all day. They were laying in wait of prey just inches under water over the top of weed beds. The light conditions were such that we could observe them for the first time since stocking them last summer. Up until this point I had not observed them at all. Here is a picture of a 21" chunk of a fish. This would be 2018 hatch and one of them that I raised in a cage last spring and early summer then released. We saw a minimum of 4 different TM in my small 2/3 acre pond. We hope to move them to a different pond at some point. This one was caught in a fyke net.

Well, I don't have any LMB. Fortunately, my SMB pulled off a HUGE spawn, and the only one I've ever noticed last year and my pond is full of 5" SMB. I'm afraid that is what the TM are preying on. So next spring I'm hoping to move these TM to another pond.

On a side note, I'm wanting to make a post about pellet training SMB. I've had SMB for most of 18 years in this pond and rarely do I see one take a pellet. I recently started horizontally aerating, or circulating my pond. Immediately it seemed my SMB gained a feeding advantage and were hammering FHM at all times. That was understandable. But I added to that. I put a belt feeder over the top of my circulator so that it would push pellets with the current. Within 18 hours I had HUNDREDS of 5" SMB feeding aggressively on pellets. I want to observe for a while longer before I make a detailed post. BC, do you have any experience with such feeding techniques? And are there any observations in particular that you'd like for me to make?