Repetition and patience in training is a key part of the process. Very interesting and educational posts. Many thanks from all. One suggestion. When you clip the meat,,, only clip a very thin sliver of the meat so a very light tug from the fish releases the meat. It appears from the video the clip is grabbing too much of a portion of the meat.
Questions -
How often do you feed the meat pieces?
and how much meat each time?
To how many musky in the cage?
Are you thinking all musky are getting pieces of meat?
Those are great questions that I largely don't have answers to at this time. Much of this all began taking place just yesterday. I'll do the best I can at answering them now and will come back and update it as I progress.
I try to feed the muskie toward dark, largely because they feed higher in the water column toward dusk so I get better observation. But some days I feed mid day, some days I don't feed at all, and some days I feed multiple times. This is largely due to my erratic schedule. I'm sure I could do better if I was more consistent, but that isn't happening until my boys are old enough to do this themselves, in the mornings. I had been feeding about 10-18 worms each day. As far as sizes of meat, I was varying sizes last night, with no noticeable difference in their interest. Obviously, I'd like them to progress to larger chunks to make the process more efficient for me. But it's a work in progress.
I have 2 cages. 8 TM per cage. The one cage of fish I have put my time and effort toward and chronicled above, the other one has largely gone ignored. Only occasionally putting worms on floats, which they'll eat after I leave the scene. Not sure if I should mix the fish next and hope those learn from the trained ones, or begin the training process on them. Maybe get advice here for the best way to proceed.
I really don't know how many are trained to eat yet. In one of the videos above, you can see 4 separate fish around the meat. So I'm assuming there are at minimum 4 trained. I'm assuming some won't train and will be cannibalized, but will find out as time goes on. I do hope to get 2 more cages from Dr. Condello and go to 4 TM per cage at some point.
Thanks for the dialogue fellas. Always glad to have people pitch in with ideas. And I'm certainly counting on Mr. Cody to share his expertise. Soon, Dr. Condello and I would like to acquire TM fingerlings, and begin this process in his tank at a much earlier stage in life. If these train as well as I'm hoping I'll build a grow out pond for them so we can get a season or two in the grow out pond before releasing.
