Do adult muskie ever eat small stuff — crayfish, gobies, insects, leeches?
Almost never, and the reason is arithmetic. Routine muskie prey is a quarter to a third of the fish's own length, so for a 100 cm (39 in) fish a goby or a crayfish is a crumb not worth a burst of speed. Both do turn up in stomach studies — crayfish occasionally, round gobies in the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence system — but mainly in smaller muskie, and always as a trace beside suckers and perch. Insects and zooplankton matter only in the first weeks of life: young muskie switch to eating fish fry earlier than almost any other gamefish, and leeches, scuds and fish eggs never figure at all. The takeaway is about lure size, not colour — a goby-coloured bait is fine, a goby-sized one is fishing for something else.
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