Saltwater Pike

[Long_Rod_Silvers]

I thought this article was interesting - it got my brain thinking about all sorts of fun possibilities.

Ocean pike?

Northern pike are native to Alaska. Just not all of Alaska. Thanks to Ice Age geology, the southern third of the state was spared from the toothy, salmon- and trout-eating predator. It was believed, until very recently, that the only pike found in south-central Alaska are there thanks to illegal...

www.hatchmag.com

 

[Nick Clayton]

Speaking of saltwater pike, wonder what ever happened to that dude on the old forum from Norway or Sweden or somewhere over there. He seemed like an interesting dude and posted some really cool reports. If I recall he was going out in a float tube in some sort of estuary like area and targeting pike. Always seemed super cool to me.

 

[John Svahn]

We would catch chain pickerel, a cousin of pike, in Chesapeake Bay in the same spot as we would catch bluefish and rays. It was brackish water but in the summer it was definitely on the salty end of brackish. FWIW

 

[SilverFly]

Speaking of saltwater pike, wonder what ever happened to that dude on the old forum from Norway or Sweden or somewhere over there. He seemed like an interesting dude and posted some really cool reports. If I recall he was going out in a float tube in some sort of estuary like area and targeting pike. Always seemed super cool to me.

Not sure but that was Adam Saarinen. It was my fault (he joined WFF). I met him on an Australian Saltwater fly fishing forum (a great forum actually) and thought some folks here might appreciate his amazing pike flies. Well that, and he was a fun/interesting guy.

 

[Dave Boyle]

They do hang out in the Baltic where salinity is reduced. I do find it interesting that their point is pike eat trout first. In Scotland where I grew up pike were enemy #1 in any watershed that had them and salmonids, they were indiscriminately killed by netting and all sorts. Turns out big pike eat small pike more than other fish. Killing the big ones leaves large populations of wee ones that mainly eat parr.

Two places I can think of in the U.K. that have/had great trout and winter pike fishing were Loch Leven and Rutland reservoir. Trout and pike can and have always co existed.

It is about management if they coexist. Trying to bluntly stuff one from existence doesn’t work and actually makes it worse. I grew up on Loch Ness where there were loads of pike in some places but also lots of trout and salmon. They were all always there and it ‘worked’ . Now we’ve screwed the salmon we really can’t blame them.

Dave

 

[Chucker]

They do hang out in the Baltic where salinity is reduced. I do find it interesting that their point is pike eat trout first. In Scotland where I grew up pike were enemy #1 in any watershed that had them and salmonids, they were indiscriminately killed by netting and all sorts. Turns out big pike eat small pike more than other fish. Killing the big ones leaves large populations of wee ones that mainly eat parr.

Two places I can think of in the U.K. that have/had great trout and winter pike fishing were Loch Leven and Rutland reservoir. Trout and pike can and have always co existed.

It is about management if they coexist. Trying to bluntly stuff one from existence doesn’t work and actually makes it worse. I grew up on Loch Ness where there were loads of pike in some places but also lots of trout and salmon. They were all always there and it ‘worked’ . Now we’ve screwed the salmon we really can’t blame them.

Dave

It’s all about where the fish hang out during their different life stages. In Scotland, the shallow weedy bays where the pike are mostly hanging out are not the places that you find the trout. In the extreme (like Loch Leven before the ecological collapse brought about by farm effluent runoff), the trout are almost pelagic and probably never see a pike in their lives. “Niche partitioning” is one term that I have heard for it.

Problem in Alaska is that the salmon fry and smolts use the habitat that is favored by the pike, and have not evolved to be able to avoid them. Similar issue in a lot of places with carp - carp have taken over what used to be salmon rearing habitat. Rather than eating the salmon, they have altered that habitat so that salmon can no longer take advantage of it.

 

[Brute]

These were the only fish in the Katmai I didn’t release…this was dinner that night. There is a shallow slough that is connected to the Big Ku river that is loaded with these guys. They are fun to target with a beat up mouse and 7wt…