I have a friend who loves pike too. He fillets them and fries them.
Lots of spearing up here on the Hi Line.
Northern Dave, how do you like to fix pike?
There is an old lady up here that will pickle them if you bring them to her. Cheese, crackers beer and pickled pike is great!
I like to bake or fry.
The kids kind of grew up on baked pike and it's made some sort of an impression on them because that is usually how they request that I cook it.
I'll do a light coating of "fry'n magic" or similar, then I'll usually wrap in foil with a little black pepper, lemon and a few pads of butter placed on top of the fillets. It flakes apart really nice, stiff texture to the meat on these pike. Sometimes I remove the Y bones, sometimes not. Depends on who I'm cooking for, some folks is too "towny" to deal with fish bones.
I'm not going to totally pee on the pickled pike idea, because I've ate a lot of it and you are correct, it is an awesome pickling meat.
But... just an FYI, pike is host to a specific parasite that some cold process pickling efforts does NOT kill, and it can be dangerous.
A hot process or freezing hard for like 48 hours prior to pickling, is key to killing the parasites.
