Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Great Northern Pike

I have a 49" on the wall ....28 lbs a days boat ride from my house ...btw if we don't catch at least a dozen over 40" = a failed trip ! lol I always liked this photo (notmine)> and this one I took, as jaws was coming at me !!! >

That's a hellofva fish ET! Biggest one I've caught on the bayou I fished as a kid was about 14 lbs. Back in my younger adult days I did a lot of scuba diving on the inland lakes around here and would always notice some big northerns "shadowing" us, the big ones made ya a little nervous but never did have a problem.

story time ....we were fishing late 11pm or so sun was low sky bright red ...in a back eddies/side sough , a little black sand beach at our feet 'knonking the pike out with every cast! all a sudden "V'ees are coming right at us ! little 6" "white fish" are jumping out of the water to get away from the "mad pike/pikes from hell" > a 5/6" "white fish" lands a good 18" out of the water and on my sand bar !! a couple feet away ....BOOM out of the water comes a pike ...like a spear grabs the litte fish ,then he wiggles himself back into the river-like a orca grabbing seals off a beach ....cool it was!!! ,my then 11 son still remembers that one ,with this take-away > u are unsafe, even out of water!!!

That looks too freakin' big to be a pike... gotta be a muskie!!

Speaking of pike stories... the day I caught my biggest (23 lbs) I was fishing with my friend Tom and his two sons at Thunder Lake, west of Barrhead, AB. We were fishing the inlet cove during the walleye spawning run, and the big pike were just off the shallow drop-off gorging on walleye. We weren't catching many, then Tom's 12-year-old son hooked and landed a 24-pounder. On his very next cast he hooked and landed a 26-pounder, and no sooner had he landed that one than I hooked my 23-pounder from the same spot.

The real big ones in spring don't fight much, more like pulling in a heavy snag/waterlogged branch. They're always females, as well.

My favorite size pike for eating/smoking is a male fish in the 3-5 pound range. Big enough for nice fillets, but you're not doing any harm to the big spawning henfish.

Anyone remember Bill Tenney and his world-wide quest for big pike? Used to be some good accounts in In-Fisherman.

its a european pike, they get way way way bigger over there

I caught an 18 pounder last July on a fly out trip with my wife. Didn't really want to kill the big fella but F&G has a kill order out on them so into the fishbox it went. We cleaned around 25 smaller fish that evening, between 20"-26" and the big one was noticably better table fare. The filets had a much whiter hue to them and were almost indistinguishable from walleye or saugeye once cooked. The smaller ones were good too but had more of a yellow coloration to the meat and a more fishy taste.

I think my favorite part of cleaning the slimy rascals is looking at stomach contents. They almost always have some interesting critter in their gut whether it's trout, salmon, sticklebacks, or other Northerns. One lake I ice fish at will have them almost exclusively full of little freshwater shrimp.

The chain pickerel or what we call Jackfish are small enough that if you gash them the bones will fry out. I'm happy to catch them small like that. I would think that very many of those northerns in a lake would be rough on the bass and pan fish…

WOW - some darn nice pike in this thread.

Wife caught this one a couple summers ago. Biggest she's ever caught by far, and she was pretty excited. Didn't have a scale so don't know what it weighed.

That's why god made the water cold. Big pike like big baits and cold water makes "things" shrink.

Here's my biggest. Caught on a BooYah 3/8oz spinnerbait.

caught one about that size out at Lake Minchumina (sp?)


you can go swimming there Jim, but don't go skinny dipping for love nor money!

Nah.......If you fish the lakes and sloughs of the various flats along the Yukon River, you routinely catch them that size. If we went sportfishing out on Kaiyuh Flats, 20 pounders got tossed back.

We've been on a couple of lakes in Western Ontario up way north of Kenora that are spectacular in early summer. One is non-stop Walleye (and big ones) with some nice Pike spots here and there for diversion. The other is wall to wall Pike (very big) and I don't think I've ever caught any other type of fish in that lake.