My sister has a bunch of ADF&G folks at her place across the inlet doing an eradication project on pike in Tukallah Lake, Three-Mile to locals. First they caught a bunch of pike and ran a bunch of tests on a number of them but also tagged and released a bunch. By using the numbers recaptured versus the numbers tagged they should get a pretty good idea how many there were and how large a percentage they recaptured/killed.

Some very interesting things found so far..
A bunch of pike were found to be eating sockeye fry/smolts, from a run thought to have been wiped out quite a few years ago. Very good news! Silver fry/smolts have not been represented so they probably have been eliminated. The run used to be epic...

Many pike had small burbot in their guts... locals did not know there were burbot there.

Two pike were caught with baby muskrats in their guts. My brother-in-law has trapped there for years and has not seen a push-up in a decade.

They are now in the catch and kill mode with nets and have had over a 50% return on tagged fish which really surprised them. It indicates the pike population is much smaller than estimated.

If that lake were more accessible to our immigrant population, the pike would soon be eradicated.

Some years back they had a small workover rig there with a bunch of coonasses and that probably slowed the growth...

Always amazing how when a bit of effort is made to look into even a small ecosystem it proves to be much more complex and diverse than at first assumed. Critters are surprisingly resilient at times.

Are they able to eradicate to 100% using nets? Rotenone has been used down here.

I doubt they can get 100% due to large swampy areas in connected ponds. The plan is not to use rotenone... probably to save the sockeye in the lake.

Honestly I have no clue.. but I'll ask. Are hatcheries able to restart the silver salmon run if the pike are thinned?

Is there any way to cook pike to make it worthwhile?

Well, they can take fish from another run and plant them, but the particular strain of fish there had developed a specific set of traits over a long period of time and likely coped better than other fish from other streams. It should be a very good producer of salmon... a very small creek and a fair-sized lake with lots of frogwater for the fry to hide in.

Establishing runs in new systems has been hit and miss in the past.

No, pike from tea-stained water are going to taste like the swamp they grew up in. I have had a lot of very good pike, but it came from lakes with very clear water and no swampy stuff.

Cutting out the Y bones takes a little finesse but there is no point in trying with our swampy fish...

If I understood corectly, getting rid of them may have some negative consequences.
As some one else said, messing around in ecosystems is more complicated than it would appear.

About 80% of our clients prefer pike. Its very good eating although my favourite is arctic grayling. If you have access to pike, try it in a chowder.

They are not native to the area. Old timers missed them from home and decided to carry them over the Alaska Range. They have eliminated trout and salmon from many systems. Reducing them is a good thing...

It has everything to do with the water. Most pike here come from boggy stuff...

Hunting them in shallow spawning areas with a canoe and 22 rifles is great sport.

Absolutely! Got to do it in Lake Champlain in NY in college. Have done it up here, too.

I used to fish several small lakes off Chena Hot Springs Road. Besides frogs and aquatic insects apparently the only other thing to eat was pike. I once caught a fairly large pike with a partly digested smaller pike, with an almost digested even smaller pike inside.

There were sticklebacks in there, but I don't recall ever seeing one in a pike's stomach.

We joked that they f'ked all summer, and fed all winter...

My oldest brother, out of one of those lakes, once caught a pike slightly in excess of 20 pounds.

Most I ever got was about 5.

My favorite technique was to wade the shore in hippers unti I saw a v- darting out of the weeds, then I would cast a Rapala to it. Worked almost every time.

Would Koyukuk or Kateel pike fall into the boggy/swampy stuff category?

I believe they would but have never eaten a pike from there. That is very boggy country.

There have only been a few lakes and rivers in AK where they pike I ate were not boggy tasting...a pike on a small tributary to the Kvichak that really got the best of my hand while I was trying to work out a deeply inhaled fly and some from Mineral Lakes along the Tok Cut-Off are the only AK pike I remember being good. I have tried to eat a lot of them...

The pike I caught in the Yuki and the Cosna were good.

the water in the Chatanika goes from muddy to clear depending upon how much rain and how recent we've had the rain.

Murphy Creek, has tannic acid or whatever it is that colors the water in it, but again depending upon water volume how brown or clear it appears.

All the pike we've taken from there have been toothsome.

Pike out of Lake Minchimuna were good eating too.

but the best I've had was from streams that connect the Ashiak (sp? ) lake chains in Canada. Right before that trip my dad had sent me a box of homegrown tomatoes from MO, I sent him sheep meat in return.

fresh caught Pike outa clear streams, fried potatoes and onions, fresh sliced maters mmmmmm, fit for a king, and even this joker got in on some of that good eating.

Good and boggy?

U got that rite ...they would look at that lake as a one time use refrigerator...

I ate some pike last summer. The ones right after ice-out were actually good. The one I caught in the Kobuk was not!

The pike situation in SC Alaska is so bad that the ADFG regulations make illegal to return a live pike to the water.

Welcome to the fire and thanks for starting on this thread!

You are absolutely correct.

The best news that came out of this first round of pike reduction was the fact the numbers were lower than expected... the fact a few sockeye have survived is just gravy...