Biokinetics

The northern pike is primarily a sight feeder with a "gangland" type of attitude of striking first and asking questions later. Its body shape is well suited to its basic nature. Lying in wait for its prey in weedbeds or beside some structure like a rock or log, it can accelerate rapidly to quickly seize an unsuspecting minnow, perch, or other prey. But it has paid the price for this ability -- it can't cruise around like other predacious fish who can rely on sustained swimming for foraging.

Lake fishermen know this biokinetic characteristic well by the mad dashes of their hooked pike, especially when the fish sees the boat for the first time. Predator and Prey

Someone once said that a pike is a machine designed for the assimilation of enormous quantities of organisms. This description is not that farfetched as the fish has a ravenous appetite, eating five to six pounds of food daily in order to sustain a weight increase of at least a pound a year. A considerable portion of the larger pike's diet consists of perch, shiners, small suckers, ciscoes, herring, and other soft-finned, highprotein baitfish.

Nature has seen to it that the pike helps control the populations of prolific breeders like pan fish. Ideally, a pike likes a fish that is about a third to a half its own size, a real mouthful! But there are confirmed reports that pike have killed the occasional smaller muskrat, duckling, and frog with their powerful jaws.

That makes the pike not only piscivorous but carnivorous as well. You can also add cannibalistic to that list since pike will quickly resort to eating each other if food is scarce. In general, then, you can say that the pike will feed on any living thing available ... hence, your assimilation machine concept.

Pike of different sizes require different diets. If an aquatic environment offers a limited forage, the results will show in the limited size of the fish or smaller populations. Large pike will be found in shallow water in the spring and fall but in the summer they'll inhabit deeper water. Both areas, then -- shallow and deep water -- must offer a suitable menu for larger-sized fish.

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