Fish
Northern Pike
Esox lucius · also called pike, jackfish, water wolf
The northern pike is the top predator of cool fresh water across the whole northern half of the world — a long, green, weed-patterned fish that hangs motionless in the shallows and then, without warning, is somewhere else with a smaller fish in its jaws.
Overview
Esox lucius lives in lakes, slow rivers, and marshes across North America, Europe, and Asia, wherever the water is cool and weedy. It is commonly 45–75 cm, with big fish over 1.3 m and 20 kg. It eats mostly fish — including a lot of other pike — plus frogs, crayfish, ducklings, and swimming rodents.
The strike
Its body is a cylinder with a duck-bill snout, and the dorsal and anal fins sit far back near the tail, turning the whole rear of the fish into one accelerator for a single explosive lunge from cover. The mouth holds hundreds of teeth angled so prey travels only one way.
Pike or muskie
A pike has light spots on a dark flank; the larger muskellunge has the reverse, dark bars on a light flank.
Early spawner
It breeds as soon as the ice melts, scattering eggs in flooded grass with no parental care. The fast-growing fry turn cannibal within weeks.
Status
Least Concern and abundant across its huge native range — but a damaging invasive predator of trout and salmon where it has been introduced outside it.
Northern Pike: common questions
Why is the northern pike called the water wolf?
Because of how it hunts and how much it eats. A pike holds motionless among weeds or beside a log, camouflaged by its barred green flanks, until a fish or other animal passes within range, then covers the gap in a fraction of a second with a lunge powered by its far-set fins. It is not a pursuit predator like a tuna; it is a single-strike ambush specialist. Pike take a wide range of prey, including animals as large as ducklings and swimming rodents, and they are heavily cannibalistic, so in many lakes the main check on the pike population is other pike. The old European name Wasserwolf, water wolf, captures the reputation.
Are northern pike dangerous to swimmers?
Not really. There are occasional reports of large pike biting the hands, feet, or legs of people wading or swimming, usually in warm shallow water in summer where a pike may mistake a moving foot for prey or be defending a spot. The result is cuts from the teeth, sometimes needing stitches, not a serious attack, and such incidents are rare. Pike are far more of a hazard to anglers handling them in the boat, where the teeth and thrashing can cause nasty wounds; experienced pike anglers use long forceps and jaw grips and keep their fingers away from the gills and mouth.
How old can a northern pike get?
In cool northern waters a pike can live 10 to 25 years, with females generally outliving and outgrowing males. The famous story of the Emperor's Pike, a fish supposedly tagged by a Holy Roman Emperor in 1230 and caught 267 years later at nearly 6 metres and 250 kg, is a medieval legend; the mounted skeleton that was displayed to prove it turned out to have extra vertebrae added to lengthen it. Real record pike are impressive enough, at well over a metre and more than 20 kg, and those are old fish that have survived decades of predation and, in many waters, angling.
What is the difference between a pike and a pickerel?
They are all members of the same family, Esocidae, and the same genus, Esox. The northern pike is the mid-sized, widely distributed species. The muskellunge is the giant of the family. The pickerels, the chain, redfin, and grass pickerels, are the small members, generally under 60 cm, found in eastern North America. Confusingly, in parts of Canada and Ireland "pickerel" is used locally for small northern pike or even for walleye, which is an unrelated perch. The safest identification is by pattern and size within the true pike family.