Ever come accross a lake that is just full of 2~3 pound Northern Pike?

[DIRTRACKIN]

Some lakes get just packed full of Northern and they don't seem to get any bigger than 2 or 3 pounds. Do the lake and yourself a favor and keep a few, and try this!!
Fillet the meat off the backbone and leave the skin on, bone out the ribbs but leave the "Y" bones in. This is what I do, squeeze a lemon on the meat side and shake on greek seasoning(Cavenders is best).
Ok now the cooking: in your Webber Grill, pile the coal up on one side of the grill(aprox 25 brickettes) and light. when the coal is white and ready for cooking, close the draft 1/2 way on the bottom of the grill. DO NOT knock down the pile of coal. On the side accross from the pile lay the fillets skin side down. leave the draft on the lid wide open. cook for 15 mins. and remove the fish from the grill. You will see that the cooking has shrunk the fillet and the "Y" bones are sticking out of the fillet, with a plier or hemo~stat pull each of the "Y" bones out..Serve and enjoy, everyone will think your serving walleye untill you turn the skin over to show them.
Another option is to use your favorite marrinate just prior to grilling, I have used Italian dressing that works great!

 

[HardScrabble]

Can't say I've ever tried Pike. Catch few every now ant ehn so I might give it a try.

Course ya know about the famous recipe for Carp don't ya.?

 

[Alaska]

Funny coincidence this comes up today. Yesterday's local papers have stories on the devastation pike can inflict on native species. We have some serious problems to deal with here in protecting our trout and salmon fisheries.

A local sporting goods store runs a derby each spring and offers prizes and a small bounty for all pike caught.
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Plan targets pike in the Kenai Peninsula

The Associated Press

ANCHORAGE(October 21, 5:05 p.m. ADT) - The Soldotna Creek drainage has yielded more than 250 pike since an experimental netting program began in May.

The project is part of a broader state and federal effort to size up the extent of the Kenai Peninsula's pike problem.

The predatory fish were planted by misguided anglers decades ago. Now they pose a threat to the region's prized sportfish like silver salmon and rainbow trout.

Pike have existed in Soldotna Creek and its adjoining lakes since the early 1970s and biologists worry that the voracious fish have polished off just about everything edible within this once plentiful system. Because Soldotna Creek empties into the Kenai River, pike might use the Kenai as a kind of transit to other feeding grounds.

There is evidence that a few already have, said Gary Sonnevil, a fisheries biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Over the summer, biologists found a pike carcass discarded by anglers fishing near the Russian River, he said. Pike have occasionally been reported in Moose River and Watson Lake. Stormy Lake in Nikiski is teeming with them.

Stormy Lake and Mackey Lakes are viewed as two major sources of trouble. Both lead directly to important salmon habitat. Fish can reach silver-rich Swanson River from Stormy Lake.

"To me, it's like a sore that's going to keep spreading," biologist Tim McKinley told the Anchorage Daily News last week.

He and fellow biologist Adam Reiner had just picked 14 healthy-looking pike only 1 1/2 hours after setting two 120-long nets among the lily pads lining the shallow shore of this lake. They asked that the lake's name be withheld. It and surrounding waterways aren't open to the public, and landowners in this residential area already have trouble shooing away rod-toting trespassers craving a chance to hook a pike, whose meat, while bony, is compared with halibut in flavor and consistency.

They skulk in shallow, reedy, slow-moving lakes and streams, waiting to ambush passing fish, Sonnevil said. They hunt visually and so prefer clear water. Voracious pike will eat every other species living in a lake before eventually turning on their own young.

The shallow, weed-filled water where they thrive also is the habitat favored by juvenile silver salmon and rainbow trout, biologists say.

The fish are native to some streams on the west side of Cook Inlet and the Interior, where they have co-evolved with other species, Sonnevil said.

But where they aren't native, pike can be devastating. They were introduced to Bulchitna Lake, southeast of Skwentna along the Susitna River a couple decades ago. They have since traveled the river, darting into sloughs and lakes and dramatically reducing silver salmon and trout populations.

State and federal biologists have several ideas about studies and methods that might slow the spread of the invasive fish. They hold out no hope of eradicating pike entirely, saying it would likely involve costly, coordinated mass poisoning of infected lakes tied to a creek that flows into the Kenai River.