Fixing Pike is more about fixing Walleye and Perch

Not sure if this part of Jim’s message is being communicated. Anglers For Habitat whom Jim is a member of; has been working on this proposal for a couple of years now. At last year’s Roundtable we made it a priority. But the problem of an overabundance of small Pike, isn’t the number one consequence. It is about the effect they (sm pike) are having on Walleyes and Perch, not to mention how they are a leading cause of stunted Panfish. Here is just one example of Jim’s findings using DNR netting outcomes.

Hi Vern In my review I looked at the most recent lake surveys for 1,004 lakes that received routine walleye stocking efforts. I found 372 (52%) of the 722 lakes that received walleye stocking in the proposed North / Central Pike Zone had pike catches that exceeded 7 per gillnet. These high density pike lakes averaged up to 50% fewer walleye per gillnet lift than lakes with fewer than 7 pike per gillnet. 93% of the statewide total of lakes receiving walleye stocking that also have high density pike populations are located in this North / Central Pike Zone. This zone receives over 70% of the statewide walleye stocking efforts. Whitefish Lake (Cross Lake) has 17.3 northern pike per gn and 95% are less than 24 inches long. The walleye gn catch is 3.9 and the rest of the Whitefish Chain has less than 3 walleye per gn despite a very heavy walleye stocking effort that includes fry, large fingerlings, yearlings ,and adults. The yellow perch population is the lowest on record for the lake at 1.21 per gillnet. The Whitefish Chain is not alone, 72% (n=38) lakes in Crow Wing County that receive walleye stocking have high density pike populations. Over 30 counties with walleye stocking are located in this North/Central Pike Management Zone and they average 52% of their lakes with fish community damaging high density northern pike populations. We need at the very least an informational hearing before all the House and Senate Environmental Committees to begin to get the wheels of working for change. Jim

Here’s a link for a more general description.

http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/291478171.html

My typical posts are just general this and that. This one I’m asking for people to take a good look and support this.

We’ve posted here before about what to do to improve the pike fishery. This is a proposal that has a chance to do not only that but improve other fisheries instead.

Is it perfect? No, but it’s a good start. My one request would be to reduce the number of over fish from 2 to 1. If we can’t legislate that can we follow our Muskie fishing brothers and practice CPR with bigger fish?

Some day I would like to do a dedicated pike trip that doesn’t have me spending my money in Canada. Getting better walleye fishing along the way is a win, win!

Jim didn’t say anything about “how they are a leading cause of stunted Panfish.” Not doubting it, just more interested in learning about that part of the ecosystem relationship.

You have anything on that part of the equation?

My only “problem” with that is I don’t see an uptick in people keeping hammer handles. Problem in quotes, because I like the idea. It would be nice to be able to force people to keep undersized pike, but that isn’t going to happen.

Sounds silly, but I think that the DNR should have some good pickling recipes at the fairs they attend with samples.

Thanks Buzz,
I fish in the heart of the area they are proposing to change the limit to ten and have been fishing some lakes since I was 12 years old. In the early seventies averaging 3 – 4# pike in a limit was very common, would be nearly impossible now.

Many of the lakes I fish have had the protected slot of 24″ – 36″ for many years. It has allowed more northern to get larger, but has not had a notable difference in catches. The theory I heard years ago is that once a northern reaches 24″ the size of prey they eat changes dramatically. I believe the thought process is they also start eating the small pike, thus leading to a bigger population of better sized fish. The small pike problem has not lessened.

The problem still remains that most people do not want to keep a 20″ or less pike, the y bones can be removed, but are much more difficult because of the small size and softness of the bones. Before I get bombarded, yes, I know many of you can fillet them out perfectly, but most people spend more time than the end result provides meat.

The information provided shows a definite correlation between stocked walleye survival and pike density. I would be 100% for trying the new proposed reg’s and see what happens.

I harvest a few limits every summer of smaller pike to pickle, and do on occasion filet and eat. We would need a considerable amount of fisherman keeping these small pike on a regular basis to really make an impact. I am willing to do my part, what about the rest of you??

This is my opinion only and is not necessarily supported by IDO, members, sponsors, and their affiliates. So let the bashing begin!

IMO, the biggest hurdle to clear is changing the mindset of the average fisherman to start keeping 22″ and less pike. I doubt that a limit of 10 little ones or even 100 little ones will have a significant effect on the population unless people start keeping them. Right now, I don’t see many people putting their 3 pike in the well that are <22″, so I would be surprised to see them start keeping a bunch more….

If we can change that mindset, that would be great. Also – I agree about 1 fish over instead of 2. As a spear fisherman, I can see where lot of spear guys would gladly take a pair of hawgs given the chance. Making it 1 over 26 would be fine by this fish hawg…..lol.

Elk

I could not have said it any better. You must fish a lot of those same lakes as I do with the 24-36 slot restriction. I have not noticed a lot of difference in the 5-6 years the slot has been in place. I just see to many problems with these slot limits to overcome the problems out there. It seems like the DNR and some on here as well think the only thing that matters is Bigger fish. I for one fish for many reasons and Keeping a few fish every once in awhile to eat is one of them. Keeping tons of smaller fish may seem like a great idea until no or few fish make it into the protected slot and all those that were in the slot die of old age or eat up all the prey in the lake and die. Those large fish need to consume lots of pry to survive. We only have to look at Mille Lacs and the slot limit’s on Walleye to see how that has worked out. Who Knows maybe the people at the DNR know what they are doing – Their track history does not support that idea but even a broken clock is correct twice each day

@elk_addict and fishthumper

I’m a fan of those 24″-36 regs you are referring to. When you are talking about not seeing a difference here’s my question. Why haven’t you seen results yet? Is there good data on this topic?

Here’s my reason. Getting a pike to 40″ takes nearly 20 years. Getting enough pike to be over say 32″ will take how long if you start with a stunted population? Do we need to wait a few more years for results?

I know first hand that big pike plus or minus 36″ will eat smaller pike. I’ve got pictures from Canadian trips and have seen it happen. That said they will eat small fish and small Rapala’s too.

Keeping and eating a sub 20″ pike does not appeal to me in the least and I wouldn’t ever do it.

The system become unbalanced. I’ve fished lakes that supported big pike with relatively few hammer handles at some earlier point in time. People took out the (32+ to 40+)” fish. No more breeders with the genes to produced future generations of fast growing big pike and nothing to keep the hammer handles in check. Pike are wicked cannibals. There you go. Take out most of the big breeders and your eventually almost guaranteed to have a lake loaded with hammer handles. I agree who wants to eat a hammer handle. If people just keep a few now and then between (27 and 32)” on occasion I don’t think a problem would ever start. I can’t stand a lake loaded with hammer handles, especially when it once held a population of nice sized fish pike and eyes.

suzuki wrote:

Keeping and eating a sub 20″ pike does not appeal to me in the least and I wouldn’t ever do it.

Ditto.

-J.

It may seem too late now but they need to run these tests in a man made lake from scratch. Bring in an x amount of species and size. Therefor they will have exact numbers and then will have more acurate information on the subject. Fixing pike is not like fixing any other speceis. They are not heavily harvested like EYEs and pan fish. For the select few that will take home a pike on these lakes it may help. I dont believe this will have any resolve for the issue. Wether its to solve the hammer handle problem or boost the Eye and panfish issue.

suzuki wrote:

Keeping and eating a sub 20″ pike does not appeal to me in the least and I wouldn’t ever do it.

But some of us will. And those of us who will, will be able to keep 10 of them so we will be able to get a meals worth out of them provided we can catch 6-10 fish. Consider this turning small pike into panfish.

Perhaps they need to advise those who don’t want to kill & eat what to do. Myself I’ll catch them all day long but they all go back because I’m nit eating them and also because of the wanton waste law.

Is it OK to kill and dump small Pike back in the lake??????? I would think no because then you have no way of controlling limits and the DNR is all about control.

Bass Pundit wrote:

But some of us will. And those of us who will, will be able to keep 10 of them so we will be able to get a meals worth out of them provided we can catch 6-10 fish. Consider this turning small pike into panfish.

After our mens trip last summer my bro gave me a bag of fillets. There was some pike in there and I tell you what, I loved those big white flakey fillets. If I still lived in Minnesota, I’d take advantage of the liberal limits on smaller pike, even if a 3# pike just gave up 1/2 pound of meat. Like you said, I’d treat it like panfish.

patk wrote:

@elk_addict and fishthumper

I’m a fan of those 24″-36 regs you are referring to. When you are talking about not seeing a difference here’s my question. Why haven’t you seen results yet? Is there good data on this topic?

Patk,
I have been a supporter and fan of the 24′ – 36″ regs also. I did state that we are seeing some bigger pike. The DNR is saying that the reg is not doing what they hoped it would.

My only “data” is personal fishing observations, but the data in the article Buzz posted tends to show that hammer handles are not just stunting the northern population, but also reducing the survival rate of stocked walleyes significantly. IF this change also increased the size of perch in lakes, that would be awesome also.

My opinion is fish management is a trial and error system. The fisheries managers use their experience, education, and netting/electroshock data to make educated decisions.

They are not always right, nor would we be if in the same position. If the tools they have say we should try this and they believe it will help, maybe we should.

Just my opinion.

IMO Small pike are great eating! If you do a cross cut (perpindicular to the bones) and fry them the majority of bones will disintegrate. Don’t even need to take out the Y bone. Used to call that the Platte Lake Special!

mplspug wrote:

My only “problem” with that is I don’t see an uptick in people keeping hammer handles. Problem in quotes, because I like the idea. It would be nice to be able to force people to keep undersized pike, but that isn’t going to happen.

Sounds silly, but I think that the DNR should have some good pickling recipes at the fairs they attend with samples.

It’s about education. Maybe if they make us take a class and put a sticker on ever northern we release, we can make a difference.

As a side note, who would keep a fish in the 26″+ range? Sure, you can eat them, but isn’t the mercury/toxin level supposedly pretty high?

I love pickling those little hammerhandles. It’s easy and they’re tasty. The only junky part is cleaning those little snot factories.

I’m not sure this is the right approach. The lake I grew up on in the 70’s and 80’s was chalk full of hammer handle pike. But we had very few walleye and a ok population of perch.

Fast forward to today and this lake has completely changed. The pike are now averaging far beyond the hammer handle size, the walleye are thriving, the perch are there, AND it has become one of the Midwest’s premier big sunfish lakes.

The change? They introduced panfish to the lake. Crappies and sunfish. And while the crappies have not flourished, the sunfish are off the charts.

Seeing this, I believe the introduction of a new food source for the pike picked up their size, allowing the walleye and perch to return. Now the lake is in great balance with good sized walleye, northern, and sunfish with the presence of crappie and perch.

I don’t see how the increase of bag limits to 10 small hammer handles is going to help given that few will be compelled to keep these fish. Perhaps they should consider upping the forage base so the pike grow and increase the odds that more walleye fry will turn into adults.

One big difference between lakes in N. Central MN and the lake I grew up on is fishing pressure. Even with the increased pressure today on our lake, it does not compare to what is seen in MN.

ET

elk_addict wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>patk wrote:</div>

@elk_addict and fishthumper

My opinion is fish management is a trial and error system. The fisheries managers use their experience, education, and netting/electroshock data to make educated decisions.

They are not always right, nor would we be if in the same position. If the tools they have say we should try this and they believe it will help, maybe we should.

Just my opinion.

Couldn’t agree more! We should at least try to improve our fisheries. The worst thing we could do is apathy and not try.

If we get a better balance then maybe some day the slot could move up a bit, say start at 24″ or 26″ if possible.

Great posts from everyone, keep’em coming.

I’ve been spending a week or 10 days on the same lake south-east of Aitkin for almost 30 years now. It’s been interesting to watch the population dynamics of this lake change over time. This is a 525 acre lake and is of typical weed growth and water clarity for the area. The DNR has been stocking Walleyes for many years. The panfishing is pretty good on this lake. The Largemouth Bass population is excellent, and it also has some of the biggest Rock Bass I’ve ever seen. Walleyes have always been very few and far between. You can scrounge one up but it really isn’t worth the effort. In spite of annual stocking there really isn’t a viable population of Walleyes in this lake. The interesting thing to me is how the population of Northerns has changed over the last quarter century. When we first started fishing this lake, there were quite a few fish in the 5-10 pound range. We would run across Pike of this caliber while Bass fishing and if you targeted them out beyond the deep weedline you could always find a few. The average fish was about 25 inches long. Over time, the big fish have pretty much disappeared. It’s now unusual to catch a decent Pike, maybe one a week. And the average size of the Pike has fallen dramatically. The majority of them are 14-16 inches long. As my wife says, “They’re worse than weeds because they’re harder to get off the hook”. The reason I’m bringing all of this up, is that I’m staying at a resort and I check out the “gut bucket” when I get the chance. Most of the guests at this resort aren’t very good at fishing, you see a lot of them trolling little spoons over the cabbage beds all day. They’re catching and keeping a lot of those little Pike. Year after year they’re killing hammer handles every chance they get. And the Pike just keep getting smaller and smaller. If this lake is any example, I don’t see the DNR’s new proposals working out at all.

Cougareye, I feel comfortable saying that the problem isn’t a forage base issue on the majority of Central MN Lakes.

I’m suggesting that the right fix might be to increase the forage base of fish other than walleye. Meaning, increase or start stocking of panfish. Instead of feeding the pike walleye fry, feed them sunfish fry.

We’ve seen over and over again how imbalancing nature by killing off a specie is not always effective.

Instead of killing pike, fatten ’em up on baby sunfish thus increasing the % likelihood that more walleye fry will hit adulthood.

Buzz what do you think of cougareye’s idea?

A couple of more thoughts, obviously this is a completed and confounding issue to even get a handle on yet alone find some solution. We (AFH) are looking to bring about the conversation that might get us headed in a new direction.

On stunted Panfish: It is a pretty straight forward deal . Yellow perch are excellent predators on young of the year bluegills. That keeps the density of bluegills in check which greatly improves growth rates for them. High density is just not good for bluegill growth. High density small pike populations are devastating on the yellow perch population leading to high density slow growing bluegill populations.

High Density Small Pike: There is evidence that Mother Nature intervenes, she doesn’t like voids. So, if we over harvest larger Pike, this triggers Pike to move toward increased reproduction. Resulting in an overabundance of Sm Pike.

Pike Diet Pike show a preference toward certain fish body styles, narrower fish like smelt, tulibee, and cisco are high on the list (if present) Small Perch are next, in most MN lakes Perch makes up much of their diet. Panfish with spiked fins appear to be less desire-able. A large Pike will often consume a smaller Pike 1/3 its size.

Perch: Perch spawn best when woody habitat is available. They attach their eggs and nature takes over. Another goal for AFH is to find a way to restore woody habit.

For the armchair fish biologists: One day a terrible fire broke out in a forest – a huge woodlands was suddenly engulfed by a raging
wild fire. Frightened, all the animals fled their homes and ran out of the forest. As they came to the edge of a stream they stopped to watch the fire and they were feeling very discouraged and powerless. They were all bemoaning the destruction of their homes. Every one of them thought there was nothing they could do about the fire, except for one little hummingbird.
This particular hummingbird decided it would do something. It swooped into the stream and picked up a few drops of water and went into the forest and put them on the fire. Then it went back to the
stream and did it again, and it kept going back, again and again and again. All the other animals watched in disbelief; some tried to discourage the hummingbird with comments like, “Don’t bother,
it is too much, you are too little, your wings will burn, your beak is too tiny, it’s only a drop, you can’t put out this fire.”
And as the animals stood around disparaging the little bird’s efforts, the bird noticed how hopeless and forlorn they looked. Then one of the animals shouted out and challenged the hummingbird in a
mocking voice, “What do you think you are doing?” And the hummingbird, without wasting time or losing a beat, looked back and said, “I am doing what I can.”

What a profound tale Buzz! That one will stick with me for a long time.
Interesting topic to talk out and troubleshoot. Ive got a keen interest in the battle against these little buggers as our lake has been inundated with snot rockets for quit some time and the liberalized 9 bag limit has done squat to reduce these buggers.

cougareye wrote:

I’m suggesting that the right fix might be to increase the forage base of fish other than walleye. Meaning, increase or start stocking of panfish. Instead of feeding the pike walleye fry, feed them sunfish fry.

We’ve seen over and over again how imbalancing nature by killing off a specie is not always effective.

Instead of killing pike, fatten ‘em up on baby sunfish thus increasing the % likelihood that more walleye fry will hit adulthood.

One problem you might have is these small hammer handles might not be able to grow into 36″+ fish they are stunted and many can reproduce. This multiplies the problem of more stunted pike in years to come. It’s a situation that can happen when the lake becomes unbalanced and the apex predators are removed in great numbers. The gene pool suffers. Heck even an 8 or 10 pound eye can eat a small hammer handle. Some of those hammer handles may be 3 to 4+ years old if the stunting is severe enough.

What about the lakes with insane numbers of 6inch and smaller perch?Lakes like Minnetonka and Pokegama near Grand Rapids?I dont see how taking more pike out of lakes like these will help perch at all as they are both lakes with over abundant walleye and pike forage allready.I guess now that I think about it they are both lakes stocked with Muskies also…Just something to think about.

@Buzz – great little story.

I feel like a just a little hummingbird some days. On this subject I have a self-imposed slot I use. The only other effort I had was promote this post.

Now on to my question, if me or others of us out there wanted to do a small part what are good ways to participate?

Buzz wrote:

For the armchair fish biologists: One day a terrible fire broke out in a forest – a huge woodlands was suddenly engulfed by a raging

……

Armchair fish biologist title fits no question, but I am not suggesting no action. I do appreciate any and all attempts at making something better or fixing an outright problem. But just because I am not a fish biologist does not mean I and others cannot see that other fish biologist supported projects have not worked as planned. I will give you however, that often politicians get in the way of science!

Thanks for the back and forth, very informative!

ET