How to know it
A pike is a musky-shaped fish — long, flat duckbill head, dorsal fin set far back — but the markings run the other way: light, bean-shaped spots on a dark green ground. The tail fin is rounded at the tips. There are five or fewer pores on each side under the lower jaw, and the cheek is fully scaled, where a musky's has scales only on the top half. A pike's teeth are what people remember.
Where it lives
Pike are native across the northern hemisphere and live in almost every lake, flowage, river and backwater in the Upper Midwest that has weeds. They are ambush fish: they sit in or beside cover — weed beds, reed edges, fallen wood, the mouths of creeks — and hit what passes. Small pike are everywhere; big pike want cooler water with large forage, and in summer on deep lakes they move out to deeper weeds and rock or suspend near schools of ciscoes.
Through the year
Pike spawn very early, right at ice-out, in flooded marsh and shallow bays, and are the first fish to move shallow in spring. The early open-water season is fishing warm bays and the first weeds to come up. As the water warms the bigger fish leave the shallows for deep weed edges and cooler water, and summer fishing for size means fishing deeper and faster. Fall cools the shallows again and brings big fish back in to feed before ice. Pike are a mainstay of ice fishing across the region, taken on tip-ups with live or dead bait set along weed edges.
How guides fish for it
Casting big, bright lures along the edge of cover: spoons, spinnerbaits, large inline spinners, jerkbaits and soft plastics. On a slow day a pike guide may switch to live bait under a float. Fly fishing for pike with large streamers on a heavy rod is well established on clear northern waters, and some guides specialize in it. Trolling covers water on big lakes in summer. In winter, tip-ups. A pike will often hit a lure meant for walleye or bass, so many guides carry a wire leader and a pike net on any trip.
Handling and release
The teeth are sharp and the gill rakers are worse, so a pike is held with a hand under the gill plate from behind, never in the gills, or with a glove across the back. Long pliers or jaw spreaders get the hooks out. Many anglers release pike over a certain size; the states' rules often encourage keeping small ones and letting big ones go, because the big ones are what makes a lake worth fishing.
Rules
Bag limits, length and slot limits and seasons vary by state and by water, and several states have zone rules meant to thin out small pike. The Minnesota DNR and the Wisconsin DNR publish the current rules, and a guide will know the ones for the water you are on.
