Northern pike, in the pond or aquarium

[Opcn]

well, norther pike pose a challenge in the aquarium, they bolt right up to 14" or so, wich is okay if you have a big tank, however they are canibbalistic and will, at this size, eat fish larger than themselves. Heres a picture of two with fish hanging out of there mouths, Probably in an alaska state department of fish and game fishtank.

unfortunately pike get to be a good 3 feet long, wichbyu CFC's keeping big fish formula of a tank4.5fishlengths lon and 1.5 wide and tall gives you a tank thats 13.5 feet long, 4.5 feet tall and 4.5 wide, in other words a 2050-gallon, fortunately pike stunt easily as a result of lack of food and a small space (they make there homes in shallow reedy ponds, they end up overstocked quite often and have evolved to live with it) and can live for at least 30 years after being stunted. Personally I dont care for pike, they arent majestic like sturgeon and they srent cool like gars, they just ruin trout fisheries and smell really fishy, but they are uber touugh and can survive low oxygen and high NH3- and NO2-

 

[abstract]

and their meat is bony as hell

 

[Opcn]

To filet a pike you first cut both sides away from the spine, being careful always that the outside of the skin does not touch the meat, you then lay them flat skin side down, you go to the end of the Y bones wich is located at the base of the tail (back of the dorsal fin or so) then you cut straight down from there, you filet that off the skin and set it aside, then you find the Y bones and run your knife down them, pearing the strips of meat off of the bottom and top, leaving a long thin triangular bit of meat inside of the Y bones, you take the two strips that you havejust cut away and together with the tail section and the other side you end up with 6 boneless pike filets. The skine, bones and last srip of meat (to tiny to be worth fileting out) you can either feed to a pet or you can bury in the garden as an effective orgainic fertilizer.

Some people try Pike Steaks but I dont like the idea of running a knife through the skin and meat at the same time, pike skin is nasty stuff.