Pike Fish: Northern Pike, Muskie, Tiger Muskie and Pickerel Told Apart

A pike fish is any member of the family Esocidae: long, duck-billed ambush hunters with the dorsal fin set far back by the tail and a mouth full of teeth. North American anglers meet four of them: the northern pike, the muskellunge, their hybrid the tiger muskie, and the chain pickerel. Below: how to tell the four apart in the net, how big each one gets, and the record for each.

Northern pike wear light spots on a dark coat and muskies wear dark marks on a light one. When the pattern has faded, count the pores under the jaw: five or fewer is a pike, six or more is a muskie.

Start here

• Muskie: how old a 40 or 50 in muskellunge is, what it weighs, and the 27 hours of fishing it takes to catch one in Wisconsin.
• Northern pike: size by age, weight by length, the truth about its teeth and where big pike go in summer.
• Muskie vs pike: the full side-by-side, with a 30-second field check.
• Tiger muskie and chain pickerel: the hybrid and the pike of the eastern pond.
• Northern pike teeth, how to catch northern pike and whether pike are good to eat.
• Best pike lures and best muskie lures: one pick per lure class, with who recommends it.
• World record muskie and world record pike: every claim and what became of it.
• Fish weight calculator: the weight of a muskie or pike from its length and girth.
• Water temperature for fishing: feeding and spawning temperatures for pike, muskie and 23 other species in one chart.
• Yellow perch: the fish both pike and muskie eat most in northern lakes.

Which pike is it? Four fish, six marks

Wisconsin DNR prints the short version on one card. A northern pike has light markings on a dark background and a rounded tail. A muskie has dark markings on a light background and a pointed tail. The hybrid has stripes and a rounded tail. The table adds the marks that still work when color fails.

Sources by row: Wisconsin DNR’s identification card for pattern, scales, pores and tails of the first three fish; Iowa DNR for the pore rule; the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission and Connecticut DEEP for the chain pickerel.

Two honest warnings. Agencies do not agree on whether a tiger muskie is dark-on-light or light-on-dark, because its bars and the gaps between them are about equally wide; use its rounded tail and its cheek instead. And Wisconsin’s own leaflets give two pore counts for pike, “5 or less” on the card and “five to seven” in a 2008 fact sheet. When a count lands on five or six, let the cheek decide.

Northern pike

The northern pike (Esox lucius) is the common one, and one of the few freshwater fish native to both North America and Eurasia. A typical Wisconsin catch is 18 to 20 in (46–51 cm) and about 2 lb (0.9 kg). With good forage a pike reaches about 40 in (102 cm) and 20 lb (9 kg). Locally it is also called jackfish, snake and, confusingly, pickerel.

Muskie

The muskellunge (Esox masquinongy) is the largest of the family and the rarest in any lake that holds it. Most are 30 to 42 in (76–107 cm), and 50 in (127 cm) is a trophy that takes a Wisconsin fish about 17 years to reach. Its home is the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence and the upper Mississippi and Ohio river basins.

Tiger muskie

The tiger muskie is the cross of a northern pike and a muskellunge. It happens naturally where the two share a lake, but most tigers come from hatcheries: about 30 states have stocked them. State agencies call the hybrid sterile. USGS is more exact: the males always are, the females often are not.

Chain pickerel

The chain pickerel (Esox niger) is the pike of the East and South, native from southwestern Maine to Florida and west along the Gulf to Texas. It is a small fish by family standards. Connecticut puts the common size at 10 to 18 in (25–46 cm), and Pennsylvania calls a 25 in (64 cm), 4 to 5 lb fish a trophy. Its two cousins, the redfin and grass pickerel, are smaller still.

One naming trap: across much of Canada “pickerel” means walleye, which is a perch and no relation.

The records

The muskie has two records because two bodies keep the books and each recognizes a different 1949 fish from the same Wisconsin town. The pike record has stayed in Europe since 1986; no North American pike has beaten Dubuc’s in more than 80 years.

The rest of the family

Worldwide the genus Esox has seven living species. Beside the four above and the American pickerel, there is the Amur pike of northeast Asia, silver with small black spots, and two European pikes separated from the northern pike only recently: the southern pike of Italy, described in 2011, and the Aquitanian pike of southwestern France, described in 2014.

Where to go next

• Fish species: every species guide in one place.
• Panfish: bluegill, perch and the sunfish that pike and muskie feed on.
• Bass: the other ambush hunters of the weed edge.
• Fishing terms: gator, hammer handle and the other words pike anglers use.