Northern Pike: Size by Age, Weight by Length and Where Big Ones Go

A typical northern pike in American water is 18 to 30 in (46–76 cm) and 2 to 10 lb (0.9–4.5 kg), dark green with rows of pale spots, lying still in the weeds until something swims past. It is the pike of the whole northern world, the same fish from Minnesota to Ireland to Siberia. In summer the big ones leave the warm weeds for cooler water, and an angler who keeps fishing the lily pads catches small pike.

Pike do not shed their teeth in summer. In 1935 two Michigan biologists examined 188 pike through the year and found no trace of it. They suspected guides had kept the story alive as an excuse for slow August days.

Northern pike or muskie?

A northern pike is a hard-muscled, tube-shaped fish with an elongated body and a flat, duckbill snout, its dorsal and anal fins set close to the tail. Three checks separate it from a muskie (muskellunge), in the order the agencies give them.

1. Pattern. A pike has light, bean-shaped spots in rows on a dark body. A muskie is the reverse, dark marks on a light body.
2. Cheek. A pike’s cheek is covered in scales; only the upper half of its gill cover is. A muskie’s cheek is scaled on the upper half only.
3. Pores. Turn the fish over and count the pores under one side of the lower jaw: about five on a pike, six to nine on a muskie.

A pike’s fins and tail tips are rounded, and the fins carry dark spots or wavy lines; a muskie’s tail and fins come to points. Young pike wear pale bars that break up into spots as they grow. The pike family page sets the pike beside the muskie, the tiger muskie and the chain pickerel in one table.

Where do pike live, and where do the big ones go in summer?

The northern pike has the widest range of any pike: across Canada and the northern United States, and from Ireland through Europe and Siberia to the Pacific. In the United States, USGS puts the native range from Labrador to Alaska and south to Pennsylvania, Missouri and Nebraska. It is a freshwater fish, though Maine notes that pike survive in weak brackish water and spawn successfully at salinities up to 7 parts per thousand.

It is a weed fish. Look for aquatic vegetation and stumps in shallow water, and marshes and weed beds while the water is cool; the same northern weed beds hold yellow perch. In rivers, pike avoid the current and hold in weedy side channels, sloughs and backwaters, lake-like water inside the river. But the big ones have a second address. In three Minnesota lakes, tracked pike longer than 28 in (71 cm) chose water of 61 to 70 °F (16–21 °C) in August, though water of 82 °F (28 °C) was available. In the two lakes with lily pads, the small pike stayed in the warm shallows. The upper lethal temperature is about 85 °F (29 °C). The water temperature chart puts those numbers beside 24 other species.

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One sheet, front and back: the three temperatures, where pike and muskie sit in five seasons, 13 lures and the leader rule.

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When and how do you catch pike?

Pike feed by day, and pike fishing season by season has the lures, the depths and the quick-strike rig. The open-water kit is short: a sturdy rod, a wire leader and a box of spoons, or live suckers and chubs up to 8 in if you prefer bait. Either way, keep it moving. Alaska’s list adds large bright spinners, diving plugs, surface lures over the weeds and a fast retrieve. A pike will follow a lure to the boat before it strikes, so fish every cast to the end.

For a big fish in July and August, go deep. In-Fisherman’s Dan Johnson quotes biologist Bruce Carlson: on a deep lake with oxygen below the thermocline, by mid to late August virtually all big pike are below it. Johnson’s own starting point is water of 55 to 60 °F, over rock in 35 ft (11 m) or more.

Pike by water temperature, rising and falling

The same reading means two things, so the thermometer tool asks which way the water is moving. Agency figures carry the biology; the lure lines are angler guidance.

How big do northern pike get?

Wisconsin DNR puts the common catch at 18 to 20 in and about 2 lb. Ohio’s range is 20 to 30 in and 2 to 10 lb. Fish of 20 lb (9 kg) are common in some Alaskan rivers and rare almost everywhere else in the United States. European and Asian pike grow larger than American ones, which is why the world record is German.

The best age data is Michigan’s: 7,726 pike from 109 lakes, aged between 1990 and 2015.

Maine’s figures past age 5 rest on a handful of fish; its age-10 column is a single pike. So an average Michigan pike reaches 24 in between ages four and five and needs about ten years to make 36 in. A new, lightly fished population grows much faster: Maine’s pike, colonizing fresh water full of food, were 31 in at five. In Alaska’s cold Interior a 25 in, 5 lb pike may be six to eight years old, and a fish over 15 lb is 10 to 17.

Crowding stunts them. Michigan’s overpopulated pike lakes hold mostly fish under 18 in.

A full-grown pike has no special name. The agencies list pike, northern, jack and jackfish, and Minnesota adds snake pickerel and hammer handle. Alaska’s fish and game department calls a pike over 15 lb (6.8 kg) trophy size.

How much does a pike weigh?

The first column is North Dakota’s average weight for its pike at each length. The second is In-Fisherman’s standard-weight chart, which describes a well-fed fish.

A 10 lb fish is about 35 in on North Dakota’s averages, and on Michigan’s curve a 35 in pike is close to ten years old. A female before the spawn runs heavier than the table: she is carrying eggs. For any length in between, the fish weight calculator does the sum.

What do northern pike eat, and how do they hunt?

Mostly fish. In North America the main prey of adult pike is probably yellow perch, and Minnesota notes a fondness for suckers of 4 to 15 in. The rest of the menu is whatever fits: frogs, crayfish, leeches, mice, muskrats, ducks and shore birds. A pike takes prey a third to half its own length, and big pike eat small ones.

It hunts by ambush. Wisconsin DNR describes a secretive predator that feeds by sight, lurking alone in the weeds until prey swims by, then lunging out from cover. Pike fitted with transmitters in an Alberta lake were active only 20% of the time. That is why a lure worked past the weed edge, where the fish lies waiting, draws the strike.

What are a pike’s teeth like?

A pike’s mouth holds hundreds of teeth, in two kinds. The big ones are the canines along the back two thirds of each lower jaw, flat-sided and knife-like. The roof of the mouth and the tongue carry short, brush-like teeth that slant backward and fold down, so prey slides in and cannot slide out.

Trautman and Hubbs counted about 16 canines on each side of the lower jaw, the same in small pike and big ones, replaced all year round. The replacement keeps a set of sharp teeth in service for life.

For the angler it means two things. Use a wire leader, which Wisconsin DNR lists as standard pike tackle. And carry long-nosed pliers, because the unhooking is where hands get cut. The northern pike teeth page covers the count, the summer-shedding myth and safe unhooking step by step.

When do northern pike spawn?

Early, as the ice goes out. Minnesota gives April and May at 40 to 50 °F (4–10 °C); Iowa sees fish moving under the ice and spawning from 35 °F (2 °C). They run into marshes, flooded grass and slow tributary streams, in water a foot deep or less, one female with one to three males. She scatters a few dozen eggs at a time for an hour or more. A female of 25 to 28 in carries about 63,000 eggs; Alaska Fish and Game puts a 25 to 30 lb female at up to half a million.

Nobody guards them. The eggs hatch in about two weeks, and Wisconsin DNR estimates that more than 99% of the young are gone by fall.

Are pike good to eat?

Yes, with a knife trick. Pike have a row of forked Y-bones along each side. Alaska’s fish and game department notes that small pike eat better than big ones and have no more bones than other fish, only differently shaped ones. It publishes a five-fillet cut that leaves the Y-bones behind. Minnesota’s advice is the same in fewer words: eat smaller pike, and cook them fresh.

Keeping the small ones is also the right thing for the lake. On a 100-acre Minnesota lake, pike aged six and older add only about 10 lb of new growth a year. One 35 in fish in the cooler is that whole year’s production of big pike.

Which pike must you release, and which must you kill?

Minnesota’s northeast zone requires the release of every pike from 30 to 40 in. In Southcentral Alaska, where pike are not native, the rule runs the other way: there is no limit. In West Cook Inlet and the Susitna River drainage, live release is prohibited, so a pike you catch may not go back into the water alive. Check which map you are on before the trip.

What is the biggest pike ever caught?

The IGFA all-tackle record is 55 lb 1 oz (25 kg), caught by Lothar Louis in Germany on October 16, 1986. The North American record is far older and smaller: Peter Dubuc’s 46 lb 2 oz (20.9 kg) pike from Great Sacandaga Lake, New York, then the Sacandaga Reservoir, on September 15, 1940. He never had it mounted. Local taxidermists quoted a dollar an inch, and Dubuc told Outdoor Life he could not see a $52.50 investment in the fish.

The world record pike page tells both stories; every other species guide starts from the fish species page.

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Where the pike are this week, and what they'll hit

The Pike & Muskie Cheat Sheet. Read the water temperature, find your season: the spot and the lure, pike and muskie side by side. One sheet, front and back, for the boat.

• Three temperatures for each fish: when they spawn, feed best and slow down
• Where they sit in five seasons, from ice-out to first ice, and what to throw
• 13 lures and when to throw them, with the size and the retrieve
• Keep your lure out of its teeth: the leader rule in one line

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Every line from the pike pages on fishing.info and the 58 sources behind them, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan DNR among them.

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