The pike’s name comes from a pointed medieval weapon
Northern pike (Esox lucius)—also called jack or simply pike—are freshwater carnivores across the Northern Hemisphere. Average adults run about 40–55 cm, yet giants can near 150 cm and 28.4 kg. The common name likens the snout to the pole-arm called a pike.
The official all-tackle record, recognised by the IGFA, is a 25 kg fish landed by Lothar Louis on Germany's Greffern Lake in October 1986. Pike grow bigger in Eurasia than in North America, and bigger along Eurasian coasts than inland; one of the largest American specimens, caught in New York's Great Sacandaga Lake in 1940, weighed 21 kg, and tales of heavier fish usually turn out to be muskellunge or undocumented legend. Weight climbs faster than length, so a 50 cm fish weighs about 0.9 kg while a 65 cm one roughly doubles that. Most live 10 to 15 years, a few to 25.
Local names are wonderfully varied: jackfish, slough shark, slimer, gator and hammer handle among them. The older word luce, used for grown fish, supplied the scientific name and still appears in heraldry. Adults are olive green fading to a yellow or white belly, with short pale bars along the flanks, while juveniles wear yellow stripes that later break into spots. Pale markings on a dark body and fewer than six pores under each side of the jaw separate it from the muskellunge.
Crosses with muskellunge produce the tiger muskie, whose males are always sterile though females often breed. Silver pike are not a subspecies but a scattered mutation without spots. Italy's southern pike, long taken for a colour form, was declared a separate species in 2011.
Pike lurk motionless in weedy shallows, slow streams and even cold rocky water, then explode forward to strike. Dense vegetation matters because young fish must hide from cannibalistic elders. In the Baltic they venture into low-salinity brackish water before returning to rivers. Introduced to western American reservoirs for sport, they can threaten trout, salmon and bass, and managers have poisoned lakes such as Stormy Lake in Alaska to remove them.
Source: Northern pike
