Huge Pike

[58thecat]

Got this pic sent to me but no one seems to know who the lucky lad was nor where this beast was caught, either way congrats on a beauty.

151669

[last minute]

Got this pic sent to me but no one seems to know who the lucky lad was nor where this beast was caught, either way congrats on a beauty.

151669wow nice fish how much do you think a fish like that weighs.

[Weedy1]

wow nice fish how much do you think a fish like that weighs.

30lbs - here's the story: https://www.outdoorhub.com/news/2018/02/01/monster-fish-13-year-old-lands-30-pound-pike-ice/

[pinelakeperch]

I've seen the picture floating around, I'm happy to see a story behind it. I'm honestly surprised that it's "only" 30lbs, with it being 47 inches and as girthy as it appears to be in the photos. Great fish!

[Sooner]

What a beast of a pike. Congrats to the kid. Couldn't imaging seeing that head swim by the hole.

[PerchBuster]

Congrats to the kid but really too bad they killed it I say. Big girls like that deserve a couple of nice pics, a speedy measurement, and a quick release back down the hole for a chance to get to 40 lbs imo.

[zipper]

You might try sticking to perch, buster.

[pinelakeperch]

Congrats to the kid but really too bad they killed it I say. Big girls like that deserve a couple of nice pics, a speedy measurement, and a quick release back down the hole for a chance to get to 40 lbs imo.

I agree. I would never keep a trophy like that, unless it was already a goner. That said, I think 13 year old me would be wanting to take it home to show my friends. Hard to fault the little guy.

[Talking moose]

Meh..... it was at the end of its life cycle anyway. It spawned many many times already. Gratz junior.

[Scott N]

That fish looks like it ate the kid's little sister before he caught it.

[58thecat]

You might try sticking to perch, buster.

Quick pics then back they go:)

When I was 13 that would have been tied to my banana seat for all of town to see.....then Dad would have smoked it.

[lannie]

An Excerpt from the article


P.S. Of course, as with all things social media, the haters crawled out of their holes and began blasting Jerron and his dad for keeping this pike. Seems like some people forget the most important life lessons, many of which are taught to us as kids. Example: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

[Red Bullets]

Glad it was a young guy that caught the pike. Glad he kept it too. Us hunter/gathers know the feeling that comes with game in hand, like when we were young and brought home a wild feast for the family. It helped build our sense of accomplishment.

Like Talking Moose mentioned that pike has had a long life. The old hen's genetics have been stocking that water body for a few years. Taking out one big fish gives a couple other pike a little more shoulder room.

We have limits on fish we can keep to manage the fish numbers. Fishing is as traditional as hunting for a way of gathering protein. We should not be made to feel guilty for keeping a fish no matter what legal size. IMO you can't beat a fresh caught fish for nutrition and flavor. A big pike stuffed, trussed and roasted is a meal fit for a king. Or something like a turducken. A pike that is stuffed with a walleye and the walleye is stuffed with a whitefish and the whitefish is stuffed with perch.

[PerchBuster]

I teach my kids to harvest responsibly and that they don’t have to keep and kill everything. Keep smaller fish for the table sure, way better table fare anyways, and release the larger fish so they keep on reproducing smaller fish for our table. There is a great personal reward and sense of accomplishment for kids or anyone for that matter after a couple of pics with their fish to release it back. It garners a real sense of respect and admiration for the resource. Giving is always a better lesson than taking. Gives them something to aspire to when returning to that waterbody that there is a chance of encountering such a beast once again. Fish stocks are not an infinite resource. Trophy class even rarer especially in this province. Science has proven emphatically that removing the largest fish or trophy status fish in virtually any waterbody is highly detrimental to the overall health and sustainability of those fisheries. That’s just a fact fellas. The end of life cycle argument just doesn’t stand the test of time. With dozens more lakes closing down in this province the old ways of thinking about harvest just don’t cut it anymore. I mean how many trophy fisheries do we even have left in this province? Alberta is the poster child to the rest of the world of how not to manage fisheries well. I am not dumping on the kid for keeping it, in fact if you read my earlier post I gave him a congrats, he caught it and it is their prerogative to decide what’s best for it. I do however think there was a huge opportunity lost to teach the kid that hey, we can get a replica mount made of this trophy by taking a few dimensions, take a couple pics, and release her to make more harvestable sized fish for us and maybe catch her again when she’s 40 lbs!!! Would that have been so bad? Opportunity lost. How could that not be a great life lesson for the youngster? That’s what my dad and Grandad taught me anyways when I was a growing up. We had a large farm pond with Largemouths in it up to 6lbs, not very many that size, and I was always encouraged to release those big ones and guess what, we always had big ones in the pond for as long as I could remember. Fish grow slowly in this climate, once the trophies are gone, like in the hundreds of sorry azz lakes in this province that once had them, they may be gone for good. Old approaches to fish management and harvesting are clearly not working very well here, it’s time to modernize our thinking, behaviours and fisheries management strategies if we are ever to have a chance to recover what’s already been lost in order to restore our lakes to their former glory days. So far I don’t see a willingness by the public or government to change course and make the necessary changes to accomplish this. Our regs for many years have been the exact opposite of what other successful jurisdictions have used for fisheries management tools. Examples, Keep one Pike over 63 cm (even if it’s 30 lbs), keep one Walleye over 50 cm (even if it’s 12 lbs) and so on. Anybody with common sense has to be able to know and understand that when those types of harvests accumulate over time by large numbers of anglers you are largely left with what is now the current state of fisheries here in Alberta. Look to other successful provinces and states and you will find retention is always on a smaller slot size, maybe keep one trophy class if there is an abundance otherwise it’s always C&R over the slot limit. The article says they fished there for a number of years never caught anything over 12 lbs until that 30 lb fish and now she’s gone for good. How many more like her in there who knows but if looking to Alberta for any clues, well, it may not have been the best decision for the overall fishery to keep her is all I am saying.

[58thecat]

I teach my kids to harvest responsibly and that they don’t have to keep and kill everything. Keep smaller fish for the table sure, way better table fare anyways, and release the larger fish so they keep on reproducing smaller fish for our table. There is a great personal reward and sense of accomplishment for kids or anyone for that matter after a couple of pics with their fish to release it back. It garners a real sense of respect and admiration for the resource. Giving is always a better lesson than taking. Gives them something to aspire to when returning to that waterbody that there is a chance of encountering such a beast once again. Fish stocks are not an infinite resource. Trophy class even rarer especially in this province. Science has proven emphatically that removing the largest fish or trophy status fish in virtually any waterbody is highly detrimental to the overall health and sustainability of those fisheries. That’s just a fact fellas. The end of life cycle argument just doesn’t stand the test of time. With dozens more lakes closing down in this province the old ways of thinking about harvest just don’t cut it anymore. I mean how many trophy fisheries do we even have left in this province? Alberta is the poster child to the rest of the world of how not to manage fisheries well. I am not dumping on the kid for keeping it, in fact if you read my earlier post I gave him a congrats, he caught it and it is their prerogative to decide what’s best for it. I do however think there was a huge opportunity lost to teach the kid that hey, we can get a replica mount made of this trophy by taking a few dimensions, take a couple pics, and release her to make more harvestable sized fish for us and maybe catch her again when she’s 40 lbs!!! Would that have been so bad? Opportunity lost. How could that not be a great life lesson for the youngster? That’s what my dad and Grandad taught me anyways when I was a growing up. We had a large farm pond with Largemouths in it up to 6lbs, not very many that size, and I was always encouraged to release those big ones and guess what, we always had big ones in the pond for as long as I could remember. Fish grow slowly in this climate, once the trophies are gone, like in the hundreds of sorry azz lakes in this province that once had them, they may be gone for good. Old approaches to fish management and harvesting are clearly not working very well here, it’s time to modernize our thinking, behaviours and fisheries management strategies if we are ever to have a chance to recover what’s already been lost in order to restore our lakes to their former glory days. So far I don’t see a willingness by the public or government to change course and make the necessary changes to accomplish this. Our regs for many years have been the exact opposite of what other successful jurisdictions have used for fisheries management tools. Examples, Keep one Pike over 63 cm (even if it’s 30 lbs), keep one Walleye over 50 cm (even if it’s 12 lbs) and so on. Anybody with common sense has to be able to know and understand that when those types of harvests accumulate over time by large numbers of anglers you are largely left with what is now the current state of fisheries here in Alberta. Look to other successful provinces and states and you will find retention is always on a smaller slot size, maybe keep one trophy class if there is an abundance otherwise it’s always C&R over the slot limit. The article says they fished there for a number of years never caught anything over 12 lbs until that 30 lb fish and now she’s gone for good. How many more like her in there who knows but if looking to Alberta for any clues, well, it may not have been the best decision for the overall fishery to keep her is all I am saying.


You taught your kids well if they continue with what they were taught.
We as anglers need to govern ourself and as hunters too.
What is legal is not always right but that being said the kid is happy with his legal caught fish.....hell I would be too....tied to the banana seat of my bike, ripping around town with the hockey cards in my spokes held by cloths pegs....:sHa_shakeshout:

[PerchBuster]

100% agree with you 58. Perhaps if they were still abundant enough more kids would still get that kind of opportunity today, would love to see it become reality, but it’s no longer the case unfortunately....here. Not impossible, they are out there, but rarer all the time. Over harvest of quality brood stock and trophy fish, while perhaps legal to do so, by net or by line, has definitely contributed to the current state of our waters. It’s not the only reason why, but it’s one of the few that we as individual sport fishing anglers on any given day on the water have control over. Any biologist (outside of AB), Pro Angler, TV fishing personalities and authorities on the topic would be on this side of this argument, thinking otherwise is to kind of say they are all wrong. To say they are all wrong is frankly in my opinion only agreeing with our Gov and current Biologists that our historical regs and fisheries management strategies have been right and correct all this time. I don’t believe that, the failures outnumber the successes. Our regs have kind of lead us in this direction over all this time and they are in stark contrast to the regs in many other places that have much more successful fisheries that protect brood stock regardless of age or stage in the life cycle.

[Woolyoldbugger]

I teach my kids to harvest responsibly and that they don’t have to keep and kill everything. Keep smaller fish for the table sure, way better table fare anyways, and release the larger fish so they keep on reproducing smaller fish for our table. There is a great personal reward and sense of accomplishment for kids or anyone for that matter after a couple of pics with their fish to release it back. It garners a real sense of respect and admiration for the resource. Giving is always a better lesson than taking. Gives them something to aspire to when returning to that waterbody that there is a chance of encountering such a beast once again. Fish stocks are not an infinite resource. Trophy class even rarer especially in this province. Science has proven emphatically that removing the largest fish or trophy status fish in virtually any waterbody is highly detrimental to the overall health and sustainability of those fisheries. That’s just a fact fellas. The end of life cycle argument just doesn’t stand the test of time. With dozens more lakes closing down in this province the old ways of thinking about harvest just don’t cut it anymore. I mean how many trophy fisheries do we even have left in this province? Alberta is the poster child to the rest of the world of how not to manage fisheries well. I am not dumping on the kid for keeping it, in fact if you read my earlier post I gave him a congrats, he caught it and it is their prerogative to decide what’s best for it. I do however think there was a huge opportunity lost to teach the kid that hey, we can get a replica mount made of this trophy by taking a few dimensions, take a couple pics, and release her to make more harvestable sized fish for us and maybe catch her again when she’s 40 lbs!!! Would that have been so bad? Opportunity lost. How could that not be a great life lesson for the youngster? That’s what my dad and Grandad taught me anyways when I was a growing up. We had a large farm pond with Largemouths in it up to 6lbs, not very many that size, and I was always encouraged to release those big ones and guess what, we always had big ones in the pond for as long as I could remember. Fish grow slowly in this climate, once the trophies are gone, like in the hundreds of sorry azz lakes in this province that once had them, they may be gone for good. Old approaches to fish management and harvesting are clearly not working very well here, it’s time to modernize our thinking, behaviours and fisheries management strategies if we are ever to have a chance to recover what’s already been lost in order to restore our lakes to their former glory days. So far I don’t see a willingness by the public or government to change course and make the necessary changes to accomplish this. Our regs for many years have been the exact opposite of what other successful jurisdictions have used for fisheries management tools. Examples, Keep one Pike over 63 cm (even if it’s 30 lbs), keep one Walleye over 50 cm (even if it’s 12 lbs) and so on. Anybody with common sense has to be able to know and understand that when those types of harvests accumulate over time by large numbers of anglers you are largely left with what is now the current state of fisheries here in Alberta. Look to other successful provinces and states and you will find retention is always on a smaller slot size, maybe keep one trophy class if there is an abundance otherwise it’s always C&R over the slot limit. The article says they fished there for a number of years never caught anything over 12 lbs until that 30 lb fish and now she’s gone for good. How many more like her in there who knows but if looking to Alberta for any clues, well, it may not have been the best decision for the overall fishery to keep her is all I am saying.

You are bang on! Can't believe the number of anglers in this province who think the lakes and rivers will never run out of fish. In an ideal situation we shouldn't have to stock at all except to offer a non-native fish opportunity.

[last minute]

it may not have been the best decision for the overall fishery to keep her is all I am saying.good for the kid his decision i dont fault him thats all i am saying .:thinking-006::):)

[FlyDog]

Well said PerchBuster!

[Jigger]

I agree 100% with perch buster, good post. I'll be teaching my kids the same way, maybe eventually the collective mindset will change. But meh its just a 30lb pike, everyone knows they're a dime a dozen eh. Congrats to the young lad.

[bjmf]

Nice fish