Off the beaten path

Maybe we should call it the summer of the pike. From personal experience and talks with anglers, people are catching more and bigger-than-usual northerns from Anchor Bay on Lake St. Clair to the Upper Peninsula shore of Lake Huron.

"I think it's this cool weather. We started catching pike in May, which is normal, but they usually drop off by the middle of June. This year we're still getting them in the middle of July," said Andrew Eckert, a Monroe fisherman who targets northerns as his favorite species.
"I've had more pike between 30-36 inches so far this summer than I normally get in three or four years."

Bigger pike prefer cool water in the 50s, and this season has seen water temperatures statewide running 5 degrees or more below normal.

"The other thing they do in northern Canada is catch-and-release with all of the big pike. Here, I see people killing every pike they catch, especially the ice fishermen. Some of them don't even take the fish home to eat. They just leave them on the ice.

"I don't understand it. How can pike grow to 20 pounds if we kill most of them when they're 5 pounds?"

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