Northerns

[aftersh0ck]

yes sir, agreed

[Guest]

deleted

[Stoneroller]

probably too warm in the bootheel and the oxygen level of the swamps there were probably too low for them to survive. the pickerel would have loved it though. bootheel used to look like the lower cache river area. although there could have been some in the st francis river basin, it certainly has cool/oxygenated enough water to support them.

[Smalliebigs]

I have seen three Northern Pike caught in Missouri and all three were out of creeks not far from the Missouri River.I saw a guy with two caught out of Pelite Saline Creek not too far from the main river.The other one out of Splice Creek...same deal not far from the river and no they were not Chain Pickrel. Three Pike that close in vicinity to each other on the Missouri river I would think they might try to spawn.I doubt they would migrate back up to South Dakota to make a bed, lay some eggs and squirt some sperm out. I guess you guys are saying the just live out some time here and die?????

[Stoneroller]

i thought i read something on the mdc website or maybe my map book saying there are northern pike in the missouri river around washington, mo and upstream. i know my book says there are plenty upstream of jeff city in the missouri river and the mouths of the tributary streams/rivers that empty into it especially boonville and up.

[aftersh0ck]

like i was saying the one i caught was at the mouth of a creek and the meramec way upstream from the springs on a trout float with the county parks around 94

and thought it was a pickerel and asked to use one of the guys pliers to get my hook

out and he said it was a pike and they are in the area.

as before i think those are all bastages from the hatchery along with the muskie.

then when i got home and looked in the book it all made sense reading more about them and seeing the pics the difference in looks were obvious then but at the time no.

back to the original idea of this post. in some of the big lakes. having them sound good or bad if possible?

having them under a dock would be awesome but check your pants after you get them in.

[Al Agnew]

Dirty little secret is that a lot of bass fishermen on Pomme de Terre don't like the muskie there at all...probably because they lose lures to them, and when they try to boat one, since many bass anglers don't use nets, it's very difficult and often painful. I think that, although they probably wouldn't be vocal about it, they'd feel the same way about pike.

I think it would all depend upon whether they could reproduce or not. If it's another perpetual stocking program like the muskie, you could control the numbers, but it would be costly. If it so happened that they reproduced like crazy and got a really good population going, then you might have problems with them preying too much on crappie and bass.

[Bill B.]

The MDC stocked northerns in the late 1960s at Stockton. They didn't last long. For a couple of years after the lake filled, in 1972 and 1973, people caught all kinds of 3- to 6-pound fish. All you had to do was troll a Bomber down the main-lake treelines. But, before long, a disease wiped them out, and wiped them out fast. I remember hearing that it was an eye fungus.

I also remember hearing stories of giant pike swimming in the restricted area by the Thomas Hill power plant. This was in the 1980s, and those fish were supposedly left over from a stocking there in the 1960s. If they really were there in the '80s, they weren't reproducing.

Conditions at Stockton in the early '70s should have been ideal for pike reproduction: lots of freshly drowned trees and shallow green vegetation. I wonder what the MDC's sampling back then indicated?

[Gary Lange]

If they survived in any numbers in Missouri Streams there wouldn't be any Trout Fishing because the Northern Pike would have already ate them all.

[exiledguide]

I don't know the answer but it seems Muskie in Fellows Lake haven't harmed the rest of the fish in the lake it's one of the best Bass and Bluegill lakes. Up north every place I've fished from Iowa to Ear Falls, Ontario has Northern Pike that seem to coexist with the other species. Pelican Lake in Orr,MN, which I as yet have not fished, has Northern along with good sized Walleye, Smallmouth, Largemouth, Crappie and Big Bluegill. Obviously the've failed in stocking attempts in Missouri. Sometimes it can also be too expensive.