Lake pike

This inhabitant of the Saint Lawrence River, and the Northern and Western lakes, grows from one to three feet in length, according to the breadth of water that he is found in. Built like a pike, he is of a deep greenish brown color, dark back, and pale sides spotted with greenish spots. In fishing for the smaller sizes, your tackle should be similar to that used for pickerel; but for large ones you want a good sized cod hue, with a cod hook to match. He will bite greedily at various baits - a bit of fish, a slice of pork, a bundle of worms, or chicken offal, a small fish, or a frog, etc. It requires a good deal of care, caution and physical exertion to land him. He is a beautiful game fish, and is the best eating fish, next to the salmon trout, that inhabits the lakes.

The muskellunge (long-face of the French) is a noble fish. He is an enormous pike, with the lower projecting jaw armed with needle teeth clear into the throat, ranging from five to forty pounds weight, agile as lightning, and a perfect water tiger among the smaller fishes. No more beautiful fish to look upon than he, nor one so destructive to the finny tribes, cleaves the water. The Niagara river abounds in them - or rather they are plentier in the Niagara than in any other water we know of. They are caught here chiefly with the seine, but occasionally with the book, in trolling; and when you do get fairly hold of a twenty-pounder, look out! Ten to one - unless you are a thorough expert, and give him a long play, wearying him out, and foiling his prodigious efforts at escape, with our gaff hook or dip net at hand - he snaps your line, or breaks your hook and escapes forever! This fish is an acrobat for feats of agility. He no sooner feels the barbed steel in his gullet, than he commences a series of writhings and contortions that would astonish an "India-rubber man." He makes a semi-circle of himself, and then springs back to a "normal" position as suddenly as a tense bow when the string is cut. He zig-zags horizontally, darts upwards, darts downwards, spins round, turns somersaults, and finally, if all these dodges fail, launches his lithe body, with a quiver, six feet into the air, and coming down head foremost, darts off at a right angle like a streak of lightning. If this last maneuver does not break the tackle, the muskellunge gives in, and suffers himself to be lifted out of the water without betraying the slightest emotion. But for all that, in dislodging the hook from his mouth, look out for the chevaux de frise that guards the entrance - the psikes are sharp. A sharp customer is your muskellunge, but a more delicate fish - flesh white as snow, and savory as an oyster, well boiled, and served upon the dinner table with proper sauces - does not exist.

This article was originally from the Boy's Own Book of Outdoor Sports, published in the early 1900s and in the public domain. [1] It should be updated.