20010114120000PileOfPikes500-10 Pictures/Fishing/snipscale-cache/20010114120000PileOfPikes500

Being a Walleye hunter walleye28, I'm surprised you want to see the Northern get big. Sounds like big Northern's favorite food is Walleye. Hmmmmmmm

http://www.qualitybooksonline.com/northern-pike.htm <quote> Big pike generally do not eat small minnows, frogs and bugs. Their main food is Walleyes. The big pike will usually hang out where they can ambush and devour Walleyes. The prime ambush area is points leading into shallower bays. Big pikes are guerilla leaders on their own. They will also hang around rocky points, shoals, islands and other places where there are plenty of Walleyes. The most obvious place to get a big trophy pike is at the mouth of a stream or river gullies between islands. The big pike just sits there quietly, waiting for Walleyes to swim past them. </quote>

http://www.seineriverlodge.on.ca/pike.htm <quote> The big trophy Northerns are not feeding on bugs and little minnows. They are feeding on 1 to 2 pound Walleyes. A big pike will spend too much energy chasing little bits of food. </quote>

This outlines a case where too many Northerns helped bring about stunted bluegill in MN. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/fish/northern/management.html <quote> Thousands of northern pike a foot long and larger were stocked in Horseshoe Lake in Crow Wing County three times during the 1970s. The northern pike ate perch of all sizes, nearly eliminating spawning-sized fish. Bass and walleye found fewer perch to eat. Bluegill, in turn, seemed to fill the niche once occupied by perch. The result of this chain reaction was the near disappearance of yellow perch, smaller and fewer largemouth bass and walleye, and a proliferation of stunted bluegill. By almost any measure, whether for walleye, bass or panfish, the fishing deteriorated. Only the northern pike population benefited - and it too, declined only after two years after stocking. Other fish populations, meanwhile, required many years to recover to natural levels.

Controlling panfish Big northern pike eat large fish and a lot of fish, and so fish managers long thought that an abundance of northern pike would limit panfish numbers, preventing the "stunting" common in many lakes. As in Horshoe Lake, stocking northern pike to control panfish can backfire. In fact, we have little evidence that an abundance of northern pike (or muskie) can prevent a proliferation of small sunfish. Apparently, sunfish are too prolific and too adept at hiding in thick cover to be controlled by northern pike. There also is evidence that northern pike prefer cylindrical fish such as perch and tullibee rather than the saucer-shaped sunfish. </quote>

Perhaps the reason everyone catches hammer handles is because the northern are 'stuntend' too?