A lake "full of pike" — good news or bad?

For trophy hunters, usually bad. Pike density and pike size run inversely: a lake boiling with 45–60 cm (18–24 in) fish is a lake where too many mouths split the prey base and few individuals ever reach the growth escape velocity of switching to large prey. The best big-pike waters typically hold modest numbers of pike over deep, cold, oily prey — ciscoes, whitefish, suckers — with enough space and cannibalism to keep the juniors thinned. So flip the question at the dock: do not ask how many pike the lake has; ask what the pike there have to eat, and how big the lake lets them get before something eats them.

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