What eats pike eggs and fry?

Nearly everything in the marsh, which is why survival is a rounding error. Perch, minnows, and invertebrates — diving beetles, dragonfly larvae, backswimmers — graze the adhesive eggs off the vegetation; hatched fry are hunted by the same cast plus larger fish and wading birds; and from a few weeks old, the deadliest predator of a young pike is a slightly older pike, with sibling cannibalism thinning every cohort. Of a female's 100,000-plus eggs, a handful of fish reaching their first birthday is a normal year. The take-home for anglers: year-class strength is set in the marsh in April and May, and you feel it in the fishing five years later.

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