What is winterkill, and why does it matter for pike lakes?
Winterkill is oxygen starvation under long ice cover: snow-buried ice blocks sunlight, plants stop photosynthesizing and start decomposing, and dissolved oxygen drains lake-wide until fish suffocate. Shallow, fertile, weedy lakes — which is to say, classic pike water — are exactly the lakes most at risk, and a hard winterkill can wipe out or reset a pike population for years. Pike are somewhat more tolerant of low oxygen than walleye or trout, so they are often the last predator standing in a marginal lake; a lake known for periodic partial winterkills can even grow big pike fast, because competition gets culled.
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