Are pike homebodies or roamers?

Both — telemetry studies keep finding two coexisting behavioral types in the same lakes: sedentary pike that live out weeks or seasons on a home weed bed measured in a few hundred meters, and mobile pike that patrol kilometers of shoreline or follow pelagic bait across open basins. Size and habitat tilt the ratio: small pike in rich weedy cover skew sedentary, while big fish in cisco lakes are more often the travelers. For fishing this means a good weed edge is worth revisiting all season — its resident will be rehired if caught — but a blank day may just mean the roamers are elsewhere on their circuit.

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