Do pike guard their eggs or young?
Not at all — the contrast with bass could not be sharper. A female scatters tens of thousands of adhesive eggs over vegetation across several days, males fertilize, and every adult leaves; the eggs and fry face temperature swings, predators, and each other entirely alone. The strategy is pure volume-and-timing: a big female may carry well over 100,000 eggs, and survival to age one is a fraction of a percent in most years. This is why pike populations boom and bust with spring conditions in a way that nest-guarding bass populations do not.
The full story
This answer is one piece of a longer lesson — setups, diagrams and the reasoning behind it.
More questions about Spawning
Same topic, other species
- Why do male crappie turn almost black in spring? — Crappie
- Do largemouth and smallmouth hybridize in the wild? — Largemouth Bass
- Do muskie guard their eggs or fry? — Muskellunge (Muskie)
- What exactly is the perch egg ribbon? — Yellow Perch
- What water temperature do smallmouth spawn at? — Smallmouth Bass
- When and where does each trout species spawn? — Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake)
- Do walleye guard a nest like bass do? — Walleye