How much do pike really eat other pike?
A lot, and pretending otherwise misreads the species. Cannibalism starts in the nursery — pike fry eat sibling fry weeks after hatching — and never stops: in many lakes, smaller pike are one of the most frequent items in big-pike stomachs, and a pike will take a victim up to roughly half its own length. This is a structural fact of pike biology, not an aberration: it is a major force capping population density, and it is why a foot-long pike swimming past a forty-incher is in genuine danger. It is also why oversized pike-patterned lures are not a gimmick.
The full story
This answer is one piece of a longer lesson — setups, diagrams and the reasoning behind it.
More questions about Territory & aggression
Same topic, other species
- Do male crappie actually defend their nests? — Crappie
- Why do repeated casts to the same spot finally draw a strike? — Largemouth Bass
- Can muskie and pike coexist in the same lake? — Muskellunge (Muskie)
- Why do perch schools sort themselves by size? — Yellow Perch
- Why do smallmouth attack lures far bigger than what they eat? — Smallmouth Bass
- Do trout defend their spawning areas? — Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake)
- Why does hooking one walleye seem to switch the whole school on? — Walleye