If I keep a big pike, does that "open up" the spot?
Yes — and that is the problem, not a perk. Remove the dominant fish from a prime ambush site and the vacancy is typically refilled, but by the next fish in the queue, which is almost always smaller; harvest enough big fish and the lake's whole size structure slides down toward the hammer-handle equilibrium, because big cannibal pike were the very thing suppressing the small-pike surplus. The spot stays good real estate forever; what your management of it decides is the caliber of tenant. This is the biological case for releasing large pike and, where regulations encourage it, harvesting the mid-size instead.
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
- Is there a pecking order inside a crappie school? — Crappie
- If I catch one fish from a group, do the rest spook? — Largemouth Bass
- How many muskie does a lake actually hold? — Muskellunge (Muskie)
- Are the biggest jumbos loners? — Yellow Perch
- What do gobies and crayfish have to do with smallmouth beds? — Smallmouth Bass
- Do lake trout school like other fish? — Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake)
- What makes a "community hole" keep producing year after year? — Walleye