What is the gorge-and-fast cycle, and how do I fish around it?
A pike's stomach can hold a meal equal to a tenth or more of its body weight, and digesting a big fish takes days — up to a week in cold water — during which the pike may not feed at all. Multiply across a lake and you get the infamous feast-or-famine rhythm: banner days when a weather trigger synchronizes hungry fish, dead days when much of the population is sleeping off a meal. You cannot schedule around individual stomachs, but you can play the odds: fish the triggers that restart feeding — fronts, wind changes, the first stable warm days — and on dead days, downsize and slow down, because a digesting pike may still inhale a small, effortless snack it would not chase a meal for.
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This answer is one piece of a longer lesson — setups, diagrams and the reasoning behind it.
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