Nicknamed the king of carnivores, the pike is easily recognised by its typical morphology: elongated body and duckbill mouth, its length generally varies between 30 and 70 cm. However, females can reach up to 130 cm and weigh more than 20 kg! These grand ladies can live up to 25 years, while males rarely live more than 7 years. But the Pike's most distinctive feature is its fearsome teeth... With 700 extremely sharp teeth, it is very easy for it to catch prey passing by. Its lower mandible is equipped with large canines, while its palate and tongue are covered with small teeth, all pointing inwards. This originality enables it to trap its prey, leaving them no escape. However, this advantage can turn into a fatality... If the pike is too greedy in catching a prey that is too large, it risks suffocating to death, unable to throw the prey out of its mouth.
Like all fish, the Pike has a system for detecting vibrations and pressure variations called the lateral line. Thanks to its sensory cells, the Pike can accurately determine the source of a stimulus, and even assess the speed and distance of a moving prey item, without even having seen it...
Pike spawning takes place well after trout spawning, from late February to May. The prolific rate is 20,000 eggs per kilo of female, or 400,000 eggs for a 20-kilo female. These stick to the characeae (macroalgae) and hatch 12 days after the temperature reaches 11°C. With the reduction in phosphate levels in Lake Geneva, the characeous algae have re-colonised the lake, providing the pike with new egg-laying sites and hiding places for hunting. From 4 or 5 weeks of age, young pike no longer make do with plankton and insect larvae, but become piscivorous, attacking young fry of bluebait or roach, and may also adopt cannibalistic behaviour towards their fellow fish.
Information taken from the websites ;
https://www.lemanpeche.ch/poissons.php
http://foudepechetnature.over-blog.com/2017/01/vous-pensiez-tout-savoir-sur-le-brochet.html
https://pecheur-nyon.ch/les-poissons-du-leman/brochet-esox-lucius.html
Photo credit: ©Krzysztof Niewolny
