If you have come into contact with a pike, you will notice that it is a big fish as an adult and a major predator in its life cycle. The professional anglers advise against stocking pike in ponds due to its predatory eating habits. The fish can feed on any fish present in the pond after depleting the preferable options like ciscoes.
The fresh-water fish has several requirements for its living environment. These include varying water temperatures, oxygen levels and depth. Pond technology and design can help achieve a proper living environment for pike, whether in a pond or an artificial lake. However, can pike in ponds?
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Pike living habitat
Pike living environment consists of slow-moving water, shallow but weedy sections of rivers, lakes or the ocean, and cooler but clear and rocky sections. Hatchlings live in submerged areas full of vegetation, hiding places from older pike due to their cannibalistic urges. You will find pike in lakes with ample vegetation, backwater creeks where the water is quiet or pooling, or in large rivers spotting shallow areas. Pike inhabit areas with a depth of 0 to 30 meters (100ft).
Farming pike in a fish pond can be detrimental to your goals and targets. The fish requires several fish species to satisfy its feeding habits and let it attains its maximum size. Pike fish feed continuously, through the day, year after another. Ponds must have abundant fish species, including ciscoes, suckers, perch, bass, bluegill, minnows and more. If rearing largemouth bass, adding a pike into the pond is an advisable pond management move.
If fishing, you will find pike in areas with a vast population of favorite pike food such as white perch and suckers. In a pond, consider rearing panfish, herring and ciscoes for the pike. Add water weeds with growth rates of 5-10 feet into the water. Pike are natural hunters and hunt along the weed line for fish coming in and out of the weeds. Consider deep spots on the river close to 15ft deep during the summer when the temperatures are high. Adult pikes prefer cooler temperatures and retreat to the deeper, colder waters.
Pike water temperature differences
Farmers wishing to rear pike will require pond water temperatures to match the natural habitats. For instance, pike spawns live in water temperatures of between 60 C and 120 C. However, the water temperatures needs vary as they grow. Therefore, pond management will require a temperature variant in some sections.
An adult pike weighing approximately 5lbs prefer temperatures of around 670C to 720C. Adults’ can grow all the way to 20lbs in weight, and as they gain in weight and age, their temperature preference changes to 500C to 550c water temperature. In some instances, pike stays in spring upwells where the deeper you go, the cooler the temperatures. The spring upwell may have a temperature of 40oC while the upper surface water during summer hits 80oC and above. Therefore, select a pond location with spring upwells with lower temperatures at the bottom and higher temperatures at the top. These provide an excellent and warm living environment perfect for pike and other fish types for food.
Farmers should provide an inflow of cold water into your pond in isolated areas. These will provide the correct temperature variations. For instance, nature allows cold water to collect in isolated areas such as the harbor, in bays with small rivers acting as water feeders to the bay. Pike stay at the bottom of the pond with an inflow of cold water during summer when the temperatures are high.
Pike Lunar Reactions (Feeding habits in the full moon)
Large ponds can provide the perfect fishing zone for pike during the lunar period. It is undocumented and unverified, but many anglers indicate that pike reacts differently with the moon’s appearance. The behavior is consistent regardless of the size of the moon (full, new, rising or setting moon).
The pike comes out of their hiding places to feed whenever the moon rises. This increase in pike in the fishing areas during the lunar season increases pike fishing competitions and tournaments. Anglers have to wait patiently for the moon to rise. The pike appears even during the day.
Pike Pond Management
Pike pond management practices may differ from the normal manipulation of the living environment. First, pike fish have specific food preferences and will always take out the favorite delicacies before feeding on the less impressive fish species. For instance, in a pond full of white suckers, bluegill, rainbow trout, and yellow perch, pike will first devour the white suckers and trout before tackling the perch and bluegill.
In an experiment carried out in an experiment involving a 60-acre land, two pikes and four years study period, stocking bluegill, yellow perch and largemouth bass, all the big fish disappeared. Before the introduction of pike in the lake, the composition included 10-inch bluegills and 12-inch perch. However, the bluegill population decreased by 90% in this period, while the perch dropped by 75%. In this period, the two small pikes turned into a 20lbs size of pike fished from each acre size of the land.
Fishers could no longer fish perch 8 inches or bluegill 6 inches in size. The health condition was expected, and the fish weren’t stunted, but the growth rate seemed slightly slower than that of the pike. However, the largemouth bass decrease in the lake was lowest at 70%. However, since the pike was smaller and younger than the bass, an increase in bass size, and most were 12 inches or longer.
In this instance, the pike pond management followed all the rules set forth by the sport fish stocking resources. An acre size of a pond should only get a single pike to be at least 8ft into the earth. Also, the introduction of the pike was after the reproduction of bass fish, perch and bluegill. The composition and lake environment hand ample food for the pike while ensuring fishing could continue. Also, there were no other large predators in the lake with the pike, mainly because the pike is a territorial fish and heavy feeder.
However, the experiment’s outcomes showed that it is inadvisable to keep pike as a pond management strategy. However, pond owners can still use pike to increase largemouth bass reared in the pond. The only challenge in rearing pike in a pond is their fast growth rate which is overwhelming to the available pond resources. Plus, after decimating available food resources, the pike will start feeding on other pikes.
If pond owners can maintain the low temperatures essential for hatching pike, the pond can turn into a pike hatchery. Instead of rearing pike into a grown adult, hatching pike eggs is a more advisable venture for a pond.
Can pike live in ponds?
Pike can generally survive in a pond. However, the natural fish species are large in size and a heavy feeders. Also, pike natural living areas differ from a pond environment. A quality living space in a pond for pike is small or limited as only one pike can live in an acre size pond.
Summary
The answer to the question if pike can live in ponds is a little complicated. Professionals advise farmers to rear pike. However, it is a considerable risk, only those who understand the risks associated with rearing pike, including its aggressive behavior towards other fish. The answer to the question is yes, pike fish can live in ponds.
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