Ten Fun Tidbits (Roughly) About PICKEREL!

The chain pickerel, Esox niger

10.  The Chain Pickerel (Esox niger) is a freshwater fish that lives in the warm, weedy ponds of the eastern USA and Canada.  If a chain pickerel is very lucky, it might grow three feet long, weigh eight pounds, and live for 9 years - but the ones you usually see/catch recreationally (and release!) are only a foot (30-40 cm).

9.  Pickerel are from the family Esocidae, called pike-fish by the English because they are long and pointy like the eponymous weapon!  There are five species from the family Esocidae from the eastern USA and Canada.  One species, the Northern Pike (Esox lucius), also naturally occurs in Eurasia - one of the few freshwater species to occur naturally on different continents!

8. In Canada, "pickerel" refers to Sander vitreus, a species we call walleye, or wall-eyed pike.  Of course, both names are misleading because Sander vitreus is simply not a pike (i.e. not a member of the family Esocidae)!  Thus, the problem of common names!

In reality, a frog would rarely see this grass pickerel coming.

7.  Pickerels and pikes are like freshwater barracuda!  While juveniles eat bugs and crayfish, the adults are piscivorous (fish-eating) ambush predators!  Thanks to their sharp teeth and quick bursts of speed, they can also eat nearly anything they can fit in their mouth - including frogs, small mammals, and even birds!

6.  Pickerel survive icy northern winters by moving from shallow weedy areas to deep waters that won't freeze over. Because their metabolism slows down, a pickerel that might normally need to feed every day can last nearly two weeks without a meal in winter!

Now THIS would be a team...  The Boston Esox.

5.  Pickerel are "dioecious," meaning they have separate sexes as determined by their genetic makeup; they are born either male or female, and stay that way (like humans).  (Yes, this is not true for all animals!)  When the springtime comes, they move up from the deep water back to weedy shallows where the females can attach thousands of sinking eggs to the plants, and the hatching young will be able to hide and hunt plant-eating prey.

4.  A "Tiger Muskie" is a cross between two pickerel sister species - the Northern Pike and a Muskellunge (Esox masquinongy, from the Algonquian tribes' words for "great pike-fish," or "ugly pike-fish").  Like most hybrid species, they are infertile.  This means that wherever they occur naturally, they are not members of a long, proud line of pure heritage, but rather the beautiful offspring of chance passion between distinctly different parents.  Were they confused, these parents?  Lame creatures, merely misled, fooled by each other?  Or were they passionate risk takers, chasing a biologically forbidden love?

Taking species management in our own hands (Esox lucius)

3.  Pickerel have mostly escaped our insatiable hunger because of the work it takes to get a meal out of them - they are small, have many little bones, and must have their poor-tasting skin removed (Westerners are very picky eaters).  But pikes, muskies, and tiger muskies are trophy fish, and can be good eating; thus, our attentions often extirpate (i.e. eliminate) them from their lake and pond homes.  Also thus, they are often grown in government hatcheries and stocked in our lakes and ponds so they can survive despite lethal doses of human attention!  We even grow tiger muskies, despite the difficulty in recreating the rare event.  Stocking may seem like species imprisonment, but we're just trying to pay for what we take.  Wild stock (and thus wild DNA) still exist, and this is what we are really protecting.
(baby tiger muskie pic)

2.  The larger Esox (pikes and muskies) are not native to Massachusetts.  In 1950, hundreds of 12+ inch northern pike adults were brought up from Lake Champlain in New York and released around Berkshire country in that year in hopes of establishing reproducing populations, mostly for sport.  I wonder what it was like to drive that payload!
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wait for it...
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1.  PICKEREL ARE SO CUTE!