Only northern pikes that do not do well at warm temperatures. The reason why pickerels are in shallow parts of water is because they do not have a choice. They are just there to avoid the competition with larger esox species. Studies showed that pickerels in pike waters are found in shallow water but never in deep water where the larger esox are at. The studies also revealed that pickerels have complete different diet in same waters with larger esox. Larger esox gets better forage fish and have higher percentage diet of soft rayed fishes where the pickerel gets poor choice of forage fish and have higher percentage diet of spiny fish which offers poor nutrition. The studies also revealed that when they removed larger esox from a specific lake/pond, the pickerels switched the diet from spiny fishes to soft rayed fishes and only larger adults of pickerels dominated in deep waters.
