I had a chain pickerel at one time. It used to hover at the top of the tank. I wanted to get it off live asap so I used to stick a silverside in it's mouth as it opened. After a few weeks, I would drop cichlid stick loaded silversides head first (darting action) and it would snatch it. Unfortunately, unless it saw it I would have to net the silverside and keep trying til it decided to take it.
Anyone else out there keeping any Esox species?
- Thread starter predatorkeeper87
- Start date
When I was working on getting grass and redfins off of live, I would start with live fish held and dangled at the surface. Then i would tie a piece of dental floss to some shrimp (barely attached so it would come loose rather easily) and make the shrimp dance in front of the pickerel. The pickerel would usually strike, then spit it out. After a couple days and enough hunger, they would eventually keep it down. I even got some pickerel to take cichlid pellets at the surface.
I am lucky enough to live in an area that has a particularly colorful morf of redfin pickerels, in the summer I catch them in water that is as warm as 90 f in fact they seem to prefer the warmer water... They make great aquarium fish, lots of fun to watch them feed on gambusia their natural prey in this area..
I'm not sure about them prefer 90F in shallows. They're just there to avoiding the competition with larger esox species.
Around here they often live in small isolated ponds where nothing but refins and gambusia live...
We have a very small populations of grass pickerel and the studies revealed there is very fierce competition between grass pickerel and larger cousins, northern pikes and muskellunges. Grass pickerels avoid the areas where the larger esox are at and it did affect on their diet. It showed that grass pickerel's main diet is made of young sunfish/crappies which can be 80% of the total diet. In an isolated pond where there is no northern pikes, their diet is completely different from the pickerels from northern pike lakes. The grass pickerel in isolated ponds preferred deep areas than the shallow areas.
Naw man they survive warm Temps just fine. Mine are exposed to low 70s throughout the year. They just get hungrier haha
Favorite species by farVery nice. Love to hear if someone is keeping an esox species in the hobby.
I netted my biggest one 2 feet away from a boat launch in a marsh haha. He was roughly 5" at that time, pushing 9" now
They are great. My big guy is the most personable fish I own. Follows me around the tank and will handfeed if my crappie are distracted somewhere else in the tank haha
