Anyone else out there keeping any Esox species?

[predatorkeeper87]

IME pickerel are very hard to get off live. I have been successful with some and unsuccessful with many others. Probably the only reason I dont keep them.

Mine were stubborn but only took about a week and a half of starving

 

[tlindsey]

Naw man they survive warm Temps just fine. Mine are exposed to low 70s throughout the year. They just get hungrier haha[/QUOTE


Great to know this now, will have to get one in the future. Thanks predatorkeeper!

 

[Moontanman]

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.

I think we maybe talking past each other, the ponds here are often just a dozen feet across and no deeper than 2 or 3 feet, much of the year they are very warm and the prey is gambusia simply because nothing else lives in those ponds except for insects, crayfish, shrimp and seasonal newts, I think the newts are inedible. I am sure the redfins would eat small crayfish and shrimp if they catch them.

 

[Norkim]

Had a Chain Pickerel. It refused to eat anything except live fish. NEVER had that trouble with Redfin or Grass Pickerels.