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Northern pike — printable fact sheet
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Northern pike
Esox lucius
Esox lucius is built as a single-purpose ambush machine. Its dorsal and anal fins are set far back near the tail, so that almost the entire rear of the body acts as one large paddle, giving explosive acceleration from a standing start — the fish can go from stationary to strike …
Did you know?
- Northern pike have been known to occasionally prey on waterfowl and even small mammals that venture near the water's edge.
- Pike teeth are not fixed — they are replaced continuously throughout life, and the old story that pike shed all their teeth in summer and stop feeding is folklore, disproved by decades of angling records. A pike's skin was long said to be slimy enough to be handled bare-handed, but the mucus and the gill rakers cut easily, and handlers use a chin grip precisely to avoid the tooth pads on the roof of the mouth. Some very large pike have body markings distinctive enough that individuals in a lake can be recognised by anglers year after year.
What I learned
Draw the northern pike
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