Shooting Fish In A Barrel

"Got her with the first one," he explains later, "but she dove down and bit the bottom." He shows us the hen pike's mouth, clogged with mud and dead reeds.

"She was about spawned out," Roy says, pointing to the dribble of spawn still trickling from the vent of the five-pound hen. Really big northerns—in excess of 20 pounds—have been known to lay a quarter of a million eggs, but a fish this size might carry only 30,000 or less. Pike lay their eggs over a wide range of shallow waters. The eggs hatch quickly, a strategy aimed at getting the fry out of the shallows into safer, deeper water before the high waters of spring dry up and lake levels go down. Mortality is high—in excess of 98%—before the survivors reach sexual maturity. Yet those that survive grow swiftly into one of the fiercest of freshwater game fish.

That is the real rub of this antique sport. A female like this one, not shot but taken with a stiff-backed 8½-foot fly rod, especially in the snag-studded shallows pike like to frequent, would be a fish to remember. And memories of that sort are what bring fishermen back to a lake or pond or river year after year, pumping income into north-country economies that can ill afford the loss of a valuable tourist attraction. The late angling writer Ray Bergman summed it up many years ago: "In certain areas pike are so unpopular that they're killed and thrown back when caught. The time may come when anglers will suffer for such thoughtlessness."

Nostalgia and tradition notwithstanding, even John Roy and his compatriots must admit that the time is now.