Long story short, we went on a fishing trip and hooked up on 8 pikes, 2 of them died belly up. They seemed bloated (the one in the picture was very bloated and ended up dying) when we got them up, they could not swim back down, a friend of mine tried nursing them, but eventually they died :(. I feel like due to the grassiness/bloatiness, they were not able to swim down. We are all new to pike fishing and never experienced it before. I am new to fishing in general so I am not sure where to start. Is there something that can be done to get rid of all that gas/extra air so they can swim down?
We ended up keeping one of the two that went belly up (in the pic) since it was over the legal size to keep. But one of them was too small, so we had to leave it behind.
Posted by Tabamon
2 Comments
Fish experience barotrauma when they are reeled up from deep water, like 50+ feet. They don’t just get bloated and gassy. The fish in your picture just looks like it recently ate something.
This is something you’re doing. Maybe keeping them out of the water too long, taking too long to remove the hook, or very prolonged fight on inappropriately light gear. Could also be that you’re aggressively finger-fucking the gills on that fish like you’re going out of your way to try to kill it. Could be all those things, either way your fish handling skills need improvement if 1 out of 4 of the pike you’re catching are dying.
Pike do have swim bladders so if you are catching them in deep water and pulling them up the bladder will have too much air in it for them to go back down. The lake I fish for striped bass has this issue in the summer when we fish deeper. We have fizz needles we use to deflate the swim bladder before we put them back in. On stripers you go three scales past the pectoral fin w the needle then let the air out. https://www.fishusa.com/FishLife-Fizz-Needles/?sku=217008&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD_va1USgyHzzlOQmEudffVT5iRCf&gclid=Cj0KCQjw-ai0BhDPARIsAB6hmP70VzIEIzTAFwMr5d4sdQqwqmvk3lVjdFE4W-1NlVBN2aN2jcgKtmQaArl5EALw_wcB
Not sure if this is your issue or not. Pike are like musky where they tire out of easily and have a hard time recovering.