I have only caught 1 northern and it was about 16 inches. It was when I was going to culinary school in upstate NY. This thing is a serious beast! I love what he was using for bait! -TBJ

I've been bitten by too many pike in my youth. I don't know if I'd put him in my lap.

That's a monster, for sure!

That pic has been around for sometime.

I think it's actually a Muskie eating a pike.

It's a pike. Musky have a little different spot configuration and style... It's a massive pike, but yeah, the pics have been around awhile.

Here's a musky:

Thanks Bret.

What ever it is.....It's friggin big.

They're mean. My grandma had a place in minnesota, that I'd spend a couple months of every summer at growing up. Caught hundreds of pike... They're big, mean, and aggressive.

We'd usually start each day coasting into small, weed lined bays and pitch big bucktail spinners toward the edges. You'd start retrieving them, and from up to 20' away a big boil would form on the surface, and a wake would start tracking towards your spinner.

Reeling faster and faster out of anticipation, watching the wake get closer and closer and then WHAMMO! Man they would knock the hell out of those spinners. Great fights, typically aerial if the bay was shallow. Good times. They taste good too, but are difficult to filet due to a strange row of bones in a bad spot. We'd usually fish them in the mornings, then head out to deeper water to troll for walleye, as they're much better to eat. Throw in some smallmouth bass fishing in the tributaries in the afternoons, and you've got yourself a pretty good time.

That's a freaking gator of a pike. Freshwater barracuda.

My uncle was one of the better musky fishermen in the midwest. He knew where they lived, what it would take to get a follow, and usually what it would take to get a grab. I convinced him to let me toss a fly to 'em for half a day just for shits n grins. It pissed him off to even consider it but I tied a big ol nasty on some lead wire and with him telling me where to cast I caught a 52" tiger musky on an 8 wt.

You don't make a noise in his boat, you don't cast unless he points out where, and you don't talk above a whisper. Sure enough he know which hole in weeds just off to the side of a submerged stump and when I cast there it emerged. Wow!

S Andros and big 'cuda. I didn't have time to add a steel leader to the bug rod so just tossed the spinning set up that was in the boat. 38#.

That pike picture will always bring about some laughs, I have gotten numerous e-mails about that fish. I'm sure some of you have as well. Always seems like it was caught in a different lake in Canada or in Minnesota by some buddies friends uncle. Think that fish was caught somewhere in Europe....

He's laughing because I'm handing him my hemostats to get those old rusty hooks out of that fish's mug. "Ya, right mon...."

I doubt that's what he's used to using them for...

That 'cuda had just eaten my buddies first cast of the day bone. It wouldn't leave the boat just looking for more bread crumbs;)

This is actually what we were after. I call it well hung and extremely well hung.

Actually thats my cousin at our lodge in da UP back in 93 ...................................