Ted Hughes - Pike

Ted Hughes reads his poem about pike fishing.

From the Poetry Archive:

Recently I felt like doing some pike fishing but in circumstances where there was no chance of it and over the days as I remembered the extreme pleasures of the sort, bits of the following poem began to arrive. By looking at the place in my memory very hard and very carefully, and by using the words that grew naturally out of the pictures and feelings, I captured not just a pike, I captured the whole pond including the monsters I never even hooked.

Feb Slab of the Month Entry:

c'est un gros poisson!  11 Kilos of beast sent to us by Fabrice Boucher

Aug. Slab of the Month Entry: Recycled Waders Edition

Chum brutha P. Jenk took a break from his last trip North to get killer shots of a Yukon sunset and an insane slab of the month submission.

Learn more about the hoister of this slab at Recycled Waders

July Slab of the Month Entry: Snot Rocket

Simon puts a finger on the nostril and escorts some length into July.

Northern Pike: A**holes of the Fishing World

Bob Wire in New West brilliantly takes aim at Montana's invasive pike, or as Wire refers to them, the Rahm Emanuel of the Sea. There are now established Pike populations in many of the watersheds of Western Montana and the outlook for containment is grim..... a laugh out loud must read.

There is some hope, if Montana fishermen are willing to take some steps in the right direction. In some states, like Maine and California, where the northern pike is not native, fishermen are required to remove the heads of any pike they catch. I say let’s take it a step further, and put those heads on a small stake at the edge of the water, as a warning to other pike.

LINK (Via: New West)

Pike have been described as jet-propelled mouths

A BBC Living World broadcast on the most fearsome of freshwater predators.

The pike has a fearsome reputation as Britain's most successful freshwater river predator. Keen fisherman and retired freshwater biologist Mike Ladle will never forget the first time he landed a pike. He was trying to catch eels, and hauled up a pike instead. When he tried to release the hook from inside its mouth, he soon found out why fishermen treat pike with such respect: their mouths are lined with rows of backwardly pointing teeth. They even have teeth on their tongue, a tongue which is green in colour! So once a pike has trapped its prey in its mouth there is no escape from those rows of thorn-like teeth.

LINK (Via: Caught By the River)