California Pike disaster..

Pike in California certianly have a colorful history and damn near ruined the town of Portola, Ca. Thankfully they have been eradicated from California waters. Actualy a couple of different times on two bodies of water that I'm aware of. Lets hope they stay gone for everyones sake. I'm not a Northen Pike hater by any means and would love to catch them in there native waters. It's just to big of a gamble on our already fragile native trout and salmon populations to live and let live in this case.

So a couple of months before the last big lake draw down and poisioning at Davis Lake in 2007, I made a trip up there. It was all over the news and I really wanted to see this place for myself. I followed all the angler laws/rules pertaining to catching this fish and it was perfectly ok to catch them while they were there, so I decided to give it go.

I headed up and spent a couple of days doing so. It was the novelty of it all I guess and with in driving distance of home. The fishing was pretty dam good that trip. These are the only Northerns I have a ever caught. I caught other species but i did manage a handfull of Northerns in the 35-40" inch range. However, the majority were juvinal fish from 15-25". The lake was full of them! We caught them on several different artificials and flies.

It would have been an utter disaster had these fish some how found there way down the water shed and established in native Salmonid Streams and Rivers. The correct measures were definitly taken and it looks like it was a success the last time. California dodged an ecological nightmare for sure. You can google them and find tons of info on it. It was a MESS! Just thought I would share a couple of images from that trip.

Fortunatly, Lake Davis and the surrounding Mountian Communty is now on the path of recovering from this dibacle. It was, before the introduction of Northen Pike a world class trout fishery and looks to be on its way back, starting from scratch.