Northern Pike

[AWS]

This has to be about my favorite fish with a Musky running a close second. I've never fished them outside of WI and MN and my largest is only 22 lbs.

I love to fish large Northerns, I try to take at least a week in northern WI fishing them.

Get them over 5 lbs. and you can easily fillet them in a one piece boneless fillet and as far as I'm concerned they are so much better than walleye for eating. We eat them boiled in spices served with browned butter over them, deep fried and baked. The large solid flake texture is much like halibut.

 

[midwestpredator]

Here is a video of the method I have used to fillet pike for years. When done right, you will get NO bones. When done wrong, you usually only get a couple.

[video:youtube][/video]

 

[AWS]

Sorry but that method looks like you only get half the meat and the just a bunch of little pieces.

I take a regular fillet and you can see the ends of the "Y" bone as a line of white dot. You just cut down on either side of the dot till you hit the "Y" bone, turn you knife and follow the surface of the bone to the end of it and then do the other side. On the short bone side when you hit the end of the bone turn you knife and cut under the "Y" bone back to your first cut. all the "Y" bone will peel out with little loss of meat.

A lot like this.

 

[midwestpredator]

There is a little more meat loss that actually removing the y bones but its not much. Basically you loose the meat from the spine to the inside y bone. There is not enough there for me to bother with removing y bones the standard way.

 

[atd]

They are lots of fun to fish. The largest I ever landed was 44". No idea of it's weight but sure it was over 20lbs. Ironically I caught it on 4lb test and a 1/8th once jig. Lucky corner of jaw hook up.