Passaic River Pike

[Suntzu]

I have been lurking for years and am active on other boards as some may know.
I do not freshwater fish a great deal, most salt, but I am enchanted with fishing the passaic river and have walked nearly the entire stretch from chatham through paterson over the years. I have caught more than 200 pike this year. I don't post pictures as I do not want to encourage others or endanger the fish, but will when I catch the next NJ record and I know where she lives

I chose to post now as this year has been troubling to me. I have seen more dead pike than in all other years combined. I have also seen a real drop off in fishing certain stretches due to fishing pressure and a poor approach to catching and releasing these fish.

The pike fishery on the passaic is a resource that needs to be cherished and preserved. It is in many respects a miracle, to have this fishery available and accessible to us, but it is fragile and can be ruined quickly. I am not in a position to lecture anyone but allow me to make a few suggestions to those who target these fish, and those who plan to:

- do not use treble hooks. The mortality rate with pike using trebles has to be very high. Avoid inline spinners and plugs, and if you must use them swap out the treble for a single hook. A nick in a gill means a dead fish. You may miss an occasional fish but who cares, the ones you catch will live. Spinner baits are best

- use braid and a heavy flouro leader. Ultra light rods are fine but use appropriate tackle. Nothing worse than hooking a nice fish and having it break you off, you lose an expensive lure and the poor pike suffers

- before you cast, make sure you are in a place where you can land a fish. From the yak no issue, from shore if you are standing 5 feet above the water with an ultra light rod and 10lb mono you cannot swing a fish up; it breaks off, you loose tackle and the pike suffers. Do not bother casting no matter how fishy it looks if you are in a place where you cannot land a fish.

- pike are crazy. They go ballastic when out of the water. Prepare for that. try to release the fish without having to take it out of the water. If you have to take it out of the water come prepared with a piece of plastic to lay it on so it does not scrape off it slime or get caked in mud and grass. Take a picture this way if you need fish porn, do not put your fingers in the fishes gills, dead fish. Do not allow the fish to beat itself senseless on the bank, dead fish. Do put in the time and effort to revive the fish before its released. Pike exhaust themselves quickly, if you just toss them back they often just sink to the bottom. Take a couple of minutes to properly revive the fish.

- do not go out there without the right tools. Long needle nose, jaw expanders are a must. To not have these things with you at all times is just irresponsible

Despite the many pictures on this site it is not so easy to regularly catch large pike. Although pike are not difficult to catch, they are very aggressive, they can be difficult to find. It takes time to find where they are, you have to cover a lot of miles but you will find in time that the joy is in finding them, not catching them. They are not the greatest fighters. having a big pike just explode on a buzzbait is almost as exciting as catching one. Have that mindset in your approach and you will enjoy your time on teh river much more, and be more inclined to take responsible approaches

This is an amazing fishery and I am eternally grateful for NJFG&W for creating it. It is up to us to protect it by teaching folks the right way to approach it, it is completely different than trout, bass, or other fishing, and we need to committ to collectively apply peer pressure when wrong approaches are taken both on the river and this board.

Thanks for listening and let's enjoy AND protect this very special resource.