When does a Jack become a Pike??

[Chris Plumb]

3lb+, 5lb+, 8lb+??? :confused: At what size would you 'boast' of having caught a Pike rather than a Jack??

 

Chris

[Waterman]

I'd say it has to come down to the modesty of the angler. For me anything under 18lbs is a jack

[phil dean]

For me, anything long thin, with big teeth and a strong tail is a pike, what's a jack??

[Steve Burke]

I think it depends on the water. At Wingham for instance I count anything under 5lbs as a jack. On the other hand at a trout reservoir I'd perhaps put the dividing line at 10lbs, although these are purely arbitary figures.

 

There is a difference in behavior, as I pointed out in a recent thread. When the big girls are on the prowl the jacks make themselves scarce for obvious reasons! For me, the size of the big fish on a given water therefore determines the dividing line.

 

Additionally, many of the jacks are male fish and usually move to the spawning areas earlier and stay for longer.

 

As a very broad generalisation, on many waters the smaller pike are ambush hunters and spend a lot of time in the margins. On some of the larger and deeper waters a lot of the big pike are open water predators. As a result each type of pike will have a different colouration to act as camouflage.

 

For me pike fishing is fun fishing and so I'm usually just happy to catch pike - whatever the size. I enjoy lure fishing most so pick up a high proportion of jacks as well as the odd big fish.

 

On the other hand, there are days when I'll go deadbaiting, which cuts down the number of jacks and so puts the average weight up. However, with the same size baits I find I catch as many big pike on lures as I do on deadbaits.

[Gray-Catchpole]

alot of peoples idea of a jack, is is around the 7lb mark, and i go along woth this, but not for that reason.

 

i think the pike is a jack untill it matures, and the easyest way to determin this is in the pattern, young/jack pike tend to have bars of color virtically along the body, this tends to lessen the older the fish gets. and older the fish gets the less uniform this patern becomes.

 

hope this helps

 

[ 09. December 2002, 12:58 PM: Message edited by: Gray-Catchpole ]

[Leon Roskilly]

A jack is a jack until it's big enough to be a Johny!

 

(I think that they stopped calling big pike johnies when it was realised that they were all female!)

 

Tight Lines - leon

[twitchandjerk]

I remember reading somewhere that Jack is a Victorian term relating to something you would rather not have caught. On this basis, any pike you catch and are proud of is a pike and any pike you wished/or expected to be a little bigger is a jack.

[Bradford Angler]

local club rules allow removal of jacks to 5lb . .

 

unfortunately not all members carry scales

[poledark]

If it is of any help, I will quote by beloved Bickerdyke....

"Jack,pickerel, luce,gedd or gade (Lowlands of Scotland),gullet, (Northumberland),haked (Cambridgshire),are some of the names borne by the pike. Jack is the name most commonly used in the Midlands and Southern counties of England, "pike"being only applied to fish of considerable size".............Many writers have attempted to define the exact weight at which the jack ends and the pike begins"

 

Angling for Pike,John Bickerdyke, published 1901.

 

Den

[Bruno Broughton]

A jack becomes a pike when... its testes descend? Checking this out with a lolly stick is a bit tricky, admittedly