Big beautiful northern pike: ‘Tricky getting such a large fish landed,’ that’s a Fish of the Week

Sean Daab caught a northern pike ice fishing at North Point Marina big enough that “the fight was intense.”

“She was an extremely healthy female and we caught several other nice fish near or above 30 inches,” he messaged. “We released them.”

His best pike, of 37-38 inches, was caught on a large shiner.

“The fight was intense,” he messaged. “The fish made multiple runs like a trout would. Once we got her to the hole, it was tricky getting such a large fish landed.”

Here’s to pike and ice fishing.

FOTW, the celebration of big fish and their stories (the stories matter, as this one shows) around Chicago fishing, runs Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times. The online posting here at chicago.suntimes.com/outdoors goes up at varied days of the week, depending on what is going on the wide world of the outdoors.

To make submissions, email (BowmanOutside@gmail.com) or contact me on Facebook (Dale Bowman), Twitter (@BowmanOutside) or Instagram (@BowmanOutside).