A northern pike comes with a couple questions

Mike Matuk caught a northern pike at the end of July on a ChatterBait with a craw trailer. Normally, that's not particularly notable.

This pike was different, making Matuk wonder if it was possibly a silver pike. Second, he asked about the "one hell of a infectious growth on its back."

I sent the photo around to a couple people who know lots more than I do.

While noting it is always hard to tell for sure from photos, Lake Michigan program manager Vic Santucci emailed, "That said, given the fully scaled cheek and the rounded fins it definitely looks like a northern pike. Given the pattern that you see from the tail working its way up the body doesn’t really look like a silver pike morph that typically is pale all over the body. I think it’s just a really pale version of a northern.

"The growth on the dorsal fin looks bacterial, perhaps Furunculosis, but can’t say for sure."

FOTW, the celebration of big fish and their stories (sometimes the stories are odd, such as this one) around Chicago fishing, runs Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times.

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