I once knew a guy that jumped through all the hoops to commercial fish for Northern Pike in the Yukon Flats. His venture was a failure, to far from a poor and unreliable market, but he had some interesting stories about the fish themselves. He told me that the most common thing in the fishes stomachs were adult robins! Robins building their nests with mud would get it from stream and slough shores and would be ambushed by the pike.
The inter-web is full of how to fillet pike leaving the dreaded Y-bones out of the fillets. I have a old Scandinavian friend in Minnesota that loves pike. He tells me, "that the big ones are the best, the only reason folks like the little ones is because they never catch a big one." He also pickles the smaller pike, the pickling solution dissolves the bones. Very good, much better than pickled herring that you buy in stores. His jars of pickled fish have eye appeal as he packs them in layers of onion, pike, onion, then a layer of carrots. The carrots adds a lot of color to a otherwise white and unappetizing looking jar of fish.
