Wabamun Pike
 

There's been lots of lament over the condition of the Northern Pike fishery at Wabamun since the lake was overrun with stunted Walleye

In two brief trips out this year, simply fishing off of our dock in 3-6' of water for about half an hour each time, we've caught a total of two very healthy Northerns. I didn't get a measure on the first one, but the 2nd fish was a feisty and solid 22 incher.

My question to you all is: What are your reports or feedback on how the Pike are doing in Wab this year? So far, in my very limited sample, the fish we caught looked and fought great. Anybody with conflicting reports?

A friend and i went fising in a boat with a rap shad trolling in 6-10 ft of water and caught 52 walleye and 6 pike in 3.5 hours. The walleye were anywhere from 38cm to 54cm. And the pike i didnt measure but all were less tha 50cm.

I mostly fish Wab and haven't been elsewhere much recently, so I didn't realize how skinny the Wabamun walleye were. We fished the North end of Pigeon Sunday and I was quite surprised to see how much fatter the 'eyes were there in comparison.

The other big difference is that Wab has a lot of distinct size classes while in Pigeon they were a lot more similar in size.

As for pike numbers, they have dropped big time. At Fallis, it's often 50-1 or more walleye to pike, though the few jack I've caught have been in decent shape.
I fished Moonlight Bay a few weeks ago for the first time in a couple years. I don't recall ever getting a walleye in there before, but this trip that was all I caught. I had one smallish pike follow a spoon, but that was it.

I'm hoping that a natural equilibrium will be established now they've stopped dumping walleye in there, but it will definitely take a few years.

Interestingly enough I was going to start a thread on the same topic after my day on the water last Sunday. This is what I noticed....

So, I have been fishing Wab for a good 20ish years now...seen the befor and after the town power plant effects and the pre and post walleye repopulation. I loved being able to fish trophy pike...from my boat...less then an hour from my house....In March...lol. but the power plant did mess up the ego system. Some species benefited....some dissappeared. Then came the oil spill. Best thing to happen to the lake IMO. Catch and release just made the pike population go crazy. Catching 10-20lbers was not hard at all with over 20lbers being a decent chance as well....now those years were a lot of fun. Then the walleye were put back in....oh boy....the lake filled with juvinelle walleye....pike were all heads, spine and tail....they all looked like they were starving and wasting away, with not one over 6 lbs to be found. At least not by me....its was, for a few years, a total disgrace of what was a wonderful recreational fishing location. I pretty much wrote Wab off as a enviromental experiment totally ******ed up and ruined.

Last Sunday changed that. Me and my girlfriend spent the day from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM fishing all my old favourite places on the lake and what I found made me smile...I was going to keep a count...but somewhere it got lost lol...together we must of landed well over 100 fish. The majority were walleye, but to my surprise...and joy...about 40%ish were also Pike. Young very healthy pike. Sure nothing was over 5 lbs, but not one anorexic bastard among them. So we now have a lake....full of young very healthy fish. Kinda looked like someone hit the re-boot switch. I'm hopeful that there a still a few hogs lurking around in there, but it does look like if all keeps on as it was last Sunday, that in 5 years or so Wab will be a good diverse lake to catch both pike and walleye, with the occasional trophy to be had. So that made me smile a bit. This winter I'm going to look for a few whites and perch. Seen lots before the walleye went back...haven't really looked hard since.

Guess what I'm saying is because of last weekend I now have hope for the lake....its still good fishing...just a totally different body of water then it was 5 years ago....just my 2 cents..

As I’ve been saying all along when people were ranting.... give it time, eventually it will balance out and start to stabilize. Good to hear.

Nice report Thorne! Good to hear things are on the mend in Wab, I've had many fun days ice fishing that lake!:)

A guy better hope it becomes a trophy walleye lake. Otherwise it will take another 10 years to maybe get back to being as good as it was for pike... Probably 15 years of inferior fishing because of those walleye and at best it will probably be so tags can be implemented...

Don't target the walleye and then report back. Use some 10-14 inch baits and see what happens

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Lol...you got it! I hit the shallow bays, 8-5' of water trolling big spoons at 5kph....nothing but pike after pike with a few savage Walleye thrown in there. Look specifically for like and there are lots to be found.

Nice report thorne, thanks for the input!

Hoping the trend of healthier pike continues, once I get out on the boat at Wab, I hope to have a similar report as yours

I see that lots here in southern AB. Guys say no big pike anymore yet they are trolling 4 inch walleye cranks. Big pike hardly ever hit small lures, waste of energy. Get a big old bulldawg out or a bondy bait, surprisingly even the little pike hit the dawg.

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Yup. I’ll pull out the biggest Lenny Thompson they make, people look at me like I’m on glue... then I start catching pike from 2 lbs and up all day long, out fishing their smaller lures by a large margin. Big walleye love the big Len Thompson’s too.

I used to fish wabamun fairly often 6-7 years ago. All I ever caught there was 6-12 pound pike on average, with 12-18 not being rare and have seen people pull out 20+ pounders. Never caught a walleye. Started fishing it again this year, spent tons on 12-16” lures in anticipation of big pike and put 30ib braided on, I usually end up using my light trout rod now. I’ve caught about 200 walleye and about 10 dinky pike there this season.

Sounds like wab had a poor age class recruitment back then if you weren’t catching under 6 or 7 pounders. Poor lake missed a few years. Lakes that have sparotic or inconsistent spawns tend to be feast or famine for a fisherman.

Don't hear as many 15 lb plus pike getting caught in the last couple years as was before. Have to wonder if the c & r is having a mortality rate increase.

Nothing to do with C&R....no more warm water all winter long for the past years and the I two of all the competing walleye

Id say plenty to do with catch and release if they arent handled extremely efficiently. Keeping them out of water in 27 C or minus 25 C for everyone to hold and get a photo or two or three is really stressing them and likely killing more than we think..

X2 on high pressure lakes, c@r mortality, poaching, etc. Play a part in a healthy fishery.

Lake has been through a lot of changes in the past 10 years....poaching now, with all the walleye in there, is going to be a huge....I can only imagine the hundreds of walleye being smuggled out of there

X3

Cabin owners along Fallis point were complaining of all the dead fish washing up on shore.

I also echo the comments in regards to the loss of the warm water discharge and yes the walleye have not helped either.

What happened to Wab should be fairly obvious to most that fished it regularly.

There was a huge population of pike of all sizes. If you fished for bigger fish you would catch them almost every trip. If you fished for smaller fish you would catch a ton of them. We aren't talking catching 10 or 20 fish in a day, we were talking the ability to catch 50+ pike in an evening after work with a number of them in the 5+ lb range and a few 10-15+ if you knew what you were doing.

C&R mortality was an issue but with healthy populations of small and medium size fish the larger fish dying from C&R were quickly replaced by younger fish and it was a balanced ecosystem.

Then they stocked 11 million walleye in the lake. The forage base which was already stretched thin due to the high numbers of pike was decimated. The small/medium size pike that were caught were starving and the walleye were stunted because of this. A bunch of these pike then died off while the larger pike that primary feed on whitefish, perch and now small walleye were still healthy. The problem is that when these larger pike died off due to natural causes or C&R mortality there was now no medium size fish growing like crazy to replace them.

Now a few years later there are very few big pike left. The odd medium size pike that survived through the tough times and some smaller fish. It is good to see the reports that the smaller fish are getting healthier again which means the ecosystem is balancing out again. The lake will slowly continue to fix itself as these fish continue to grow older and bigger now.

It will still take 10+ years to get this lake back to the pike fishery it was. It will be 15+ years of substandard fishing because of our fisheries departments ineptitude. Completely unacceptable and something anglers would be wise not to readily forget. This is not the first lake that has seen a massive pike population decline in the name of trying to increase walleye populations. Will walleye ever be opened up to general limits? Highly unlikely. Maybe tags or else will stay C&R in which case hopefully it grows some trophy walleye and doesn't just remain a lake with a bunch of small walleye like say Sylvan has.

When was wab stocked with walleye?

Just another pigeon lake going thru it's stages. It doesn't end well....the walleyes eat that big spoon because they are starving...just a sign of an imbalance. The perch fry and minnows that a walleye should be interested in are n.a. what you figure is a new discovery in fishing is just a sign of a horrible mismanagement of a fishery. Go to a real walleye lake and try dragging that big Lenny for walleye. Snap out of it. A couple 70 cm pike in a lake that size that you figure look "normal" doesn't replace the 20 and 30 pounders that the lake was full of and known for. Have at er, yay, walleye every cast and you can't even slap a 10 dollar tag on the greasy bastards. Let me guess next year the lake is magically cleaned and the wallies are good to eat at ten bux a pop. Barf.

Am I the only one thats noticing the walleye don't seem to be growing in Wabuman whatsoever?

Saw a sad sight while cruising the shoreline yesterday, a nice formerly healthy looking pike floating tits up in the weeds near the town of Seba
I didn't have my phone or I would have taken a picture of it. If I had to guess, looked to be about 5-7 lbs
No visible injuries on the body and it was a thick fish. Probably a victim of poor handling

First floater I've come across on the lake this year, always a disappointment to see this

Wabamun Health
 

I have found that there are still healthy pike in Wabamun, and that perhaps they are changing diet. I have caught more than 1 small walleye from shore in the weeds that had massive bite marks in their flanks, maybe some of the big girls have adapted to swallowing 12" walleye whole? :scared0015:

I also caught a 39 inch, 12+ pound slough shark from Wabamun in October, there is a thread in the forum with pictures for those curious.

They will be fewer and further between because of the eyes but with a lake the size of Wab there will always be a population of nice fish unless there is a full on kill from lack of oxygen.

A lot of the hungriest walleye in Wabamun were stocked fairly recently, and they are all 12 to 16 inches long. There are some larger breed-stock dropped in from Isle lake and they are in the 24 to 28 inch range, but there aren't that many left because a lot of the larger ones were netted last winter.

They will grow its just going to require a bit of harvest to thin the numbers before the overall size increases. I'm sure the nets will help, and an open harvest of lest say 2 fish between 40 and 50 CM should help thin it out to where you can catch "A" class fish more regularly (60+ CM)

Back in June I was fishing in moonlight bay and was watching a ~12" walleye follow my fly up to the boat. Right as the walleye reached the surface a nice sized pike t-boned it and scared the **** out of me. I watched it sit on the bottom afterwards for about 10 mins just holding the walleye sideways in its mouth. Ended up leaving the area before seeing how/if the pike finished eating it. Pretty cool to see. They are definitely going after them!