Northern Pike Fishing Catch Clean Cook in Alaska these Pike are full of LEECHES

All right guys it is a drizzly Alaskan summer day here and I've got my friends and family with us and we're going to do a little pike fishing trip. You guys excited? Yeah partially because I love spearfishing and partially because there's not enough room in the canoes I am going to swim around and spearfish and uh you guys are going to try to catch a pike on rod and reel and uh I think you guys are probably going to out fish me but you know we'll we'll see what happens. All right guys so we're going to be targeting pike which are kind of a funny thing here in Alaska. Pike are considered an invasive trash fish by a lot of sports fishermen. Most places in the world they're a highly prized game fish but they've been illegally introduced to a lot of the lakes around here and that's adversely affecting the salmon and trout and so it's pretty much no holds barred take as many as you want any way you can and uh and that's what we're gonna try to do. That loon is so peeved that we're over on his lake he's like chasing us. It's a lot of profanity coming out of that loon's beak. Let's get ourselves rigged up before we head out. Yeah we got this this bad guy so this right here is a really good one and it's basically just a flasher you use the spoon like a flasher and then you got this weedless rig so you can throw this right in the muck okay and it has a really hard time getting snagged up but um but this is kind of more of an open water thing that's this is this is a surface one this will work real good uh grab some steel leaders that's going to be incredible watching them hit that. Now what I would do is I would just slide out like 12-15 feet and fish this fish this cove. Graceful as the seal right there. They've barely gone out 20 feet they already got fish that's good good sign. Oh they got one already yeah that's not bad. It's time to go poke a fish. How's it going? Thank you. So Tom am I like the ugliest sea otter you've ever seen? How are you guys doing? One one. Look at that guy. Check out that sucker. We're gonna go and keep it. All right you're good. Just trying to mark the spot and I'll go I'll go dive for it. So I caught something finally. You want me to cast it for you and you reel it in? Oh got one Tom. Come here reel him in reel him in. Oh Tom this is a nice one. The thing with it you know those pin bones that are in a salmon right along the back these got some something similar but they're called Y bones because they they start off like this and they branch off into a Y and the Y is kind of like curved like this if you cut into it then it breaks into pieces and you have all these bone chunks in it so that's one of the biggest reason people don't like to keep pike is because of that bones so so I just go in and fillet them leave the bones in there and then just bake it fillet up and then once it's baked just go in there with a fork and pull it and you can pull out all these chunks and then eat it like you would a lobster roll with chunks of meat and and so you can leave the skin on and everything just take the ribs every everything in the in the plate just down the side super simple and then deal with it post cooking and then I'm always curious what these guys are eating because I mean I I'm snorkeling around there and I didn't see much of anything in there. Hey that right there yeah that that's a leech yeah oh yeah that is that's a that's a leech that's a leech that's a leech yeah so a lot of black leeches oh yeah look at that it's full of leeches too oh that one's got a clam that one ate a clam just oh actually gonna make the mosquitoes hungry and the ladies thirsty here oh yeah yeah you know all those pikes their bellies were just full of leeches and clams and bugs and stuff like that because they've killed off all the trout and they'll cannibalize each other and then they'll die off but that's how it's been in all these lakes they got infested with pike first the pike population explodes and you get huge pike then you get a lot of pike and then the pike run out of food and then it just collapses and then it's just kind of a crappy lake with a little bit of pike in it that's why it's such a problem up here and you guys you guys have a good time oh yeah great time got lots of fish got lots of fish everything's wet and i'll see you guys around but uh i'm gonna go back home and i'm gonna show you how to cook up those pike tell me how many fish did you catch four that's great buddy you caught more than i did chris the guy who was with tommy in the kayak caught about two dozen fish everybody else caught at least two or three i think i did the worst of anybody all right guys we're back at the house and i've got a bunch of these northern pike fillets to take care of and i'm gonna do something kind of fun i'm gonna make some smoked fish all right just got some plain old soy sauce little pan of hickory chips just sitting right there on the heating element and that'll start smoking here in just a little bit all right we'll just let that fish smoke for somewhere between 18 to 20 hours depending on how cold it is tonight oh here watch out watch out i taste this one are no they're not hot but they're hold on hold on let me get everything out there we go some beautiful smoked pike you know northern pike's kind of infamous for having a bit of bones but once it's cooked like this the bones just peel out that easy so does the skin yep i love smoked fish which i adore this is exactly like smoked salmon there we go that's smoked northern pike like that tom yeah well guys i hope you enjoyed this video if you want to see more videos from the catfish and carp youtube channel don't forget to click subscribe and activate that notification button so you can be notified when we put out new videos thanks for watching you click subscribe nailed it