Northern pike in trout water

For the last decade, the state of California has waged a Sisyphean battle against the northern pike, a fish and a voracious eating machine. In the mid-1990s, when pike were first found in Lake Davis, a Sierra Nevada reservoir about four miles north of here, the discovery set off a panic over the potential impact on the local trout-fishing and tourist industries as well as the possibility of the fish migrating to fragile ecosystems downstream. Since then, millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours have been spent trying to spike the pike.

No one knows exactly how many of “these individuals” live in Lake Davis, though estimates run anywhere from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands. Nor does anyone know where the pike came from, though Mr. Martarano says they may have been introduced by sport fishermen who prize its fight or even “eco-terrorists” who might have introduced the pike “just to cause trouble.”

Whatever the cause, the pike is not a friendly newcomer to any ecosystem. A slender, razor-toothed hunter that can grow to more than three feet long, the pike has been known to devour anything it can get its pointed maw around, including frogs, waterfowl and — legend has it — small dogs.

- NY Times (read full story here)

By contrast, Colorado intentionally planted pike in trout water.