What happens when a pike swims off with your lure?

A study done byresearchers atCarleton University's Cooke Labhas shed light on a common fishing question: what happens when a pike swims off with your lure?

Graduate student Chris Pullen hooked pike in four different parts of the mouth with colour codedcrankbait luresfitted with radio transmitters.

The fish werethenreleased into a small lake and tracked.

Thepike shook thelures with ease.

"By and large, most of the lures were shed in a relatively short period of time,"said Pullen."Barbless hooks - as one wouldexpect - came out usually within 24 hours. And deeply hooked [lures]also came out relatively quickly, although they were retained for a number of days."

Thepikein the studywere hooked in the lowerjaw (with both barbed and un-barbed hooks), through boththe upper and lower jaw together,anddeeply in the mouth.

Pullen said pike hooked in the lower jaw actually took longer to shed thelure thanthose hooked deeply near the back of the tongue.

He saidthe theory with that isthe hook in the jaw is less of an annoyance thanone that isdeeper and impacting their ability to forage.

"We have a pretty good idea now, for pike atleast,with crankbaits, what likely happens with the lure," he said."And that is faster thanpeople might think, that fish is able to get that hook out."

Pullen saidthe study shows anglers who want to release a fish arelikelybetter off cutting the line on a deep hooked pike then trying to pull out the hookitself.

He saidresearch shows pike are easily stressed by over-handling and prolonged air exposure.

The study was supervisedbyDr.Steven Cookeand the Fish Ecology and Conservation Physiology Lab at Carleton.

The field work was done at the Queens University Biological Research Station (QUBS).