A New Method for Out-of-Season Propagation for Northern Pike (Esox Lucius, L.)

Abstract

Being a valuable fish specie for aquaculture, the pike is getting more attention from the scientists and the farmers. Normally, intensive pike farming involves the feeding of pikes with pellets up to the size of 250-300 grams, followed by culture in traditional policulture in earth ponds. In intensive pike farming, having the fingerlings sooner means that the pike will have a bigger size at the end of the growing season. Therefore out-of-season propagation for this specie is important if we need large size pike at the age of one summer. In current practice, out-of-season propagation for pike involves quick wintering followed by thermal shocks. We propose a simple method which consists in lack of wintering and allows the farmer to artificially reproduce the pike almost in any period of winter or spring

Keywords

• northern pike
• out-of-season
• propagation