{"id":264,"date":"2021-08-25T11:47:51","date_gmt":"2021-08-25T11:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outdoorsniagara.com\/?p=264"},"modified":"2021-09-02T18:54:15","modified_gmt":"2021-09-02T18:54:15","slug":"bluepikegillisi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outdoorsniagara.com\/bluepikegillisi\/","title":{"rendered":"BLUE PIKE, A REMNANT FROM THE PAST, HOPE FOR THE FUTURE?"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Blue Pike Story Part I\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b><\/span>
\nExclusively on Outdoors Niagara!<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>The
\nBlue Pike The Stories Start On This Page.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

There is a whole lot of Blue Pike
\ninformation in these pages. There is no other website that has the in-depth
\ncoverage as what appears here in these Outdoors Niagara web pages. A lot of what
\nappears elsewhere was copied from Outdoors Niagara and that is welcomed. The
\nBlue Pike story is interesting and should be seen and heard by all, young & old.
\nThe Blue Pike were officially declared extinct by the USFWS in 1976<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The article directly below is a fair
\nassessment and with some in-depth research by Mike Gillis.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

BLUE
\nPIKE, A REMNANT FROM
\nTHE PAST, HOPE FOR THE FUTURE?
\n<\/span>\u00a0by Mike
\nGillis<\/i><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

PART ONE: THE PAST
\n<\/span>T ONE: THE PAST<\/p>\n

<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/h1>\n

Blue
\nPike were once, during the first half of this century, probably the best
\ntasting, and definitely most, commercially harvested fish in the lower great
\nlakes system. Chances were almost certain, that if you went to a local
\nrestaurant for a Friday fish fry, you would be served blue pike, not haddock.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I
\nhad the opportunity to sit down and have an interesting discussion with former
\nLake Ontario commercial fisherman Elton Jeffords<\/b> of Youngstown, NY, and
\nformer game warden Kimpton Vosburg<\/b> was the head game warden in this area
\nfrom 1948 until 1979, and returned during the hunting seasons from ’83 to ’89.
\nWe talked a lot about blue pike, some of which I\u2019ll mention in this article,
\nand several other subjects of interest in Niagara River fishing history, which
\nI\u2019ll write about in the future. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

According
\nto Elton, it wasn’t uncommon to buy a thousand pounds of fish from hook and line
\nfishermen in a day. With his gill nets, it was also not uncommon to catch this
\nmany fish. The size of the holes in the gill nets were carefully regulated and
\nfrequently checked by men, such as Vosburg, so that only a certain size range of
\nfish could be kept, thus insuring the survival of a good spawning population of
\nfish for future harvest, and giving the smaller fish a chance to grow bigger.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The
\nlast blue pike that Vosburg can recall being caught out of the Niagara was in
\n1955 on the day that Marilyn Bell swam from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Toronto for
\nthe Toronto Exposition. Of course, no one blames Marilyn Bell for the
\ndisappearance of the blue pike. However, several other reasons to blame do come
\nup. Elton Jeffords believes that over-fishing by the hook and line fishermen and
\nthe use of illegal sized gill nets played a large role in finishing off the blue
\npike.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Kimpton
\nVosburg attributes the demise to pollution, such as the cyanide that was dumped
\ndaily into the water by a prominent North Tonawanda NY company.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Several
\nyears ago, when I took a fishery biology course in SUNY College at Morrisville
\nPA, our professor attributed the disappearance of the blue pike to phosphate
\ndetergents. Some of you may remember Arthur Godfrey doing the phosphate
\ncommercials on your black and white TV sets. Households around the populated
\nareas around the great lakes used these detergents widely at the time. The
\nrunoff of these eventually ended up in the water of the great lakes, working its
\nway down to Lake Erie, the Niagara River and Lake Ontario. The phosphates from
\nthese detergents promoted excessive aquatic plant growth, thus depleting the
\ndeeper water of light and oxygen. This phenomenon had a particularly profound
\neffect upon the deeper water and high oxygen requiring blue pike. Phosphate
\ndetergents are now banned.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\nThe blue pike was officially<\/u> declared extinct by the
\nUS Fish & Wildlife Service in 1976.
\n<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n

Please
\ngo to next page for <\/span>
\nPart
\nTwo<\/span><\/a> <\/b><\/span>[“The
\nPresent”] of this story.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/center><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n
\nGo
\nto Website Index\/Contents Page<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/td>\n
\n<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

[top]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nBack
\nto the blue pike index page<\/span><\/a><\/b><\/td>\n
\n Part Two
\n<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/center><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Blue Pike Story Part I\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Exclusively on Outdoors Niagara! The Blue Pike The Stories Start On This Page. There is a whole lot of Blue Pike information in these pages. There is no other website that has the in-depth coverage as what appears here in these Outdoors Niagara web pages. A lot of what … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nBLUE PIKE, A REMNANT FROM THE PAST, HOPE FOR THE FUTURE? - OutdoorsNiagara<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.outdoorsniagara.com\/bluepikegillisi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"BLUE PIKE, A REMNANT FROM THE PAST, HOPE FOR THE FUTURE? - OutdoorsNiagara\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"  Blue Pike Story Part I\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Exclusively on Outdoors Niagara! 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The Blue Pike The Stories Start On This Page. There is a whole lot of Blue Pike information in these pages. There is no other website that has the in-depth coverage as what appears here in these Outdoors Niagara web pages. A lot of what ... 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