BBB, Pike in Bathing Beauty eh? Didn't know this until a young fellow at work said the same thing last week. Sounds like you are offering a challenge huh! I like challenges and pike, so I will try my hardest to rid the lake of the tasty gators.
There's burbot in the lake too, but not so plentiful.
Fish and game has had trouble trying to put a halt to runaway pike, but seem to run up against a wall everytime. What is needed is a decent pike fishery that is accessable via the roadside for pike. That used to be Harding lake, but since the drought and the lack of reed flats for spawning. Pike were placed off limits to us pike chasers. Birch "had" fish, but the state poisoned it off to introduce trout and char? Birch would be a perfect lake for pike! Char and bows caught in the lake are way to thin, not to mention not even native. Most of these lakes had pike, whitefish, grayling, and burbot as the major sporting fish. Now it seems that the state is happy with it's plan of eliminating the natural fish in order to replace them with non-natives like char, bows, and salmon? Most of us love to catch the trout, and even better LOVE to have our kids hook up with some on a good day, but I feel there's a good sized population of pike lovers that will do anything to re-establish a decent population to the local area. Even if it's placing some in Bathing Beauty, (although seagulls, wading birds, and ducks have been known to transport them into area ponds.)
Anyhow, I agree with you on Bathing Beauty! It's a great place for the local folks to wet a line for trout, and it's way to small for supporting a decent population of pike. I guess my madness would be to leave the big lakes for the pike and keep the smaller ponds for trout stockings? I wish ADFG felt the same. It's even wise to keep the pike and char together! Look at Harding, with it's huge population of monster char! I have personnally boated several dozen 10 plus pound char from Harding in the last two years, and it's teeming with pike. We will see how this "new" Moose creek slough/lake turns out! This could be the answer to our prayers.
-Barleydog
