Nothing can make a day on a frozen lake quite as exciting as pulling a fat northern pike up through an 8-inch hole in the ice. These voracious ambush predators take a multitude of different baits and they fight hard!

Northerns are not native to New England, aside from Lake Champlain, arguably the best pike water in the region. Through stockings (both legal and otherwise), these fish now inhabit waters throughout the Northeast.

Pike grow fast. They can survive and even breed in saline environments and regularly find their way into new bodies of water.

Hungry pike will eat smaller fish, frogs, tadpoles, crayfish, leeches and insects. Large pike will even dine on rodents, snakes and birds! They hunt by sight, which makes them easy to target during daylight hours.

And because they keep feeding throughout the winter, ice-fishing is productive too. Here are some best-bet waters to get you started.

CONNECTICUT
Quaddick Reservoir
At this 467-acre reservoir in Thompson, pike are most active early in the season, just after safe ice has formed. Later in the year, be sure to check for safe ice before you venture out. Pike action heats up again late in the season as waters warm up.

Hardwater anglers here report good catches when fishing live shiners off a wire leader around weed edges.

Quaddick Reservoir is stocked with thousands of fingerling pike annually.

The reservoir is comprised of three basins -- lower, middle and upper. The middle, located partially within Quaddick State Park, has good public access. The lower basin is dammed; the upper basin is shallow and weedy.

Ice-anglers at Quaddick focus on the weedlines and transition zones from shallow to deeper waters. That's according to Chris McDowell, a biologist with the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Fisheries Division.

McDowell said that at Quaddick, pike tend to congregate in the middle basin, but that to find fish, visiting anglers should simply locate other anglers!

To reach access on the eastern shore within the state park, take Exit 99 off Interstate Route 395 onto Route 200 east (Quaddick Road).

Then travel 2.8 miles and turn left onto Quaddick Town Farm Road. The park entrance is 1.5 miles in, on the left.

For more information, check out DeLorme's Connecticut/ Rhode Island Atlas and Gazetteer, Map 57. For more fishing information, call 1-860-424-3474, or visit www.ct.gov/dep. (Cont'd)

MAINE
Pushaw Lake
Pike are a fairly recent arrival at this Penobscot Region lake in Orono. There aren't yet high numbers of big fish there, but the population is firmly established and may eventually spread into the Greater Pushaw watershed, including Mud Pond and Little Pushaw Lake.

Pike taken from Pushaw Lake often measure 20 inches or more.

"The northern end is the place to fish," said Nels Kramer, a fisheries biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

"In the deeper part of the lake, there is a ledge island. About 80 percent of the pike are taken there. The largest pike taken through the ice there weighed 8 pounds."