Yeah. 7 inches. Rainbow lakes always have the biggest fattest pike. I had a small rainbow on the fly rod last year on gage and a pike hit it mid fight. I lost the pike and the rainbow had some big cuts.
That night I made some streamers in rainbow trout colors
Ditto. State record NP came from Clear Lake that used to be regularly stocked with rainbows. Lake Gage that is stocked with rainbows has big pike. Second biggest pike I've mounted (I mounted the state record pike) came from Oliver Lake, another lake that is regularly stocked with trout. That fish was 45 inches and weighed just under 26 pounds. She was caught in the summer with no eggs. Would have weighed a few more pounds if she had been full of eggs.
Oliver also has decent size common white suckers. A good number in fact. And they suspend in the same waters as the trout and pike in the summer (yes they feed in the water column on zooplankton and aren't just bottom feeders). I spent a day gill netting with Larry Koza one summer and we gill netted a fair number that were suspended. I never would have suspected suckers weren't just bottom feeders.
Other lakes with big pike are Dallas downstream from Oliver and Snow up by Angola. Wawasee has some decent ones. And Hamilton but Im hearing there are a lot of small ones as of late.
It's not just the forage though. Allegedly once pike reach a certain size they essentially become a coldwater fish. That's why the biggest come from deeper colder lakes with good water quality. The shallower more eutrophic lakes usually don't produce really big pike. There are exceptions though.
