Northern Pike
Follow the water up the arms in spring. As the reservoir climbs toward its 6.55-metre summer pool, it re-floods the sandy, drawn-down banks of the S-shaped upper valley, and pike push into that fresh vegetation to spawn — the reservoir's calendar and the pike's run on the same clock. By the second-Saturday-of-May opener they've settled onto the new weed edges, working out from the flooded shallows toward open water.
← Back to Wildwood Reservoir conditionsHow it fishes
The season is a migration between the two ends of the reservoir. Spring belongs to the upper arms: the refill floods vegetated banks, pike spawn there, then hold the weed and flat edges while the water is high, with yellow perch and other forage packed into the same cover.
Then the drawdown starts in late June and doesn't quit until winter, pulling water off the arms and concentrating everything downstream toward the dam. By ice season the fishery has collapsed onto the dam basin at the west end — the deepest water left — where anglers take pike from the lowest holes, around 15 feet down, often while working perch.
Treat any shallow spot as temporary; the reservoir can strand it in weeks. Follow the deep water toward the dam as the season drains the arms.
Structure
The lowest-lying water holds through the winter drawdown, so it becomes the pike's cold-season address — ice anglers pull them from the deepest holes, around 15 feet, while targeting perch. (Angler-documented; no bathymetric chart exists for the reservoir.)
Sandy and muddy flooded banks that re-inundate each spring as the reservoir climbs to summer pool — fresh drowned vegetation that lines up with the pike spawn. Specific bays aren't named in the sources; this is the reservoir-cycle pattern, not a mapped spot.
Regulations
This is a summary, not the legal regulation — confirm current rules with the official source before fishing.