Chain pickerel (Esox niger) is a freshwater species recorded in the United States.
Scientific name: Esox niger · Water: Freshwater
Size: up to 99 cm
The chain pickerel is a demersal esocid of vegetated lakes, swamps and the backwaters and quiet pools of creeks and small to medium rivers; it is also found in deep, cold water with little or no vegetation. Adults move into deeper water and then make shoreward spawning migrations as the ice disappears, and it is oviparous with pelagic eggs. Juveniles tend to lie motionless near shore or to bury themselves in mud beneath debris, and the larvae hide among vegetation. Its range is North America, from Nova Scotia to southern Florida and west along the Gulf coast to the Sabine Lake drainage in Louisiana, and north in the Mississippi River basin to Kentucky and Missouri; it has been introduced to the Lakes Ontario and Erie drainages and elsewhere. Maximum length is about 99 cm total length, commonly about 42 cm, and it can live nine years. It is taken in subsistence fisheries and is a gamefish. Fishing vulnerability is high at 58 of 100 and resilience medium. IUCN lists it as least concern.
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