Michael Schweizer
visit. “I said I’ve been spearfishing,” Schweizer recalls. “And they said, ‘Yes!’ These FWP guys were so pumped to be able to check off ‘spearfishing’ on their sheet. I think one of the guys even gave me a high five.” However uncommon, here we are, gliding from the shore into the murky weeds, where Schweizer says the pike like to loiter. We kick our fins gently and then float over the weeds, our bodies still, and scan for our big-jawed targets, which also tend to lie still, scanning for their own unsuspecting prey. The circumstance is altogether different from hunting in the woods, but nonetheless, it brings a similar adrenaline rush: my eyes widen, my senses are piqued, my heart rate quickens. This, I think to myself, is fun. Montana Headwall
I’m a little unsure, though, about how to actually spear a fish—and how it might feel. It seems prudent to shadow Schweizer, who is only a few feet away and appears to have a pike in his sights. I watch as
He releases, triggering a flash of movement. A cloud of sediment covers the scene. It dissipates, only to reveal his fishless spear. He missed. We make eye contact and move along.
Because of their
fish-eating
gluttonous
habits, pike can eliminate
their food supply in only
a few years,
leaving a population of
stunted he hovers silently, slowly extending his arm and pointing the spear, cocked in his right arm, in the direction of something. I can’t see what. Page 42 Spring 2010
terminally
“hammer handles.” Schweizer spots another. He inches closer this time, perhaps only two feet away from a smallish, motionless pike. He points just behind its gills
and releases, skewering the poor fish like a hotdog over a campfire. Schweizer raises his spear out of the water, and we watch as the fish’s shimmering green body flails futilely and dies quickly. “I would have an issue with killing these fish if they weren’t an invasive species,” Schweizer would explain later. “All the reports from FWP say that they are definitely a voracious predator just killing all the trout and all the other game fish that we’re used to catching in the lakes and rivers around here.” We swim to shore and Schweizer slides the slippery pike off the spear. He usually fillets them, he says, but this one is so puny—about 14 inches at most, compared to the 30-inchers he’s caught in the past—it’s probably not worth the trouble. He takes a