ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Jacie Hart and husband Duane were rigging ice-fishing lines on Alexander Lake last week when the flag on a tip-up snapped up, indicating a northern pike had taken the herring bait. Jacie Hart grabbed the line with cotton-gloved hands and pulled. It wouldn't budge.

"I thought it was a little one wrapped around a log," said Jacie, of Wasilla. "Or we had the big one."

Duane thought it was a big one. He told Jacie to grab a gaffe.

"I thought, What am I supposed to do with this?' " she said.

Then the prehistoric mouth with rows of sharp teeth emerged, nearly filling the circumference of the hole.

Jacie gaffed the monster pike through the mouth and pulled it from the water. A whopper weighing 26 pounds, 6 ounces and measuring 4512 inches long flopped on the ice.

Just 20 minutes after landing their Super Cub, the Harts had the longest and heaviest fish in the inaugural Mat-Su Pike Derby.

"It was unbelievable," Jacie said.

Members of the Houston Chamber of Commerce and Houston Lions Club dreamed up the winter pike derby. It accomplishes a couple of important things, chamber secretary Nancy Sult said.

—Anglers get a fun competition during a slow time of year.

—The Valley pike problem is highlighted. Native to Alaska's interior, pike were illegally introduced in Southcentral Alaska waters. Aggressive pike voraciously eat salmon and trout fry, and the predators are blamed for decimating rainbow populations in several stocked lakes.

Pike have also contributed to sharply reduced salmon returns on Fish Creek, Alexander Creek and Lake Creek, Fish and Game area biologist Dave Rutz said.

The derby gives people a chance to reduce the pike population. On most lakes, there are few if any size restrictions and no bag limits. Up to five lines can be used. Pike can also be caught using a spear or a bow and arrow.

That many people consider pike a tasty game fish is a bonus.

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Conoco Phillips became a major sponsor of the derby, and cash prizes are offered in several categories: longest pike, heaviest pike, most fish caught, total length of fish caught, total poundage, shortest pike and lightest pike.

Top prize in each category is $500 and a hand-carved pike decoy. Second prize is $250 worth of fireworks from Gorilla Fireworks and third is a $75 gift card to Sportsman's Warehouse.

Sult, who grew up fishing for pike in Minnesota, said the chamber plans to make the derby an annual event.

That was good news to Rutz, even though he said it would make only a small dent in the pike population.

"We're always in favor of removing pike from a lot of water systems," he said. "Though in places like the Susitna River system, you won't remove even a hundredth, or a thousandth, of the number of pike there."

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(c) 2008, Anchorage Daily News (Anchorage, Alaska).

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