"Ugly Pike"

[Matt Walker]

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1409518349.673003.jpg


Our Native friends call them "Ugly Pike" I don't think there to bad?

[Roper]

Is that a pike? Its coloured like a muskie.

[Rodbender]

Is that a pike? Its coloured like a muskie.

X2

[JMatthews]

Maybe a Muskie is an ugly Pike?

[blumpkinturlet]

I'm pretty sure that's what muskellunge originated from. An Ojibwa word that meant ugly pike.

[Bushmoose]

I'm pretty sure that's what muskellunge originated from. An Ojibwa word that meant ugly pike.

Ugly,slimy, get them the hell outta the boat, pike?

[tweedwolfscream]

Haha yes I believe Matt was just refering to the original Anishinaabemowin word for muskie (which is the source of our word for them), hence "Our Native friends". Wikipedia transliterates their name for it as "maashkinoozhe". Since the N and L sounds are almost interchangeable in Algonquian languages and switch between regional dialects, the early French settlers called the fish "masque allongé", which both means "elongated face" and sounds like the native word, so two visual descriptions for one phonetic price. It's from that former French name that we get our word muskellunge, though the French name has since become maskinongé, a closer adaptation of the original Anishenaabemowin.

Nice muskie!

[Roper]

tweedwolfscream: Excellent historic derivation of the name muskellunge. Thanks.
I love catching pike and someday hope to go for an early spring trip for the big boys when they are still in shallow bays.