The pike (Esox lucius), or northern pike, is a long, slender, ambush-hunting freshwater fish of cool lakes and slow rivers across the Northern Hemisphere, armoured with a flat, duck-billed snout and a mouthful of backward-curving teeth. Its flesh is lean, white, firm and mild — prized enough to be the classic fish of French quenelles de brochet and a staple of Eastern and Northern European cooking — yet famously marred by a row of many fine, forked Y-bones that make filleting it a small art.