the strangest thing

[smallies24]

....well maybe not the strangest, but today while on my way off the lake I saw a fish floating out in the middle of the lake so I drove over. Turns out to be a nice walleye, over 29", gills were still bright red. I plucked it out of the water to take a closer look and found a 7" sunfish stuck in the gills. Shame to see that but it sure is something you don't see everyday....I'll try to get a hold of a digital camera and post the pics if I can.

Good fishing,

Brian

[The Grebe]

I found one on Minnetonka about the same size and the same senario had occured, only this one was dead as a door nail and sun bleached. I've found Northerns dead, from trying to swallow an over sized victim. Sometimes the pike will try to eat other pike that are only slightly smaller then themselves.

[musky hunter]

I had a very nice interview a couple years ago with one of the Wisconsin DNR's senior fisheries biologists, and we got into the topic of longivity of walleyes, mortality if you will. It's like death stalks us all. First of all, you retrieved a very mature walleye. What we don't know is if old age physically incapacitated the fish restricting it's ability to eat, or if it suffreed an unfortunate accident. We'll never know if it would have grown to 33" or more, that's dictated the the fishes genes. But the long and the short of it is, less that a fraction of a percent of all walleyes ever get that big, those that do are on borrowed time. My advice, put a rapalla in it's mouth, take a picture with it, and claim lots of bragging rights!

[blindluck]

Nothing to do with a fish's life time, but a strange occurance none the less.

I was fishing off a dock one day at a cabin on Okoboji Lake in Iowa. I was very young at the time, and I was using my trusty orange and white snoopy rod. Anyway, I noticed that all of the adults had their rods laying on the dock while they drank coffee. I decided to lay my rod down and go in for a little while.
My father came in sometime later to ask me where my pole was. I responded that I had left it on the dock. As I ran out, I noticed that my pole was no longer there, and that the adults had wrapped a line around the dock posts to keep a fish from leaving with there pole.
Sometime later that afternoon, after a couple of hours had passed, my father came back into the cabin and told me that I had better get out there. Sure enough, another person fishing had caught the fish that had my pole! I grabbed my pole from the water and realed him in.
To this day I find that occurrance quite odd, but I also remember being verry happy to get my snoopy rod and reel back.

See ya' all real soon.
Mike G

[slick814]

Check out the thread called "Pfeiffer Lake" that I started on the Lake Vemilion forum. There's a pic there of this very thing. An 'Eye with a Crappie that was too big for him...

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Fishin' is life
The rest is just details

[fishermn]

Along the same lines, we were fishing basswood during the weekend after opener and caught a 28 inch walleye that had some good size fresh scars on her side. If that was from another fish, I would sure like to have seen what tried to eat her!

[james_walleye]

About 10 years ago on Leech Lake a guy at the resort i was staying at caught a 39" northern and while fighting it a muskie hit the northern. You should have seen how wide the teeth marks were on the side of that northern.

[rms]

Fred's bait in Deer River has some cool pictures of a 32" northern with a 26" northern sticking out of its mouth. I don't remember if someone caught it or if they found it floating.