Great White?

[gunflint]

Has anyone ever caught a white walleye? I caught one tonight. This fish was mostly cream colored with a little light gray checkering where the dark pigment should be.

At first I thought it might be a sucker or whitefish or something like that, but after looking at it for several seconds it was definitely a walleye. It was 25 inches so it was too big to eat, too small to mount, and frankly too cool to kill. I was fishing alone so I have no pictures.

The walleyes that normally come out of this lake are almost black and gold. I've seen pics of green and white walleyes and pale colored ones but this one was different.

I'm thinking that maybe it was very old but it sure fought like a healthy fish. Any ideas? ( Northlander, it was caught the very first time I tried "pink" Fireline!)

[Northlander]

Oh ya the old Pink Fireline trick. I told ya all that would catch you is the old half blind greying walleyes.

Seriously though you should have got a picture I would have loved to show that to a DNR Biologist I know. If you catch another get a pic for me.

Whats up tomorrow and Tues? Any fish biting your way? Im looking for a close 2 day trip.

Drop me a e-mail.

[Mike Walerak]

Depending on what lake you were fishing you might have tied into a "Blue Walleye". There are a few lakes that have populations on this particular strain. I will see if I can dig up a picture of one.

mw

[Northlander]

From what Gunflint told me on the phone this thing was WHITE. Not a blue. Im headed up tomorrow to fish with him and with any luck will will catch it and get some good photos to post. The lake he fishes doesnt have blues either so its very interesting to me.

[ocf2]

Albino

[Capt.Blaine]

Last summer I was fishing the beach (park point) and one of the walleyes we caught was almost clear you could see the stomach and everything and the spine. Weirdest thing I have ever seen. It was 24inches long and seemed to be healthy.

[Northlander]

If you guys ever catch eyes like this send me pics and a scale sample and I will send them into a DNR Biologist I know. He as well as I would like to see if we can find out the reasons for some of these freaky fish.

[fisherman-andy]

I have fish Devils Lake, ND lotsa times for eyes and they seem to match similiar discription to a white wally or bluish white.

[Carp-fisher]

Quote:

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Depending on what lake you were fishing you might have tied into a "Blue Walleye". There are a few lakes that have populations on this particular strain. I will see if I can dig up a picture of one.

mw

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The blue walleye (Sander vitreus glaucus) sometimes erroneously called the blue pike, was a subspecies of the walleye that went extinct in the 1970s. Until the middle of the 20th century, it was a commercially valuable fish with about a half million tonnes being landed during the period from about 1880 to the late 1950s, when the populations collapsed.

The fish was endemic to lakes Erie and Ontario of the Great Lakes region of the U.S. and Canada, including the inter-connecting Niagara River, but most especially to Lake Erie where it sometimes represented more than 50% of the commercial catch. The subspecies was apparently extirpated by about 1970 through a combination of anthropogenic eutrophication, overfishing and competition with the introduced rainbow smelt (Osmerus mordax). The subspecies is now considered extinct.

There are occasional reports of blue walleye being caught from waters in the Great Lakes basin. This is due to the fact that many yellow walleye populations also contain a colour variant with a bluish colour. The actual blue walleye, however, was said to be distinguishable from the yellow walleye by various meristics and morphometrics; things which the blue colour variant of the yellow walleye seems not to share. Reportedly, some of the meristic and morphometric differences may simply have been artifacts of the different growth rates of yellow and blue walleyes. The clearest evidence, though, is that the blue walleye, whatever its taxonomic status, has been lost. Nonetheless, an investigation of genetic material from preserved blue walleye specimens is currently underway in several research facilities in an effort to decipher the true status of the populations.

To date, none of the bluish-coloured walleyes recently captured has been shown to be a blue walleye, despite the fact that at least one organization in the US is offering a reward for the successful capture of a blue walleye specimen. A United States Fish and Wildlife Service recovery plan in the mid-1970s was unable to find any certain evidence of the blue walleye's existence at that time. Nine purported blue walleyes captured in 1975, including a number of gravid females, were inconclusive as to their subspecific designation and failed to produce any viable offspring through artificial propagation. The last known blue walleyes, to any degree of certainty, were captured in about 1965 from both lakes Erie and Ontario. Subsequent, exhaustive efforts to find a relict population have been entirely unsuccessful. The loss of the blue walleye is, arguably, an extinction event on par with the loss of the passenger pigeon and the near-extirpation of the American bison. Where once the subspecies numbered in the millions, all are now gone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_walleye