Walleye headed back to Ontario Canada

[BLKBEARKLR]

So helped out a friend who does not do fish, Just got it finished last week so sending it back to him in Canada.


Joe

[littlemac]

Nice looking mount.  Sure is great to have the knowledge that the fish is still out there too.

What were the measurements?

[rasbo]

what a pig,good work joe looks awesome

[benhuntin]

That is an awesome mount.  How much did it weigh?

[BLKBEARKLR]

It was 24x16 so about 7 pounds roughly.

I was excited to do this one with it being a blue walleye, they are pretty rare to catch, I just wish the guy had taken better reference photos. I talked to the master of fish painting couple of weeks ago and in 35 years he has only done two of them so he told me to keep it dark not a lot of shines of gold or copper to them and go for it. So hopefully it will be the same pattern.

This is the best pic I could find of what they look like

[alanger]

Very nice mount BLKBEAR

[WCTaxidermy]

Joe, that looks awesome.  Good job!  I didn't know there was such a sub-species so I'm glad you told us about that.  Again nice job Joe.  John

[rasbo]

damn I forgot about you telling me that..thats a great color

[Elkstuffer]

Wow! They do look alot different than the walleye from around here. Thanks for sharing.

[yelp]

This is a Banks Lake Walleye mounted by a taxidermist from Minnesota..LOL  They look different.  Nice mount.

[BLKBEARKLR]

Not all of the walleye in Canada look like that, it is a blue walleye, very rare fish although it is not a true one.

   
The blue walleye (Sander vitreus glaucus), was a subspecies of the walleye that went extinct in the Great Lakes in the 1980s. 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 North America, 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 in the Great Lakes by about 1983 through a combination of anthropogenic eutrophication, overfishing and competition with the introduced rainbow smelt, Osmerus mordax. In the Great Lakes, The subspecies is now considered extinct.

There are occasional reports of blue walleye being caught from waters in the Great Lakes Basin. This is because 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 which the blue colour variant of the yellow walleye seems not to share. Reportedly, though, 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, however, 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[citation needed] , 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 1983 from both lakes Erie and Ontario[citation needed] . 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.

[yelp]

It is a cool looking walleye for sure.  It is cool to look at all of the different genus' of the walleye...my favorite is the Zander.  They get big in the netherlands..

[littlemac]

Wow, there are some big walleye.......

Love that blueish variant.

I also love to catch and eat them at shore lunch, here's a little stringer of lunch and take home fish we caught a couple of years ago.  No blue ones here

[yelp]

A Zander video.. light colored for sure.

Big 33 inch Zander! Fishing in the Netherlands 84cm

[BLKBEARKLR]

Yelp that is a sweet one.


Littlemac, going to share some of those!!!!!!


Joe