Sunday, January 15, 2006

Mucous Sample Procedure

Blue walleye, and regular walleye from the same lake, will have blue colored protein in the mucous of their skin.

1) Gently remove the thin layer of blue mucous ("blue slime") from the dorsal side of the fish, moving your knife from anterior to posterior, or head to tail. Be careful not to remove the scales from the specimen.

2) Deposit the blue slime into a small bottle filled partially with water. Be sure to keep the contents of the bottle cool in temperature.

3) Send your sample to the following address:

Dr. Wayne Schaefer
University of Wisconsin - Washington County
400 University Drive
West Bend, WI 53095

View Instructional Video
(101 MB, 2 minutes)

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wayne,

Heard your talk at the AFS meeting in Dubuque. I found it interesting since we have had walleye that exude a blue, windshield fluid like, substance brought in to our Woodruff office several times over the last ten years. The only one I can remember the details from was a fish caught on Little Donahue lake (T43N R10E Sec 30). The fish was caught by ice fishermen several years ago and turned the snow blue were they laid the fish on the ice.

Steve Gilbert

Anonymous said...

I also heard your talk in Dubuque. I have done alot of fishing in the Wabakimi Provincial Park in northwestern Ontario and have come across yellow walleye with the blue mucous in many of the lakes. Some of the lakes that seemed to have alot of them were Moonshine and Montcreif.

Anonymous said...

WE HAVE FISHED NORTH OF EAR FALLS FOR 25 YEARS AND HAVE COUGHT NUMEROUS BLUE WALLEYES AND SOME PERCH. ON RICHARDSON LAKE I CAUGHT A BLACK AND WHITE PERCH, I MAYSTILL HAVE A PICTURE OF IT. BUT ON THAT LAKE WE CAUGHT MANY BLUE WALLEYES. BACK A NUMBER OF YEARS WE ASKED A DEPT. OF MINISTRY PERSON ABOUT THEM HE CLAIMED THEY WERE A DIFFERENT GENETIC WALLEYE. WE BOUGHT THAT REASON.
PATRICK DOYLE WWW.EFFIE@FRONTIERNET.NET

Anonymous said...

Hi Pat: Thanks for your sighting on Richardson Lake. We will add it to our data base. We also received another sighting today from Richardson Lake. Who is the outfitter there? Thanks for your help. Wayne Schaefer

Anonymous said...

Been catching thes fish in Steel Lake, Northern Ont. for over 30 years. Most run in the 1.5 to 3 lbs. but some up to 5 lbs.

Paukets said...

I read a recent article in Ontario Outdoors that brought back many memories of catching Blues. But in the article most of the fish being discussed were from Northern Ontario. My parents had a cottage on Go Home Lake near Mactier (Just south of Perry Sound) and we used to catch the odd blue walleye at the falls located in the northern part of the lake. Now this is going back 25+ yrs ago and I don't know if they're still there, but I remember coming across a MMR team that were count fish from a net that they had across a channel and they told us that surprisingly the lake had a sustaining population of Blue Walleye. Not knowing they were rare, we informed them that we catch them all the time up by the falls in about 65-70 feet of water right on the bottom. The fish were smaller then the Yellow walleye about 14-16", and that was perfect eating size for the that lake because of the restrictions on eating larger fish due to Mercury level.
Mike Pauk

lcandy9@yahoo.com said...

Hey Wayne,
I haven't seen any Blue Walleye here in Utah, but it gets cold enough if you look close, you can see that I have turned a deep cold blue from the ice!!!!
Does that count as a blue walleye fisherman!!
Like me and Mick at Strawberry when you fished in the cold those many yuears ago!!
Good on ya mate! Laurie

Anonymous said...

I have caught & relesed blue walleyes in Georgian Bay Ontario, Canada.

The run up The Pickerel River to spawn every spring with the yellow pickerel (walleye).

Not many just a few over the years & none recently.

http://www.georgianbaybasshole176.wordpress.com

taybos said...

Name: Trevor Bosanic
Lake: Indian Lake
Town/City: Manistique
State/Providence: MI
Country: US
Number Caught: 1 blue perch
Average Size (inches): 11 1/2
Date Caught (month/day/year): 01/19/2013
Email: taybosanic@gmail.com
Additional Comments : Although this was a blue perch not a blue walleye, I thought that I would report it since we hadn't seen a fish like it before. Trevor is my 8 year old son, he was very excited about his catch that day. It is currently being mounted for him.