Black River system walleye...some extremely interesting new stuff!

[Al Agnew]

Many years ago, I spent a lot of time in the winter fishing for walleye on lower Black River. There were three large gravel dredged holes at that time where the few anglers who fished for walleye concentrated their efforts. The usual way everybody fished was with big live minnows from the bank or from an anchored boat. We didn't catch a lot of walleye but there were big ones caught; we never even bragged about a fish unless it was 10 pounds or better.

As more anglers discovered walleye fishing on the rivers, and the big dredged pools began to fill in with sand and gravel, and also because I discovered winter fishing for smallmouth, I pretty much stopped fishing for those big walleye. But I always thought that the Black River strain of walleye had the potential to grow to world record sizes. My personal best was 31 inches and 12.5 pounds, but I saw walleye caught that were 15 pounds and better, including two that weighed 17.5 pounds.

I kept in contact with some of the guys who fished for them, and by the 1990s I was hearing of far fewer really big ones being caught. And I really began to think that we would never see the really big walleye these streams could produce unless people began to value the big ones as more than just table fare. I advocated catch and release for the big ones, and tried to convince people that these fish, with their potential for great sizes, were a unique resource that deserved more protection. Although I no longer fished Black or Current, I occasionally caught walleye on the Meramec fishing for bass. There weren't many guys concentrating on walleye on the Meramec, but I know that it was exceedingly rare to catch one over 10 pounds on the Meramec. I suspected that the Meramec fish were a different strain, without that potential to grow really big.

So I got a message a few weeks ago from the biologists who are in charge of Black and Current, wanting to know if I was interested in hearing what they'd been finding out about Black River system walleye. They knew I occasionally posted about Ozark walleye on Facebook and in angling forums. Of course, I said "SURE"!

Guys, what they've been finding out about these fish is amazing.

First and maybe most importantly...I was right. These fish ARE a different breed, and have the potential to grow to huge sizes. They grow fast and they live a fairly long time--if allowed to. In fact, DNA studies are now showing that these fish are so different from lake strain walleye and even river strain walleye everywhere else that they are probably going to be classified a different SPECIES, not a subspecies or strain. The biologists suspect that walleye endemic to the upper White River, now mostly buried under the big lakes, were originally this same strain/species. But wholesale stocking of lake strain walleye by both Arkansas and Missouri over the years in the big lakes have pretty much diluted the genetics of the native river fish to the point where they are no longer the same as the Black River fish...and they no longer have the potential to grow to near record sizes.

By Black River strain, we are talking about fish endemic to the streams running into Black River, even far down into Arkansas. These include the Eleven Point, Current, and Black rivers in Missouri, and probably the Spring River in Arkansas. It may have also included the St. Francis River; at one time the state record in Missouri was a St. Francis River fish. But the walleye died out on the St. Francis (a bit more on that later). At present, and for the last 20 years, the biologists have been collecting eggs from Black River walleye and raising them to stock in the St. Francis. It now has a viable fishery, but supplemental stocking is necessary to maintain it, so they continue to capture Black River fish to get the eggs to raise. And for the last five years, since they've been capturing them anyway, they've been really studying these fish.

And here is the most important thing they've found: only the females grow big, and anglers have been legally keeping mostly females. In some streams, including the Eleven Point, the length limit is 18 inches. And even where it's 15 inches, many anglers won't keep one until it's up there close to 18 inches. And the males of these Black River strain walleye seldom get bigger than 18 inches! The biggest they've captured was only 22 inches, and they've captured very few over 18. So that 20 inch fish you kept was almost certainly a female. The females are in effect being selectively cropped off, leaving the males. The males become sexually mature at age three, when they are 14-17 inches, and grow to at least 11 years, where some are STILL under 18 inches.

So the biologists now know that the regulations in Missouri are not good for these fish, and changes may be coming in the future, though they are still a long way from figuring out what to propose. Whatever it is, it's likely to be special regulations only on the Black, Current, Eleven Point, and St. Francis...unless they find these same genetics elsewhere.

They found that while the males are 14-17 inches at age three, the females at that age commonly are up to 21 inches, and they captured one that was 26 inches! And from there the females continue to grow. Some reach 30 inches by age seven, and most are 30 inches or better by age eight.

In capturing males and females, they found that they caught more than five times as many males; the males are apparently naturally more abundant, AND are not being cropped off like the females. They also found that the bigger the female, the more eggs she has. Most in the 18-22 inch range produce about 50,000 eggs. The two biggest they've captured, both around 31 inches, had over 300,000 and over 400,000 eggs! Another reason to protect the bigger females.

There is one other amazing thing they found out, and that's how much these fish travel. They do their capturing on Black River just below Clearwater Dam. As part of their studies, they tagged some fish with electronic tags, and set up sensors along the rivers that pick up the signal from these tags as the fish pass the sensor. They captured an 18-inch male, and tagged it, on March 10. They had a sensor in the pool where they captured it, right below a spawning riffle area. It hung around the pool, continually recorded on the sensor, until March 30. Then it disappeared, and they next picked up the signal in Corning, Arkansas, on April 12! There they lost it, because there were no other sensors installed farther down on Black River. But a sensor was installed on Current River in Arkansas that August, and on October 31 the it picked up that fish. On November 7 it passed Corning. On November 12 it passed the Highway 67 bridge on Black River upstream from Poplar Bluff. And on November 17, it reached the next pool below the pool where they had captured and tagged it. It hung in that pool and the pool where it had been captured until it spawned, and then did the same migration at almost exactly the same time frame. It did this four years in a row, and was finally caught and harvested on July 21 after the fourth spawn and migration...on Current River upstream from Doniphan. That's a total of 230 river miles that fish traveled, TWICE every year, from its spawning area to its summering area and back!

And it isn't just the adults who travel.  The fingerlings soon leave the spawning riffles and head downstream long distances as well.  It's likely that this downstream migration is a big reason why the walleye died out in the St. Francis.  Once Wappapello Lake was built, both fingerlings and adults almost certainly migrated all the way down the river to the lake, and down the lake and through the dam...never to return.

[fishinwrench]

Somewhere around 2001-2004 our beloved biologists were injecting a sizable number of walleye, either below Wappapelo or Clearwater (or both), with some growth hormone.   Ask your buddies if they are still doing that. 🙄   I doubt that you'll get an honest answer......but I question their statement that the Walleye there are being considered as a "different species".    They should know darn well !   

 

I wouldn't want to be eating them, that's for sure. 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10915504/at

[fishinwrench]

2 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

So I got a message a few weeks ago from the biologists who are in charge of Black and Current, wanting to know if I was interested in hearing what they'd been finding out about Black River system walleye

How long have these guys been at their current job ?    

[Quillback]

Walleye have some design flaws- they are tasty and easy to fillet.  I have never seen so much pressure on them on Table Rock as I have seen this year. 

Genetic marker info for Black and Eleven Point:

Assessment of Stocking Success of Walleye in the Eleven Point River, Arkansas: North American Journal of Fisheries Management: Vol 28, No 5

[Al Agnew]

1 hour ago, Quillback said:

Walleye have some design flaws- they are tasty and easy to fillet.  I have never seen so much pressure on them on Table Rock as I have seen this year. 

Genetic marker info for Black and Eleven Point:

Assessment of Stocking Success of Walleye in the Eleven Point River, Arkansas: North American Journal of Fisheries Management: Vol 28, No 5

Arkansas stocked non-native strain walleye for a lot longer than Missouri did, but now agree that it was a bad idea.  What this movement information shows is that Arkansas and Missouri need to work together and be on the same page with regulations and management of these fish.

[Quillback]

12 minutes ago, Al Agnew said:

Arkansas stocked non-native strain walleye for a lot longer than Missouri did, but now agree that it was a bad idea.  What this movement information shows is that Arkansas and Missouri need to work together and be on the same page with regulations and management of these fish.

Yes, you'd think they'd work together on this.  

[tjm]

5 hours ago, Quillback said:

Genetic marker info for Black and Eleven Point:

Assessment of Stocking Success of Walleye in the Eleven Point River, Arkansas: North American Journal of Fisheries Management: Vol 28, No 5

Is this indicating that the two don't interbreed? It would seem that if the Black River fish are a separate species,  mixing DNA might not be a concern. 

[Quillback]

16 minutes ago, tjm said:

Is this indicating that the two don't interbreed? It would seem that if the Black River fish are a separate species,  mixing DNA might not be a concern. 

I don't know, you'd think they would interbreed.  

[tjm]

I'm no biologist, but I though that different species didn't normally cross, like largemouth bass and smallmouth bass; and I'd think the clear constant percentage of "A" fish and "C" fish would have some percentage of "A/C" if they were mingling.

The other thing that I noticed is the study shows the non-natvive fish growing faster and larger than the native fish, contrary to @Al Agnew's observations. 

[tjm]

15 hours ago, fishinwrench said:

Somewhere around 2001-2004 our beloved biologists were injecting a sizable number of walleye, either below Wappapelo or Clearwater (or both), with some growth hormone. 

Do you remember where you read that? I'm curious to know more.