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

[fishinwrench]

23 minutes ago, tjm said:

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

I didn't read it.   I was good friends with a MDC employee that was doing the collecting & releasing of the fish. 

[tjm]

.I didn't find any record of such work, and it should be documented  as part of budgeting  monies to pay for the labor and the hormones. so it kinda becomes an  "I heard this"  thing, kinda like hearsay. Interesting though. 

[fishinwrench]

49 minutes ago, tjm said:

I didn't find any record of such work,

 

Well, that solves it then 👍 

 

After all these years....a NEW species, specific to that particular watershed, has been discovered!   🙄

[Quillback]

2 hours ago, tjm said:

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. 

 

2 hours ago, tjm said:

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. 

The "A" and "C" are haplotypes. I have never heard of a haplotype until reading that article.  I did a search on haplotype and good grief, there is a lot of reading material on that subject.  Too much for me to absorb.  Does not seem to indicate a separate species.  

[tjm]

59 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

 

Well, that solves it then 👍 

 

After all these years....a NEW species, specific to that particular watershed, has been discovered!   🙄

New species or even subspecies determination would depend on DNA and no injection of hormones would change the DNA. It won't be the first time that a new fish species has been discovered peculiar to a watershed. In my area we have Neosho bass, for example,  in Georgia they found two recently new species of black bass endemic to particular watersheds Bartram’s bass  in the Savannah and Saluda River basins, and Altamaha bass  in the Altamaha and Ogeechee River basins. Not so new but endemic to only couple of watersheds is the Guadalupe bass.

Worldwide they named 309  new species of freshwater fish just in  2025. We not only have better tools for determining species' relationships with other species, but we have many more scientists at work on the subject. 

[jdmidwest]

Back in the 90's I fished out of Poplar Bluff at the Sportsman's access for walleye in the winter with a friend's Dad.  He had fished it all of his life.  Like Al, the fishery had produced 15 lbers many times.  We trolled with a square stern canoe with a 5hp motor on it running up river as far as Hillard.  We boated some 5 lb ones and hooked in a few big ones, but broke off.  That was the start of my walleye adventures.  I still put in at the Gravel Pits and jet boat every once in a while, still catch a few in those old drag line holes.

My first walleye, actually a "Jack Salmon", was caught on the Castor River above Gypsy bridge back in about 1979 casting a crankbait for bass out of a jon boat.  Did not even know what a walleye was til I fished with Richard on the Black.

[Al Agnew]

8 hours 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. 

It's not nearly that simple when it comes to fish species.  Yes, they can interbreed.  Same as spotted bass interbreed with smallmouth bass, or Florida bass interbreed with northern largemouth bass (and now the Florida bass is considered a separate species, by the way).  However, the two strains or species do have different spawning habits and locations.  The walleye stocked in the big lakes are lake spawners, spawning on wind-swept banks and seldom ascending the rivers above the lakes to spawn.  The native walleye are river spawners, and apparently never spawn within the lakes.  So they end up not interbreeding very much.  The problem with the lake strain walleye in the big lakes is that they ended up outcompeting the river strain fish, and contrary to what that study  mentioned showed, they simply don't grow as big.  When Greers Ferry Lake was built, the first few years people were catching huge river run walleye in the forks of the Little Red above the lake.  The state record was broken there.  And people were saying the next world record could come from Greers Ferry.  But those spawning runs in the forks above the lake petered out, and the huge walleye are no longer caught in Greers Ferry.  Same thing happened at Stockton Lake.

And the other big reason the river run fish disappeared is that the tendency of both adults and fingerlings to move long distances downstream meant that a lot of them ended up going through the dams...and then they couldn't return to the lakes and the rivers above the lakes.

As for the study showing the stocked fish being heavier on average, I'd have to know a lot more about the study and the fish stocked.  The abstract was a bit confusing, noting that the stocked fish had the A marker and the native fish had the C marker, but then later stating that nearly half the fish that were hatched naturally before stocking started had the A marker.  And it made no mention of where the stocked fish came from originally.  Given that the study is 20 years old and DNA analysis has come a very long way since then, I would question the information in the study.  But that's not my observation above about growth rates and top end sizes, it's what the biologists told me.

We are living in a time where the "splitters" among taxonomists are dominant, with DNA studies showing a whole lot of fish we once thought were the same species are different enough to warrant being considered a different species.  The Neosho smallmouth, once considered a subspecies, is now a separate species.  And it's looking likely that there will be more smallmouth split off, including the smallies of the Ouachita Mountains region in Arkansas and Oklahoma.  The redeye/Coosa bass of the Southeastern Appalachians has been split into something like 9 different species the last I checked; there are now at least 15 different black bass species.  And most of them can and do interbreed.  The different redeye species are endemic to different watersheds and each one is found only in one or two watersheds.  The invasion of both spotted bass and Alabama bass (which are almost indistinguishable from spotted bass by appearance) into these watersheds has caused a major decline in the whichever native redeye species is in that watershed, mostly by the invaders interbreeding with them.

[Quillback]

Just got this email from AGFC.  

Trophy Walleye Lurking in Arkansas Rivers

 

Biologists teamed up in February and March to sample Walleye in streams and rivers across north-central and eastern Arkansas. Using boat electrofishing gear, Walleye were collected from the Spring River, Eleven Point River, and the lower White River near Batesville. Biologists measured each fish for length and weight and collected a small tissue sample as part of a statewide effort to better understand the Walleye's genetic diversity and distribution across Arkansas.

Although anglers often associate Walleye fishing with large, deep reservoirs, these rivers hold some true trophies. A few of the Walleye collected measured around 30 inches and weighed over 8 pounds. The largest was a female from the White River near Batesville, measuring 30 inches and tipping the scales at 11 pounds.

With trophies like these cruising our rivers, now is the perfect time to grab a rod and get on the water!

[Brian Jones]

On 3/7/2026 at 7:18 PM, jdmidwest said:

My first walleye, actually a "Jack Salmon", was caught on the Castor River above Gypsy bridge back in about 1979 casting a crankbait for bass out of a jon boat.  Did not even know what a walleye was til I fished with Richard on the Black.

One of the things I've often wondered is how walleye became known as "Jack Salmon" and is that name synonymous with the Ozarks, or are they called that in other areas of the country as well?

[Quillback]

2 hours ago, Brian Jones said:

One of the things I've often wondered is how walleye became known as "Jack Salmon" and is that name synonymous with the Ozarks, or are they called that in other areas of the country as well?

Immature male chinook salmon that returned to the rivers are called "Jacks".  The only place I have heard walleye called jack salmon is around here, but I don't know if anyone uses that name for walleye nowadays.  Here's what AI thinks:

The term "jack salmon" originated as a culinary term in the early 20th-century Midwestern United States, specifically St. Louis and Cincinnati, where it was used to market Pacific whiting (a small hake) as a cheap alternative to true salmon, with usage dating back to at least the 1920s. It also referred to small, early-returning male salmon.