Looking back on the Blue Pike

With the last ones caught over 50 years ago, the number of people old enough to remember blue pike is diminishing. However, there are still some veteran Central Basin fishermen who fondly reminisce about catching what may once have been Lake Erie's favorite fish species.Going out after sunset, hanging a lantern over the side of the boat to attract shiners, then fishing until a trash can or the bottom of the boat was full of blue pike is a common memory shared by a few old timers.The blue pike was a sub-species of the yellow walleye that primarily inhabited the cool water layer of Lake Erie's Central and Eastern Basins, and western Lake Ontario. It differed from yellow walleye by their smaller size, unique bluish coloration and proportionally larger eyes. They were sexually mature at 13 inches and reached a maximum length of 16 inches and two pounds.They were especially favored by local restaurants for their convenient size that perfectly filled a dinner plate when hog-dressed, cooked and served intact, as was customary. Although their flesh was less firm than that of a walleye, the flavor was described as sweeter, similar to crappies.They preferred deeper, darker water than walleye, so interactions of these two species were normally infrequent except in the Western Basin reefs and Islands area over the winter — and through the spring spawning season. The Put-in-Bay State Fish hatchery raised millions of fry some years.In the early 1900's, blue pike populations began to fluctuate widely, with high abundances every 4-to-6 years. This phenomenon was suspected to be the result of cannibalism by the older blue pike which cropped off their young-of-year offspring during their high cycles. As the adult population began to diminish, higher offspring survival would result in another huge year class. This pattern continued without much concern to fish biologists until the collapse of the population began in 1958, after 1954s last substantial hatch.Several related factors have been suggested as the cause of this rather sudden, catastrophic extinction. Most scientists agree that the expanding, low dissolved oxygen dead zone led to suffocation of blue pike. It also reduced their primary food supplies, including burrowing mayflies and cool-water orientated bait fish such as trout-perch and silver chubs.Invasive smelt and alewives increased in abundance during the mid-twentieth century, and preyed heavily on young-of-year blue pike, and may have been responsible for additional declines as populations were already fading.When the schools of oxygen-starved fish concentrated near shore to avoid the low-oxygen conditions, an increase in landings by commercial netters further reduced the blue pike population. Commercial catches ranged from 2-to-26 million pounds per year in the 1950s. The final year that blue pike were sold, 1964, less than 200 hundred pounds reached the fish markets. The last few confirmed blue pike were caught in 1965 from Lake Erie.For the next several years, bluish-colored walleyes were occasionally captured by both sport and commercial fishermen. Subsequent DNA-testing indicated that all of them were in-fact hybrids, apparently spawning with an increasing population of yellow walleyes as blue pike became scarcer.When both species were abundant, they occasionally produced hybrids, known by commercial fishermen as grays, jumbos or mules, which grew larger than blue pike typically did and with blue pike color pattern.A last-ditch effort to capture some brood stock for breeding purposes was attempted by Pennsylvania and Ohio in the late 1960s, with several blue-colored fish taken to the National Fish Hatchery in Hebron and elsewhere. Propagation attempts failed and the species was officially declared extinct in 1976 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.In a few lakes in Ontario and Quebec, blue-colored walleyes are frequently caught, but DNA analysis has repeatedly shown that they are simply a blue color-phased walleye that is missing yellow pigment and not a true blue pike.From your elementary art classes, remember that yellow and blue make green, and without the yellow only the blue color remains.The extinction of blue pike, which for a time comprised about 50 percent of Lake Erie's annual catch, is a tragic example of what can happen in the absence of scientific fish management, pollution and competition from exotic species.Persistent fisheries monitoring leading to sustainable harvest limits by our skilled fisheries managers will likely prevent this from ever happening to another commercial or game fish species under professional management, although Silver and Bighead may fully test their skills after they arrive.