TJ -- you are on-target except for limited reproductive ability. The hybrid (saugeye) is fertile, will back-cross with both parents, and will produce an F2 generation. That's what really stopped the momentum for them for sport fishing. For a while, I was hoping that someone was going to get into triploid saugeye to avoid the reproduction issue, but haven't heard anything about that lately.

The states of Ohio and Oklahoma really had some spectacular saugeye fisheries going in places where the walleye populations had been poor (turbid, high flow through). Other Midwestern states were interested and used them a little, but then the concern over the saugeyes getting into native walleye and sauger populations arose, and most states backed off on saugeyes. We used them up at Richmond Lake (880 impoundment) in SD, and really created a super black crappie fishery in a lake in which the crappies had been stunted for years (decades). We compared saugeye and walleye in a 22-acre pond near Brookings, and really saw no difference between them in this good habitat. However, it was really cool when my son caught that 30-inch saugeye last summer out there! \:\) As Cecil indicated on the other thread, we really don't expect reproduction by saugeye or walleye in ponds. However, the walleyes in one gravel pit north of town here do have a little trickle of natural recruitment. Every time we electrofish in the fall, we always got just a few age-0 fish that came from natural spawning.

Bill and Cecil -- I thought some of the early work on saugeye showed that they were easier to intensive culture than the walleye? Same thing with the tiger musky vs. the northern pike or muskellunge?

I checked with Mike Brown, our culture guy, and he wondered if Held had been using the new Otohime diet or something similar? Mike said his LMB really like it in his tank experiments. I think Otohime is the next generation of the Biokyowa diet, and that diet sure helped some of the intensive culture efforts.

We still end up at the same place. What would be the brood source for pure sauger and pure walleye for production of the hybrids?


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From Bob Lusk: Dr. Dave Willis passed away January 13, 2014. He continues to be a key part of our Pond Boss family...and always will be.