Dead Walleye

I was out on pool 12 yesterday morning in the cold. There I found a 17-18 inch walleye floating dead by the boat dock. It didn’t look like it was dead long (it wasn’t white or bloated) so I picked it up for a look. He was missing his left eye and had about a 10 inch shad in its mouth. Looked like he bit off more than he could chew, but what happened to his eye? I was curious if anyone had seen anything like this or might have a guess at what happened.

Thanks
Mr. Twister

Eyeballs are the first thing a bird will peck off of a floater.

The missing eyeball was on the down side – that is part of what made me wonder what happened. Maybe he just spun over when a bird was working on him? Why not eat the one on the other side?

Curious,
Twisted

I am with Jon, as soon as that fish came to the surface a bird got the eyeball. He may have been able to dive again a couple more times to avoid the bird, but then died.

I see it all the time. I released a fish on Erie last week and about 50 yards behind the boat it came back up. Before we could get to it, the birds had the eyes gone.

Do you think it choked on the shad to cause it to die?

The old saying is that you leave in at least one eye so the meal will See you through the week.

have caught a walleye or sauger in the past whom were missing a eye. never seen any other scares, thought maybe sometimes when they miss your hook set they get caught in the eye. more so with crankbaits. i would assume then if bad they would also lose a eye socket??????????????

Yes, that huge shad killed it. I am sure it was stuck 1/2 way in, couldn’t get it down, couldn’t get it back up. It is more common with big pike, but I saw in on LOTW before with a 9 lb walleye and a 15 inch sauger. The Walleye actually lived after we removed the sauger.