Sauger, Saugeye….Whats the difference????

I am not really sure if i have ever caught a saugeye before but i know they live on the mississippi so i am wondering how you can tell them apart from a sauger or a walleye…and also, are they like a hybrid or what?

They are a hybrid of a walleye and sauger but I cant personally tell you how to recognize them.

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe a saugeye will have both the spots on the dorsal fin of the sauger and the white on the tail of the walleye.

dave

yes, the decrirptions above are true and the most distinctive way to tell is that walleyes have no scales on thier gill plates, saugeyes do just like saugers. Thier coloring resembles more of the sauger than the walleye but you can see the genetic traits of the walleye. I can see the diffrence in them in how saugers and walleyes spread thier gills when caught resembling the spread of the sauger. They have more of a similar color to a sauger then a walleye and they definately have scales on thier gill plates just like a sauger does. I’ve caught them on the Iowa river here in Iowa, stocked by the dnr. They stocked them for thier agressive eating habits similar to saugers compared to the finicky eating habits of walleyes and they do grow big and faster, the ones we caught were from 3 too 8 pounds and lots of others caught them too fishing for walleyes. They are a nice fish to have in the water because of thier fast growth and aggressive feeding hablit plus thier size make it nice. They have the size of a walleye with the feeding habits of a sauger, they are a nice fish. Nice catches of sizable fish per day are fairly common. If you catch a fish that looks more like a sauger and has the weight and size of a walleye, over 6 or 7 pounds its a saugeye or a new worlds record sauger. Thier is some natural reproduction of this fish in the wild by cross spawning and its real effective done in a hatchery. Im not sure if they use a female walleye because of the numbers of eggs they have available to spawn and a male sauger or vice versa, be interisting to know this. Im kinda surprised that they aren’t stocked more than they are, perticulary in lakes that are over populated with lots of small fish. They can’t reproduce so they won’t take over and are a temporary stocking only as not to throw the natural swing of things off. Thier a heck of a gamefish

I believe I caught one on P2 a few weeks ago, it looked like a sauger but had the white tipped tail, the other thing that I noticed was the small lines on its head, it just looked alittle different.I have a picture but its 1.2 meg so I can’t get it on the sight, you can see the spots and the white tail, if you want to see it PM me with your E-mail address and I will send it to you.

Sippi,
If you would like to email the pic to me, I can prob resize it and put it on here if you like. We’d like to see it.
Jack..
[email protected]

those were good descriptions. I have caught them here in iowa i just couldnt explain the difference from memory, though when I do catch one I do know what it is. I remember the first time I had caught one, I had never heard of a saugeye before and couldnt for the life of me decide if I had a walleye or a sauger. I was leaning towards sauger. when i got home I looked up the lake and found that the IDNR had stocked the saugeyes in the lake. And that there were no walleyes or saugers in the lake just saugeyes.

here is a pic of a saugeye I found off the net. A goole search will turn up a lot of info for u.

If you caught one under 15″ would DNR count it as a sauger or walleye ??

now that is a good question!…dont know…

Well along the mississipi in Iowa I believe we can keep any size. When talking about the possesion of walleye, sauger and saugeye the only length limit mentioned in the regs is for the walleye. To me this means no length limit on saugeye. This is Iowa law I dont know how some of the other states read.

here is what a sauger(s) look like

Looks like someone is about to go fishing for Pike.

i think my dad got a saugeye the other night while we were fishing for bass.. He got it on a plastic worm.Looked just like a sauger, but it had some white on the tail…I am sure we have caught these plenty of times, just never really observing them enough to notice the difference between them and saugers..

You are correct about being able to keep saugeyes under 15″ as they are considered saugers by the DNR here in Iowa but be very careful. I had a fisheries biologist show me a few ways to tell the difference between a walleye, sauger and saugeye. A true saugeye will have scaled cheeks like a sauger where as a walleye has smooth cheeks. This obviously was not taught to the conservation officers in the field because I had one tell me they have been instructed to treat any fish with even a tiny spot of white on the tail as walleye. Sometime it is difficult to distinguish the cream color on the tail of a sauger from the white on the tail of a walleye. I was also told that not all saugeyes look the same. I have also witnessed this. Some will look more like a walleye and some look more like a sauger. I have caught several over the years. Most of the larger ones have the body size and coloring of a walleye with the markings of a sauger. This past early spring we were fishing up at Guttenberg and one of the guys in my boat caught a saugeye that was green like a walleye. It had both the spots on the dorsal fin like a sauger and the black spot like a walleye. It had scales on the cheeks and it was obvious that it was a saugeye. The fish was just under 15″. The DNR guy doing the creel count made my friend put the fish back in the water claiming that it was a short walleye because there was a tiny spot of white on the bottom of the tail. Just be careful because what may be obvious to you might not be so obvious to the DNR.