The Fish That Swam A Crooked Mile – Part 2

Earlier this year I remember a post and a pic of a walleye with a crooked tail. I caught a relative on Friday in Pool 2. This fish was 12″ long as viewed and close to 13″ if it were stretched out.

Dino

Wasn’t there something in the trout population awhile back called the whirling desease? Do you suppose it could jump species?

James caught a bigger version earlier this year. I suspect somethings fishy here.

Got one last summer like that. He was about 25 inches if I remember correctly. I have a picture of it somewhere. I will try to find it and post it.

Gator Hunter

cool pic! thanks for sharing

I caught several fish like that on the Mississippi many years ago. I had the same thoughts but after filleting a couple and finding that the backbone appeared to have been broken and then healed, I dismissed it as prop injury. Maybe a barge or outboard dinged the fish as a very young fish… That opinion and a buck gets you coffee at Rufus, Oregon.

dan

Snowing(very rare!) out in Oregon land where the walleyes grow bigger and nobody fishes for them.

Lake Osakis has a lot of those things. I’ve caught probably a half dozen that had weird things going on with their tails. Don’t know what causes it, but I just wonder if maybe they pulled a muscle on the way up. If they’re at the ‘eater’ mark, maybe someone told them that a tail curl would keep them from going into the live well.

Hey Dan, I was thinking something to that affect(prop injury ) but upon close examination (those are my hands holding the fish) I could not find any real signs of a scar that would most surely accompany a injury such as that Other than the bent tail the fish looked very healthy

From the Oregonian (oregon’s biggest newspaper kinda like the DM R&T)

An unusually large number of fish with kinked spines, fused vertebrae and other deformities first gained notice in 1992 in a stretch of the Willamette River near Portland. And for the past 10 years, state agencies have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars searching without success for the pollutants or other agents that might be to blame.

Here is the link>

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/front_page/1074084929175221.xml

dan
Out in Oregon land where the walleyes grow bigger and nobody fishes for them.

Thanks Dan(or) thats a great story . It certainly could be the same type of problem . We will just have to keep fishing and continue to look for more of them, hopefully tomorrow. Whatever the problem is it didnt seem to affect his appetite any , he jumped all over that DOO. Thanks for the great linK.

ROSCOE

The Crooked Ruler to Measure the Crooked Fish!

I gotta get me one of those Hey john the rivers open and the ramp is negotiable

Quote:

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I gotta get me one of those Hey john the rivers open and the ramp is negotiable

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…and the boat is ready!! Got a Ice Fishing gig this Saturday. May have to hit it Sunday.

J.

Maybe someone suggested this cause….but I believe a lot of these “deformaties” are the result of electrofishing. When these fish get to close to the electrodes, they get a pretty good jolt and it can break their backbones. It doesn’t kill em, but causes these deformaties.

I’ve seen it in trout streams as well. The trout will have burn marks or else this “crooked back” syndrome. That is caused by the fish touching the handheld electrode.