Thread: has anyone seen this before?

here is my thinking on it... from time to time there is fish that come out blue for example if you google any blue walleye reports you will find that its not the old blue walleyes that are extinct but just some sort of either genetic mess up or some sort of color varient...i researched and found out that this happens also in yelow perch and crapppie but it is very rare.. her is an article i found on blue waleye that has a paragraph expalining how it happens kind of..Fish have bodies in their skins called chromatophores which carry pigments of different colors. These chromatophores expand and contract, much like the pupil in an eye, as the fish encounters backgrounds of different colors. This allows many species to change color in just 20-30 minutes.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_walleye

i catch a lot of purple ones out of a private pond

Originally Posted by john h

here is my thinking on it... from time to time there is fish that come out blue for example if you google any blue walleye reports you will find that its not the old blue walleyes that are extinct but just some sort of either genetic mess up or some sort of color varient...i researched and found out that this happens also in yelow perch and crapppie but it is very rare.. her is an article i found on blue waleye that has a paragraph expalining how it happens kind of..Fish have bodies in their skins called chromatophores which carry pigments of different colors. These chromatophores expand and contract, much like the pupil in an eye, as the fish encounters backgrounds of different colors. This allows many species to change color in just 20-30 minutes.



Blue walleye - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

that was my first idea too. when i vaught it i thought about the blue walleyes.

Looks normal to me, I've caught them blue looking just like that from one coast to the other.

That's a very pretty blue colored fish!! Usually the Gills I catch have the blue color along their bottom jaw/throat region as well as the lower gill plate margin with the rest of the fish various shades of dark olive green on back blending to olive green, gray, copper, orange, purple, or brown on the sides. Usually males have an orange or red belly with females a yellow or yellowish gold belly with 5-9 vertical bars on the sides which fade with age and a dark round gill spot. Like Shellquacker made reference to, water with pigments or tannins staining the water can make for unusual and beautiful color variations in different fish species.

Oddly enough, the gills are not as blue as the ones I generally catch.

I see some color variation in the ones I catch, but I can honestly say I have never seen one where the whole fish was blue like that.

Oscar

Possibly a spawing bluegill? I know last month on Lake Vermilion, off my grandparents dock, we were catching all kinds of Gill's that were very bold colors ranging from orange to bluew to purple like that. They were spawning.

pretty...