A Fish For All Seasons

Ever wish for a fish you could catch limits of all year long? Fish that still bite, following cold fronts in water barely above freezing? A fish that will hit jigs with abandon in streams with high muddy spring runoff, more suitable for plowing than fishing? A fish whose snow white fillets boast culinary attributes somewhere between yellow perch and walleye? If you think I’m talking about sauger, you’re close. Your wishes have been answered by state wildlife agencies stocking saugeye.

The saugeye is a hybrid created by crossing a female walleye with a male sauger. Saugeye are easy to visually identify most of the time. They have a brown background with darker saddle-shaped markings like a sauger, and a white tip on the lower margin of the tail fin like a walleye. Saugeye have a black blotch in the last membrane of the spinous dorsal fin; sauger do not. Saugeye have a continuous black blotch on the membranes of the spinous dorsal fin, while sauger have rows of distinct black dots.

Numerous states are stocking saugeye because they survive and grow rapidly where past stockings of walleye fingerlings produced poor survival or inconsistent results. While this hybrid can theoretically be present in the wild from natural spawning, its occurrence is considered somewhat rare. The eggs from walleye females and the sperm from sauger males are collected from wild fish. When the fry hatch, they are placed in hatchery ponds where they grow to fingerling size before stocking.

Some states, such as Ohio, have invested time and money into cooperative research with universities like Ohio State to improve hatchery production and fingerling survival after stocking. Two of the main areas researched were the proper amount and timing of pond fertilization for plankton production (saugeye fry feed on various zooplankton) and the timing of the gizzard shad fry hatch in reservoirs. Saugeye stocked as fingerlings require newly hatched shad fry to eat for increased survival and rapid growth.

Many states, including Ohio, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Iowa, and Illinois, are researching the stocking potential of saugeye. Saugeye stocking strategies are in their infancy, with most states starting at 50 fingerlings per acre of water. Ohio has reaped the benefits of the successful production research and has produced as many as 11,000,000 fingerlings (not fry) in a single year. Ohio stocks fingerlings at a rate of 100 to 300 per acre, depending on the ratio of acres of watershed to acres of reservoir. Reservoirs with higher flushing rates are stocked with a greater number of fingerlings.

Two study lakes in Ohio receive 600 fingerlings per acre, and fish collected in fall are given Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tags. Fish are monitored through angler creel surveys and via electrofishing to determine their movement above and below dams. Monitoring helps calculate the population levels of young saugeye in the fishery and indicates when significant numbers are leaving the lake where they were initially stocked. Lakes with high flushing rates are stocked more heavily and typically are more popular as tailwater fisheries.

The main area for caution in this hybrid stocking program is its potential to affect naturally reproducing stocks of walleye and sauger. The saugeye is not a sterile hybrid and is therefore capable of producing offspring with either parent stock. While the jury is still out as to what extent this can happen in the wild, precautions are being taken not to stock reservoirs that drain into a Great Lakes basin, and not to stock rivers with naturally reproducing walleye and sauger populations. Saugeye spawning with a parent species could weaken genetic integrity and reduce odds for future survival.