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Fished Boyd Thursday 11-16, I caught what looks like a saugeye.
It has the transparent dorsal fin with some black spots, it has the lighter color and the dark splotches not the vertical bars and a smaller white tip on the tail. Caught 2 vertical jigging twister tails in 25 f.o.w.
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Nice going Chuck, were you tipping your jig with anything other than the twister tail?
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A lot of the eyes I get around here look to me to have some sauger influence in their genes, the smaller they are the more distinct the color and it darkens with stress. I've noticed that stress reactions creates excellent camouflage.
Almost all the big, old eyes I've caught look more like pure walleye, the males and females can look different too. I think small/medium walleye can look like a saugeye when stressed, more obvious in cold water. .
The bars on the tail and spots are probably more or pronounced depending on the gene ratio or something, just guessing though.
I don't like the sauger influence, I think they're pushing the real walleye out by breeding with them, at the same time walleye don't get stocked often because they're the most expensive to raise.
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Glad to see you found the Colo board, that was why I was asking you if you fished Boyd lake on the Ice fishing board. I saw you were from Longmont, so I thought you might fish Boyd.
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I got a lot of tips here when I was new to ice fishing so I'll try to add what I can in gratitude.
Boyd's all I've fished recently, never do quite as good as I'd like. Its a little low right now with a mix of hunters, fisherman and speed boats, even saw a fan boat that sounded like a jet. All that going on along with cold water didn't amount to great fishing but it was entertaining. Heard they recently stocked it with some trout, should be easy pickings for them.
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I didn’t know that the smaller eyes would look more like a saugeye, I’ve only known walleye. This is the first place I’ve fished with saugeye in the system so I really don’t know. I’m hoping that school of fish will stay around that same area ice fishing. It’s not too far of a walk either.
Talk to you later.
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Don't know exactly what it is , probably a mix of things. I'm never sure with those. Sometimes I think its like a trout from deeper water thats more silvery or more colorful from shallow, maybe a camouflage thing and or breed mixing. Have to ask an old DOW guy if I ever get a chance, maybe its just a stocking thing, like why it seems like they only stock cutbows now.
Usually identifying the females/males is all I care about.
Not sure how successfully they breed in boyd if at all or about the other places around but I suspect most of the eggs never hatch for a lot of reasons.
Nice catch by the way! Definitely looking forward to my first iced eye there, tried hard last year but had too many pesky trout. Thats why Lonetree was special, you had the chance to learn how to catch them without trout getting in the way.
I'd encourage people to ice fish lake loveland instead. Those fish don't belong to the people living on the lake, even if they act like they do.
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Thanks, I’ve never fished lake Loveland, I seen a couple people last year ice fishing it, and the inlet gets hit pretty hard. With the way this winter is going Boyd might not freeze up safe. It’s had ice a couple times but just gets too warm during the day. Maybe after this storm it will get colder and get a cap on it.
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