Gender of the kept Walleye in 45-50 cm slot.

[Andrzej]

Fishing three consecutive days on the Lake with one walleye daily retention limit in a slot of 45-50 cm I've noticed that from three keepers two of those fish were males.

I don't recall reading statistics regarding the gender of those kept fish.
If 66% of fish kept are indeed males then there is much less harm to the breeding Walleye population as presented in most studies.

It would be interesting to have a yearly gender harvest report on those keepers.

I would volunteer my findings.

It could be collected on Alberta Relm as it is already mandatory reporting harvest of large game animals.

[aulrich]

You probably don't need a survey.

I don't know what size would apply to walleye. But as I understand it, with pike under 4-5 lbs the gender split is basically 50/50 at 7lbs it 70/30 female/male and between 7-10 lb it goes 100% female

When I am keeping pike for food I have a personal slot limit of 63-81 cm or 25-32 inches. Big enough to get a decent fillet but leaving the prime breeders as much as possible.

Let us pretend a 30" walleye = 40" in pike to keep the math easy and we will have to assume the relative growth curve is about the same so my personal slot limit in theory for walleye is 47-61 cm or 18.75 - 24 inches.

I would not be surprised with the 45-50cm slot the gender split would be somewhere between 50/50 and 60/40 female/male

I am not a Bio it's just my personal rule I made up after some google searches so take it for what it is.

[bucksman]

I am also not a biologist but as I understand it walleye take a lot longer to mature than other fish and the slot size at any given lake was so that you are retaining male fish rather than females

[bucksman]

looks like aulrich is right

[aulrich]

I am pretty sure that chart or one very like it was what I had based my personal slot limit on.

[DiabeticKripple]

you cannot make a determination off a sample size of 3.

[Andrzej]

Originally Posted by DiabeticKripple

you cannot make a determination off a sample size of 3.

That's why I've suggested that:

"It would be interesting to have a yearly gender harvest report on those keepers" from most anglers.

[cube]

Originally Posted by Andrzej

Fishing three consecutive days on the Lake with one walleye daily retention limit in a slot of 45-50 cm I've noticed that from three keepers two of those fish were males.

I don't recall reading statistics regarding the gender of those kept fish.
If 66% of fish kept are indeed males then there is much less harm to the breeding Walleye population as presented in most studies.

It would be interesting to have a yearly gender harvest report on those keepers.

I would volunteer my findings.

It could be collected on Alberta Relm as it is already mandatory reporting harvest of large game animals.

It would of course depend on the lake at that time frame. Example Pigeon lake the last few years has lots of fish in the low 50's and a large number in the 43-50. Given the larger fish that are sexually mature are female most of the 50+ fish are female and most of the 43-50's are male. I have had tags for both sizes in our group for a number of years now and that is exactly as it has worked out.
Now if your on a lake with much larger sized fish then the females would be in the 60's and the males would be in the 50's. They would still all be A tag size.

I believe lots of people on here don't understand fish breeding. They are not like deer where one male can successfully fertilize all the eggs from a herd.
Our Fish are broadcast spawners and it takes multiple males per female to get reasonable fertilization rates. Esp from the large females with 100K eggs. So you don't really want heavily skewed sex ratios. And yes our tag system does exactly that.

[EZM]

To accurately sex a walleye (without opening it up) is not easy for most people outside of the spring spawning season. In the spring you can see the "slit" on a female versus the "round doughnut" on the male (not sure if this is a great description).

I'm thinking it's because this time of year they more actively using their reproductive organs and they are "swollen" so it's easier to do this time of year with significantly better accuracy and reliability.

In late summer, fall and winter, I have to say it can be pretty tough, and even a trained biologist can make some errors in sexing a fish visually.

[Andrzej]

I've got another 47 cm keeper this weekend. It was male.
So now it is 75% males and 25% females