Early on July 10, Ethan Bear and his two pals Connor Dahl and Drew Kramlich were already on the water. The three young anglers had trailered their 19-foot Ranger boat to an unnamed eastern North Dakota lake.
Bear, a 21-year-old from Jamestown, North Dakota, was using forward-facing sonar to locate the big walleye they were targeting that day.
“We started catching some nice fish in a little shallower water,” Bear told Wired2fish. “We were using 3/8-ounce Northland jigs, each rigged with a nose-hooked single long nightcrawler worm.”
A Banner Day Begins
The anglers “looked” for big walleyes on sonar before casting to them, and were into lunker fish through the morning.
“By noon, we’d caught seven good ones weighing six to nine pounds,” said Bear, a wind tower technician. “The smallest was 26 inches long, and we released them all.”
When the walleyes moved deeper with the rising sun, the anglers began using sonar to check depths to 20 feet.
“They were down tight to bottom,” Bear said. “I was running the boat and saw a good fish on sonar on top of a ridge 15 feet deep surrounded by 25 feet of water. I was using a green jig with a six-inch nightcrawler, cast to the fish, and it hit.”
Reeling in a Rarity
Bear set the hook and battled the walleye to their boat. A video shows him bringing in the walleye, which flashed a bright gold hue — not the usual olive green of most walleyes.
There was an instant celebration as one of Bear’s buddies netted the fish and they all realized when an ultra-rare walleye it was. The 27-inch fat and healthy fish was estimated to weigh about six pounds.
The golden fish is believed to have had a rare scale mutation known as xanthism. Every year, anglers catch a few bass, crappies, and even trout that have xanthism, which biologists consider a “one in a million” genetic oddity. For walleyes, however, it seems like an even rarer occurrence — “one in a billion,” according to some authorities, as well as veteran anglers and walleye guides alike.
The Walleye Returns to the Water
Bear and his pals knew how rare the fish was. And, for a time, Bear briefly considered keeping it for a mount. But he released it, as a video shows Bear returning the spunky golden walleye back to its lake.
“We release our big walleyes to maintain our good fishing lakes,” he said. The trio of young walleye anglers continued fishing that day after landing the golden walleye, releasing five other big walleyes.
A taxidermist will make a replica mount of the golden walleye so Bear can hang it on his living room wall to remember his “one in a billion” catch.
“We’ve fished that lake a good bit over the years: No one I know has ever heard of a golden walleye there or anywhere else,” Bear said. “We’ll be going back soon to fish that lake again, and I like knowing that golden walleye is still swimming there.”
