Walleye

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More names for this animal

Anishinaabemowin: Ogaa

Dakota: Howaḳaŋ (fish)

The Dakota and Anishinaabe were among the earliest people to name Minnesota’s plants and animals, as well as to understand them in relation to Minnesota’s climate and seasons. Those original names are still in use, and several are included on the Season Watch website.

Latin (or scientific name): Sander vitreus

The scientific community has a convention of assigning agreed-upon Latin names to every kind of organism. Using scientific names helps people communicate confidently about the same organism and organize lifeforms based on how closely related they are.

More common names: Susquehanna salmon, yellow pike, pickerel

Page contents

About the walleye

Visual guide to phenology

More resources

Two walleye fish above a pebbly ground. Their bodies are mottled black and yellowish brown. Their tail and pectoral fins have white tips.
Walleye
May 4, 2004, no location information
Photo by Eric Engbretson / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

About the walleye

  • The easiest way to identify a walleye is by looking for the white spot at the tip of its tail fin. The walleye is the largest fish in the perch family and averages one to two pounds in weight.
  • Walleyes live in lakes with sandy, gravelly, or rocky bottoms and water with moderate movement or turbidity.
  • They can live up to twenty years and live longest in cooler water (65 to 70 °F, or 18 to 21 °C).
  • The breeding, spawning, and hatching behaviors of walleye are highly dependent on water temperature. This means that success and survival rates for fry (recently hatched fish) varies greatly from year to year.
  • The walleye is the state fish of Minnesota and is named for its reflective eyes.
  • Fun fact: The largest walleye ever caught in Minnesota weighed seventeen pounds, eight ounces. It was caught in 1979.

Visual guide to phenology

Watch for walleyes' presence (or absence) and behaviors at different times of year.

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Note to observers

This page explains general clues to watch and listen for when observing walleye phenology. However, this page does not explain how to identify this animal or collect data in a standardized way.

Photo of a frozen lake with a green ice fishing shed. Snow in the foreground had tire tracks and two vehicles are parked near the shed.
Photo taken with a microscope showing about fifty walleye eggs. Each egg is roughly spherical, transparent pale yellow, and has two black spots.
Photo taken with a microscope of a larval walleye. Its pale yellow body is thin with a large belly. It has a large black eye.
Walleye minnow that is only about eight centimeters long. Its body is pale brown and mottled. It has a large eye.
In the cobalt-blue water swim a chaotic school of small fish, over one hundred in number. In this light, the fish appear silvery-blue in color.
A large, dark fish with a white tip on its tail swims near the water's surface. The water reflects the blue sky.
Close-up photo of a walleye's open mouth with several small, pointy white teeth.

More resources

Walleye (Sander vitreus) in the Minnesota Biodiversity Atlas

 

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Times of year

Co-author: Audrey Negro, Minnesota Master Naturalist