I pulled a couple Walleye from deep water and when I was going to release them – I was told that they wouldn’t survive – why is that?

The first reason that walleye will not survive upon release is if the hook was ingested into the bladder. After the puncturing of the bladder and releasing the fish back into deeper waters will result in their bladder expanding in deeper waters causing death. For this reason, you should never release a walleye back into the deep water if they have swallowed the hook. To prevent them from swallowing the hook, you can use a circle hook, which hooks on the side of the mouth.

If they do ingest the hook, you should clip it right outside the mouth, but do not try to pull the hook out. They have a better chance of surviving with the hook intact then if you try to remove it from farther down the throat. If you see any type of bleeding, you should not return the fish to the water. Even if hook the fish in swallow waters and the hook punctures the bladder, you should not release them back, they will swim to deeper waters and then die.

In addition, if you pull walleye out of deep waters very rapidly, they are surly going to die and releasing them into the water will find them floating belly up. It is the same as a diver coming up to fast from deeper waters without regulating the breathing, there lungs can expand and they die if proper care is not taken to come up slowly. People are put into a decompression chamber to correct this problem, but not the walleye. You need to take proper care when fishing for walleye in deep waters if you plan to release them after the catch.