Real or Fake?

With the memories of below zero (F) temperatures, 12 inch snowfalls, and 6 ft snow drifts quickly fading away, so go the stories of winter. But not before a few of us sneak in a couple more.

My friend and colleague who caught his “Fish of a Lifetime” last summer sent me this video of an 18 lb walleye being pulled out of an ice hole in Manitoba.

View the video on YouTube if you don’t see the embedded video below.

Is it just me or does that walleye look fake? I have several problems with this video:

• The walleye is stiff as a board.
• It never twitches. It’s fins don’t move, it’s gill plates don’t move, and it’s dorsal fins didn’t fold down even when coming out of the hole.
• The color of it’s chin didn’t look right.
• It’s eyes look too.. human.
• It took almost no effort to lift the fish out of the hole and carry it away. Eighteen pounds is not light. He lifted it like it weighed less than 5 lbs.

Shortly after seeing this video, I saw a picture of Ron Schara of Minnesota Bound with a nice walleye that he caught. The coloration of it was similar to that in the video above. I began to doubt my skepticism. That is, I became less sure the video was a fake.

So I’m conducting an informal poll. What do you think? Was the walleye pulled out of the hole real or fake? Leave a comment with your thoughts.

Maybe someone should call the Mythbusters.