... and it gets REALLY confusing when you throw "sauger" into the discussion.

I remember the time when a guy from northern Ontario arrived at my buddy's outfitting shop in an old station wagon, kicking up a lot of dust in the parking lot.  He rushes into where a few of us were standing around, BS-ing and drinking beer.  The dude had just returned from a trip into the interior of Quetico and was returning a canoe.  He obviously had something to say, so we stopped our discussion to listen.  The big news?  He declares he had caught sauger on Alice Lake.  From that point forward, however, the conversation, which included both Americans and other Canadians, got very confusing....

"You mean you caught walleye?"

"No, t'was sauger, I swear!"

"It wasn't just a pickerel with spots on the fins, eh?"

"Or maybe a walleye with spots on it fins?", says yet another guy.

"That makes it a sauger, naturally!"

"Ain't no sauger on Alice, just pickerel!", asserts a local guy.

"That can't be right", says a friend of mine (who should have stayed out of it).  "I caught both walleye and pike there!"

"You mean pickerel, we're not talking about pike!"

"Well ain't a pickerel a small pike?"

"Not if it's a walleye."

"Or a sauger..."
***********************

Anyway, that pointless conversation went round and round.  My head was spinning so much that I never did figure out what, exactly, that guy actually caught.  You get the drift... a Canadian version of Abbott & Costello's "Who's On First?"

Hey, a walleye, by another other name, still tastes as good... even if it's really a sauger or a pickerel.

Jimbo   8-)