CAROLINE COUNTY, Va. -- After years of fishing, John Byrd recently caught something he'd never seen before.
A bright blue fish!
"I’d never seen one that color! And I’ve been fishing in that pond for more than 20 years!” the Bowling Green man told the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources.
After Byrd caught the 11 ½-inch blue chain pickerel in a private Caroline County pond, he called the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources to report his catch.
"The coloration expressed by the blue pickerel is extremely rare,” Scott Herrmann, a Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) regional fisheries biologist, said in a DWR blog post. "It pretty much falls into the one-in-a-lifetime category of catches. The normal coloration expressed in the green of a chain pickerel is from the xanthins of the yellow pigments. Blue pickerel express the rare mutation that is axanthic.”
Herrmann said the fish had a “wild genetic pigment mutation” but was otherwise normal.
Byrd kept the fish and plans to get it mounted for display at his home.
"Reaction has been great," Byrd said. "A lot of people have never seen or heard of a pickerel that color so they are amazed at it. I'm still in awe that I caught a fish so rare!"
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