‘Once in a lifetime’ catch: Virginia fisherman reels in rare blue-mouthed mutation

CAROLINE COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — After fishing in the same private pond in Caroline County for 20 years, this fisherman reeled in a catch he never would have expected.

John Byrd, of Bowling Green, had caught a rare 11-and-a-half-inch blue-mouth chain pickerel.

Byrd contacted a Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources regional fisheries biologist and was told that the fish had a “wild genetic pigment mutation” and that the catch “pretty much falls into the one-in-a-lifetime category of catches” but was otherwise normal.

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