Last month after a long (and successful) day on the water, I had one of those conversations that started simple and ended with me questioning everything I thought I knew about Walleye. A fellow angler was cleaning his catch and the topic of Y bones came up. As he worked, he mentioned that he didn't keep Pike - slimy, too difficult to clean and not as tasty as walleye.
"The Y bones are way smaller in walleye," he said, tossing the strips into his scrap bucket. "That's why they're so much easier than pike."
I was a bit surprised - I had always thought they were pin bones, not Y bones. But we could certainly agree Walleye were the superior fish; everyone knows northern pike are a nightmare to clean with their maze of Y bones buried deep in the meat.
Walleye? You zip out that one line of pin bones and you're golden.
Still, something nagged at me about calling them the same thing.
What Science Actually Says
After diving into actual fish anatomy research (yeah, I went that deep), walleye don't have Y bones at all. Or pin bones, as it turns out. Not small ones, not modified ones - no bones in the meat at all.
Those bones you're zipping out along the mudline are actually ribs - specifically, epipleural ribs. They're basically modified dorsal ribs that extend toward the lateral line area. True Y bones - or intermuscular bones if you want to get technical - only exist in more primitive fish like carp, trout, and yes, those slimy northern pike we all love to hate.
The whole order of fish that walleye belong to (Perciformes, which includes Yellow Perch) evolved past needing these extra bones. They developed better ways to swim efficiently without all that internal scaffolding cluttering up their muscle tissue.
Why Walleye Are Just Better Fish
This isn't just academic fish nerd stuff - it explains why walleye are objectively the best eating freshwater fish. While pike are stuck with an ancient skeletal system that makes them a pain to process, walleye streamlined their bones millions of years ago.
The result? Cleaner meat, easier filleting, and that perfect flaky texture that makes walleye the gold standard. Pike might fight harder, but they're basically swimming around with outdated hardware.
Those epipleural ribs in walleye sit right along the natural division between upper and lower muscle groups. When you make your cuts and zip, you're following an anatomical highway that lets you remove them cleanly - it's actually satisfying.
Pike's Y bones branch out through the meat like a road system designed by someone who hates GPS and loves the feeling of bones in their throat.
The Practical Side
Here's what this means for your fish cleaning: keep doing the zipper technique.
You're dealing with a completely different bone structure than pike. The ribs get more noticeable in bigger walleye - anything over 16 inches will have them, and they're really pronounced in those 24-inch plus slabs.
The technique works so well because these ribs naturally separate along tissue lines. That satisfying unzipping sound? That's connective tissue releasing in sequence as you pull.
Try the same thing on a pike - where the bones are actually in the meat - and you'll just end up frustrated with chunks of meat stuck to scattered bone fragments.
The next time someone tells you walleye have Y bones too, you can set them straight. They're dealing with completely different equipment - just more proof that walleye figured out how to be perfect fish while pike are still messing around with Stone Age architecture.
Now get out there and catch some before winter hits.
Walleye are still the finest fish that swims in Canadian waters, after all.
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