Underwater Book Club: Walleye Edition

A man hailing from Wisconsin has written a book about walleye, which, well, seems about right.

It’s natural to assume it’s a noir thriller about a streetwise walleye detective who, after taking on a beautiful Bluegill with a dark secret as a client, gets caught up in a series of double-crosses that lead him deeper and deeper into the lake and a showdown with the mysterious head of a Northern Pike crime syndicate. Alas, in news that will likely make you exhale deeply and do that thing where you rub the bridge of your nose, the book is actually about the challenges the delicious species faces due to its popularity as well as climate change, pollution, invasive species and habitat loss.

The author, Paul Radomski, was born in Stevens Point, grew up in Plover, and studied at UW-Stevens Point, where he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in fisheries and limnology. His career has been spent as a fisheries biologist and lake ecology scientist in Minnesota.

We’d prefer all the bad stuff that happened to Wisconsin were in the pages of a hardboiled crime novel, but they do face real challenges. The good guy in detective stories always comes out on top when the chips are down. Here’s hoping the same thing goes for walleye.