Any angler who has one in possession, dead or alive, could solve the mystery by contacting the Fish and Wildlife Service at (716) 691-5496.

If you happen to have a taxidermy mount of a blue pike in your attic, please dig it up and give the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service a call. Its scientists would like to take some DNA samples in an effort to save an extinct species.

Blue pike is a sub-species of the walleye., it was pursued intensely by commercial and sport fishers, who together landed a billion pounds of the fish between 1885 and 1962. At times, the blue pike made up more than 50 percent of the commercial catch in Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

The population crashed in 1958, but the species lingered on until it was officially declared extinct in 1975.

In 1996, the Fish and Wildlife Service's Great Lakes Fishery Resources Office in Buffalo suggested the blue pike's obituary may have been written prematurely.

Canadian anglers had sent federal researchers two specimens, which, superficially at least, resembled blue pike. One was a whole fish that had been kept in a freezer for 25 years. It was said to have been caught in the province of Ontario. The other was the head and skeleton of a fish caught in a Quebec lake nine years ago.

Federal scientists took DNA samples from both specimens, hoping the genetic material could be identified as that of a blue pike. Such a discovery would justify a renewed search for the species in Canadian lakes where it was not previously known to exist.

According to an Associated press report , Betsy Trometer, a fishery biologist with the Great Lakes unit, said all of the DNA scrapings from the frozen fish "either exactly matched walleye DNA or were so close to it that we can't conclusively say there's a difference."

For more information on The Endangered Species Act or other articles about Blue Pike and DNA