Dave Hall called this week with a question that got my attention.

“How much would a 361/4-inch walleye weigh?” Hall asked.

Hall, 46, said he caught a walleye of precisely that length last week while fishing in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness near Ely, Minn. Some may doubt Hall’s claim because anglers have been known to stretch their stories a tad.

Then, too, you have the problem that Hall, a Cloquet, Minn., resident, who was fishing in a party of nine on an annual BWCAW trip, did not measure the fish with a tape. His friend, Rick Olson, measured the fish using a rope, which he tied a knot in.

“Dave was holding (the fish) in the water,” said Olson, a Cloquet dentist. “I measured it with a piece of rope and checked it three times. Then I gave him the piece of rope.”

Olson, 48, is confident the measurement is correct.

“I’m sure that’s right,” he said. “The length, I know, is right. I would go to my grave saying that’s how long it is.”

“Rick is a dentist. He’s very meticulous,” said Brad Iverson of Cloquet, another member of the party. “I know it’s all of 36 (inches).”

Hall, a Carlton County social worker, caught the fish on a 1/16th-ounce chartreuse jig and a minnow on six-pound test line. He was fishing in a canoe with his 16-year-son, Gene Hall. After a few photos were taken, Hall released the fish.

I’ll let you reach your own conclusion about Hall’s walleye. I have no reason to doubt Hall and his companions. I talked independently with all three anglers named above. Their accounts of the incident are identical. Clearly, they made every effort to document Hall’s catch short of bringing the fish back something none of them wanted to do.

Hall is not claiming that his fish may have been a state record. Angling records in Minnesota and beyond show that 36-inch walleyes are extremely rare. The state record, LeRoy Chiovitte’s 17-pound, 8-ounce walleye caught in 1979 full of spawn, was 35 inches long.

University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks caught Minnesota’s second-largest reported walleye. That fish, caught July 4, 1989, on Loon Lake north of Grand Marais, weighed 17 pounds, 6 ounces. It was 37 inches long, according to a plaque on the mounted fish in Bruininks’ office.

The catch-and-release world-record walleye, according to the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame, was 35 inches long. Actually, three fish of that length are tied for the record, and all were caught in the Columbia River in Oregon.

Do 36-inch walleyes exist in the canoe country?

“It’s very possible,” said Ely angler and author Bob Cary.

“I think they do,” said Ely angler and fishing guide Steve Kleist. “There are certainly some lakes, near Ely or elsewhere, that produce fish of that size. But it’s certainly an abnormality.”

A walleye of that length could weigh anywhere from 12 to 16 pounds, said Mike Berg, owner of Seagull Creek Fishing Camp.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this event is that Hall released the fish with the unanimous approval of his partners, most of whom had kids along.

“What an experience for those kids to see that fish go back in the water,” Iverson said.

Clearly, Hall caught a tremendous walleye. And we can presume it’s still swimming up in the canoe country.