Sturgeon spearing closes on upriver lakes;

[Showme]

WINNEBAGO COUNTY, Wis. (WLUK) -- The sturgeon spearing season on lakes Poygan, Winneconne and Butte des Morts is over after four days.

With 11 adult females speared on those three lakes Tuesday, spearers hit the 100 percent harvest cap, which triggers an immediate closure of the season.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources sturgeon biologist Ryan Koenigs says the decision on closing the season "came down to the wire." If between two and ten adult females had been speared, the season would have extended another day on the upriver lakes.
"At 1:50 (p.m.), we were still sitting on 10 adult females, but the 11th adult female was registered at Critter’s at 1:55 resulting in a complete season closure," Koenigs said in a news release.
The final number of sturgeon speared on the upriver lakes was 297, two more than in the 2017 season.
7-FOOT STURGEON


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[WessV]

I saw a guy spearing pike through the ice in Michigan once. It was cool. He said he used to go to "black lake" up in Cananda and would trade room and board for the sturgeon eggs of the ones he speared. The cosest I ever got to it was suckers in the creek and frogs.

[stormcloud]

Showme, not familiar with that method of collecting fish, could you tell us a little about it and do they just catch them for
the eggs?

[Showme]

Totally radical, they set up ice houses with wide cut outs in the floor, sit there with there spear and wait for a STURGEON to swim by then the spear it. Look up STURGEON

spearing on youtube. They cannot sell the eggs.

I'm also addicted to snagging for spoonbill....if you haven't these needed to be added to the bucket list.

[stormcloud]

Watched about an hour of them. Never knew that season existed. Never get too old to learn. Enjoyed. What is used for
the decoy ?

[Showme]

Well you're diving into another couple hours on utube. Decoys for fishing go way back and worked so well they been banned at times....one early carved sturgeon decoy ended up in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.


apparently, sturgeon are curious creatures. That is the only thing that explains all the oddities—toilet seats, disco balls, and copper gelatin molds, for example—used as decoys. It is more like coaxing sturgeon to come see what this weird thing is; it definitely is not baiting. Sturgeon feed on the bottom and aren’t looking upward for food. Their diet is mostly insects, larvae, small crustaceans, and clams.*

“I was working at a check-in station with the DNR one year and a guy speared a really nice one,” shared Schmidt. “While we were getting the measurements he said, ‘Want to see how I got it?’ and I said, ‘Sure.’ Then he holds up two Barbie dolls duct taped together, back-to-back.”


One good option would be a hand-carved, basswood sturgeon decoy by George Schmidt of Appleton, Wisconsin. He has been carving decoys (duck decoys, sturgeon decoys, and more) since 1955. He started numbering and signing them in 1980, and he is up to 1,049 now. They cost about $60, depending on the size.
Collectors have been purchasing them in good number. “A lot of my decoys don’t go in the water anymore,” said the retired compressor worker. Schmidt traveled all over the world repairing oil-rig pipes, the type used in oceans as well as the Alaskan pipeline. Now he stays close to home and makes decoys.

nidentified, Sturgeon Decoy, 20th century, painted wood with metal, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson, 1986.65.57

https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/sturgeon-decoy-31561








Luce Center Label
Carved fish decoys are one of the earliest forms of American folk art. Hunters around the Bering Sea first used small bone or ivory decoys for ice fishing around 1000 AD. They believed that the decoys embodied the innua, or inner spirit of the fish. The practice spread to upstate New York and the Great Lakes, where it became a tourist industry with many communities growing around prime fishing areas. Ice fishing was banned in 1905, however, because the popularity of the sport had brought about a serious decline in large game fish. During the Depression, many hunters and fishermen turned again to fish spearing for survival. The decoys from this period are simpler, focusing on realistic shapes, colors, and movement rather than fanciful decoration (Steven Michaan, American Fish Decoys, 2003).

[Central Minn]

I have a couple of friends that ice fish them, bait balls or a wad of night crawlers threaded on a circle hook dropped to the bottom and wait,wait,wait,wait.

[Barnacle Bill]

Are there Kaluga Sturgeon is the US?

[stormcloud]

Thanks very much for the information. Now I know the rest of the story. Now I can tell folks I ain't as dumb as I look.
Ask me about spearing sturgeon using a decoy.

[Showme]

no...8 species, Lake Sturgeon in Wisconsin

A sturgeon spearing season is held in February on the Winnebago chain of lakes. And a hook-and-line fishing season is held in fall in several waters, including the Wisconsin and Menominee rivers.


The sturgeon provides a unique shot in the arm to the local economy. The sturgeon spearing season provides an estimated $3.5 million economic impact over 10 days to the economy around Winnebago system.


And in people turn out in droves to view spawning sturgeon, generating a $350,000 in economic impact in three days in Shiocton, Shawano and New London.

In April, DNR crews tagged a female sturgeon on the Wolf River that was 87.5 inches in length and weighed approximately 240 pounds.
Perhaps most impressive of all: The fish was an estimated 125 years old.




The White Sturgeon
Out sized only by the Beluga and the Kaluga, the White Sturgeon is the third largest of the sturgeon species. As it is, this species still remains the largest freshwater fish in North America.


The White Sturgeon is an anadromous fish that is characterized by slow growth and late maturity. Although Sturgeon have poor eyesight, they employ their barbels to feel for prey when feeding. Like the Atlantic Sturgeon and other species, the White Sturgeon uses its vacuum like mouth to suck in prey.

While young, White Sturgeon feed on insect larvae, small invertebrates, chironomids, and mollusks. As they grow bigger, however, they narrow down to mostly shrimp, mollusk and fish based diets. Studies have indicated that White Sturgeon move no more than just a few kilometers during summer - the feeding season.

However, when need arises to travel for spawning and reproductive purposes, the White Sturgeon can extend to a distance of over 100 kilometers. White Sturgeon spawn during spring and summer and may only repeat the process every 4-11 years.

A White Sturgeon will spawn in an area with turbulent fast waters, such as in the tail-waters below a dam or below a waterfall such as is the case on Oregon’s Willamette River.

While adult White Sturgeon can be found in deep, fast waters of large rivers, young White Sturgeon prefer the slower moving backwaters and side channels out of the river's main flow. This being said, sturgeon both adult and juvenile will go anywhere they want to find food and comfort and overlap each others traditional holding areas.