Rebounding lake sturgeon

[Lee Borgersen]

Rebounding lake sturgeon population draws in spring anglers to Lake of the Woods and Rainy River.

 
BAUDETTE, Minn. — Heather Brosdahl and her husband, Brian, spent Easter Sunday fishing for sturgeon on the Rainy River.

Better to be on the water thinking about God — an angler’s creed, of sorts — than being in church thinking about fishing.




The attraction, Heather said, is the opportunity to tangle with fish 60 inches long or more that can tip the scales at upward of 100 pounds.


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“Sturgeon are beautiful — in a prehistoric way — freshwater fish that have a great fight,” said Brosdahl, who lives in Max, in northern Itasca County. “I fish saltwater where you expect to catch giant fish, but sturgeon are the largest fish I catch in a year’s time.”

Twenty years ago, anglers who ventured north to fish sturgeon on Lake of the Woods and Rainy River in the spring pretty much had the place to themselves.

Not anymore.

These days — and it’s been that way for a couple of weeks now — anglers converge on Four-Mile Bay at the mouth of the Rainy River and points upstream to do battle with lake sturgeon, the largest fish northern Minnesota has to offer.

The Wheelers Point boat access north of Baudette, once an empty parking lot until the May walleye opener, routinely fills to overflowing, and vehicle-boat trailer rigs line the edge of state Highway 172, often for a half-mile or more.

There are big fish to be caught, and the secret’s out.

When ice fishing season ends, the excitement for open water is in the air, and our first open water fishing trip is for sturgeon on the Rainy River,” Brosdahl said. “These are true river monsters — no need for light rods and tackle here.

“There’s nothing like the anticipation of waiting for a bite from a fish that can grow to more than 100 pounds and more than

6 feet long.”



On the rebound

Nearly wiped out by the early 1900s from overfishing and pollution from a pulp and paper industry that degraded spawning habitat and prevented recovery, a small population of the prehistoric fish survived. Federal clean water legislation enacted in the 1960s in both the United States and Canada helped jump-start the species.

Today, sturgeon populations on the border lake and river have recovered to the point where short-term recovery goals set by Minnesota and Ontario fisheries managers have been met. Those goals — which call for male sturgeon to age 30 and females to 50 years old, with fish larger than 70 inches and 30 age-classes of fish in the population — mean some great fishing opportunities.

Results from a “mark-and-recapture” tagging study in 2014 tallied an estimated 92,300 sturgeon 40 inches or longer in Lake of the Woods and Rainy River. That compares with 59,000 sturgeon that size during the previous survey in 2004 and 17,000 during the initial population assessment in 1990.

Tom Heinrich, large lake specialist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources in Baudette, says the abundance of bigger sturgeon in the system reflects quite a change from the early 1990s, when the DNR began sampling sturgeon in the border country.

When we started our sturgeon population assessment, it was really cool to see one that was over 60 inches,” Heinrich said. “Now, it’s looking for that 70-incher. It’s just like the anglers. When they started up here, it was something to get a legal sturgeon, which was like a 45-incher.”

Catch a 60-inch sturgeon today, and it’s likely to generate little more than a lukewarm “nice fish.”

A 5-foot-long fish … ho-hum.

We can see some huge differences,” Heinrich said. “The 60-inchers right now, they’re not even warranting a second glance unless they’re 68 or 69 inches long. Those 62s, 65s are very nice fish, but they’re just not that unusual anymore.”

Tag returns

The DNR encourages anglers to report the tag numbers from sturgeon they catch, and in turn provides a report showing when and where the fish was tagged and whether other anglers or fisheries crews have reported catching the fish.

Already this spring, Heinrich says he’s gotten several tag returns from sturgeon 60 inches and longer.

Perhaps the most interesting, he says, came from a sturgeon tagged in 1998 in Four-Mile Bay and recaptured for the first time March 26, also in Four-Mile Bay. The sturgeon was 50.6 inches long and 19 years old when it

was tagged, and it measured 63 inches when it was caught last week.

Assuming the angler got the length correct, this fish is most likely a female because very few males get any longer than 60 inches,” Heinrich said. “She is now 37 years old.”

Another sturgeon of interest is fish No. 98787, dubbed “the old guy,” which measured 61.2 inches long and was 45 years old when tagged in May 1995 in the Rapid River, a Rainy River tributary.

The sturgeon was caught by anglers in May 2004 and April 2013 in the Rainy River and by DNR fisheries crews in May 2005, April 2007, May 2009 and April 2015 in the Rapid River.

The length of the sturgeon hasn’t changed, Heinrich says, which suggests the fish is a male.

Now 66 years old, the sturgeon is just an old-looking fish, he said.



Shifting gears

Walleye season on the Rainy River and other Minnesota-Ontario border waters is open through April 14, but it’s not uncommon for springtime anglers to shift gears and break out the heavy tackle if the walleyes aren’t cooperating.

That certainly has been the case this spring. Although the Rainy River opened early, it also muddied up early, the result of runoff and the opening of tributary streams such as the Little Fork and Big Fork rivers.

When the Rainy turns muddy, walleye fishing is tough until water clarity improves. The impact on sturgeon is less apparent. Best of all, fishing sturgeon is as simple as anchoring upstream from a hole and dunking a glob of nightcrawlers. Anglers who want to get really fancy will add a frozen shiner minnow or two, as well.

It’s one of the most exciting fish you can target in the U.S.,” Heather Brosdahl said.

Minnesota’s state record sturgeon, caught in 1994 on the Kettle River in Pine County, measured 70 inches and weighed 94 pounds, 4 ounces. That record likely would have been broken several times on Lake of the Woods and Rainy River except for stringent harvest regulations. Sturgeon on the border waters must be 45 inches to 50 inches long — or longer than 75 inches — before they can be legally kept, and the harvest window is limited.

On Lake of the Woods and the Rainy River, sturgeon fishing is catch-and-release only until April 24, when a harvest season begins and continues through May 7; fishing returns to catch-and-release only from May 8-15, and the season then is closed through June 30. That’s followed by another harvest season from July 1 through Sept. 30, with catch-and-release fishing from Oct. 1 through April 23, 2017.

Anglers must purchase a sturgeon tag, which costs $5 for both residents and nonresidents, to keep a sturgeon during the harvest season, and the limit is one a year. The tag is required only for anglers who want to harvest a sturgeon and is not required for catch-and-release fishing.

The area also hosts two sturgeon tournaments that draw big numbers and big fish. The 10th annual Sportsman’s Lodge Sturgeon Tournament, set for May 6-7, routinely reaches its 50-boat capacity, and the North American Sturgeon Championship on the Rainy River near Birchdale has been an August fixture for more than 20 years.

In addition, the DNR’s Becoming an Outdoors Woman sturgeon excursion is one of the most popular offerings on the program’s calendar and also fills to capacity. This year’s BOW sturgeon event is set for Aug. 12-14, and more information is available at mndnr.gov/education/bow.

More opportunities

Lake of the Woods, the Rainy River and other U.S.-Ontario border waters, along with portions of the St. Croix River, offer the only opportunities for harvesting a lake sturgeon in Minnesota, but the DNR in 2015 opened a catch-and-release sturgeon season on other bodies of water, including Otter Tail Lake and the Littlefork, Big Fork and Kettle Rivers. The season also provides catch-and-release opportunities on border rivers such as the Red, St. Louis and Mississippi.

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The DNR says comebacks in sturgeon populations have made the new catch-and-release sturgeon fishing seasons possible, but harvest opportunities on the new waters remain several years away.

Lake sturgeon can live more than 100 years and exceed 200 pounds, but they don’t reach sexual maturity until their late teens to mid-20s. Mature males spawn only every two to three years, while females only spawn every four to six years.



In that context, sturgeon populations in Lake of the Woods and Rainy River still are relatively young. Which begs the question: What can anglers expect if the population continues on its present course of recovery?

“We’ve got good size structure right now, and I think that will continue to improve,” Heinrich, the DNR fisheries biologist in Baudette, said of the Lake of the Woods and Rainy River population. “But I think those real huge fish — the 150- to 200-pound fish — are always going to be relatively unusual.”

Unusual, perhaps, but not beyond the realm of possibility.
 



To learn more

For more information on sturgeon regulations on Lake of the Woods and Rainy River and other Minnesota waters where fishing is allowed, check out the 2016 Minnesota Fishing Regulations booklet, available at license

dealers or online at mndnr.gov.


Heather Brosdahl of Max, Minn., landed this sturgeon recently during an excursion to the Rainy River. The opportunity to tangle with big, prehistoric fish that can reach 100 pounds or more is a big attraction for anglers who flock to the border country every spring.

                                   




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