Tuesday, February 14: Winnebago System Sturgeon Spearing Season - 2012 Another slow day with very low effort - basically it boils down to "when the effort is low, low numbers of fish come in". Add in the poor water clarity in some areas, a dash of bad ice here and there, and you have the perfect recipe for low harvest rates. Despite the low numbers though, some very nice fish were registered. At this point of the season, we have seen 22 fish 100 pounds or larger in the total harvest of 347 system-wide; 7 out of 105 on Lake Winnebago (6.7%) and 15 out of 242 (6.2%) during the 2-day season on the Upriver lakes.
Spearers are reporting seeing large groups of gizzard shad this year, but not the typical 6-8" shad that the sturgeon like to eat in the winter, rather very large shad 12-14" which are fish that survived last winter and grew to this large adult size. These shad will also experience a natural winter die-off, but not in the quantity that is seen when they are only 1 year olds. Sturgeon will consume these large 2 year and older shad as they find them on the bottom dead or dying, but this is a much larger fish to swallow and occasionally we will see a sturgeon with the tail end of a large shad sticking out of its mouth when it is brought in to the registration station. Sturgeon consume mostly lake fly larvae ("redworms") but will also consume large quantities of dead and dying yearling shad in the winter in the years when we have big shad hatches. The shad are a very important food source for Winnebago sturgeon and one of the reasons we have such healthy fish and an abundance of sturgeon in the system. The fact that we have much lower numbers of yearling shad this winter and an abundance of lake fly larvae is part of the reason spearers are having a hard time seeing fish on Winnebago this year. The lake fly beds are primarily in the deep water mud flats, mostly in water greater than 12 feet in depth. Water clarity is at best about 10-11 feet on Lake Winnebago so even if a spearer is set up over a good "redworm" bed, the fish are likely swimming below the 10 foot water depth closer to the bottom where the lake fly larvae are, out of site of the spearer anxiously waiting to see a fish. Fish that deep may not even decoy all that well either as the decoys are set also above the 10 foot depth level. So the hunt goes in the sport of sturgeon spearing. Hoping the water clears over the next week or so.
http://dnr.wi.gov/fish/sturgeon/lakewinnebago/
