Agents discover Lake Sturgeon in state's waters
www.rod-fly-fishing2.com
Agents discover Lake Sturgeon in state's waters
Agents discover Lake Sturgeon in state's waters
University of Missouri student Michael Moore surgically implants a transmitter into a Lake Sturgeon while research assistant Brandon Brooke maintains care of the fish. Results from the research indicate the fish can swim hundreds of miles in Missouri’s waterways.
Fisheries biologists from the Missouri Department of Conservation have discovered Lake Sturgeon are once again swimming hundreds of miles through the state’s waterways.
Lake Sturgeon were once common in the state’s rivers, but by the 1970s overharvest and changes to the rivers caused their numbers to plummet.The conservation department listed the species as a state endangered fish in 1974 and banned its harvest. Since 1984, the state agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have partnered to raise and stock fingerling Lake Sturgeon into the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.
Travis Moore, head of the department’s Lake Sturgeon Recovery Team, said the stocking of the fish and the research on their movement is part of a three-decade-long effort to create a self-sustaining wild population.
In order to track the movement of the fish, the conservation department places transmitters on them.
“Our goal is to get enough of a population out there to someday have a rod-and-reel season for them,” Moore said. “They can live to be over 100 years old. However, they don’t become adults until they reach between 25 and 30 years of age. Therefore, the fish stocked in the 1980s have just recently become adults and are starting to spawn on their own. The young fish that we will stock in about a month won’t be adults for 25 more years. We have to keep that time frame in mind as we help restore this population.”
Lake Sturgeon can grow to lengths approaching eight feet and can weigh as much as 200 to 300 pounds. They can also live to be 150 years old.
“We’ve had a number of fish captures from the public and by our staff in the Kansas City and St. Joseph areas,” Moore said. “I was sent a picture a little over a year ago of a fish that was caught south of Kansas City that according to the angler’s scales was over 100 pounds.”
He said a female Lake Sturgeon was also caught in Wisconsin in 2012 that weighed 240 pounds and they believe she was 125 years old and hatched from an egg in the late 1880s.
The conservation department’s efforts finally paid off in April 2015 when Lake Sturgeon were confirmed spawning in the Mississippi River near West Alton. During that time, one particular sturgeon had managed to swim up a tributary of the Mississippi River. It ended up trapped in a pool of Dardenne Creek near New Melle in St. Charles County.
The fish was assigned the number #26026 and became known as “Norman.” It was believed to be between 20 and 25 years old.
Moore inserted a radio transmitter into the fish, and St. Louis regional fisheries management biologist Sarah Peper and her crew returned Norman to the Mississippi River.
This past spring a bleep was picked up by a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service receiver at Keokuk, Iowa, from Norman’s transmitter. The fish had traveled more than 170 river miles through a total of six locks and dams.
Moore said multiple fish have been tracked long distances across waterways.
He said this is possible because during high water, the Army Corps of Engineers often sets the gates of the dams wide open and the fish can swim through. It’s also possible the fish could have locked through with a barge.
Another Lake Sturgeon tagged in the Osage River near Bonnet’s Mill in 2016 was detected below Melvin Price Lock and Dam on the Mississippi River north of St. Louis, which was 130 river miles away from the tagging site.
They also discovered a fish that had been tagged in late March 2016 in Pool 20 of the Upper Mississippi River near Keokuk. It was tracked as it made a right-hand turn from the Mississippi River into the Missouri River. A telemetry remote receiver in the Missouri River detected the fish in November 2016 that was 170 miles from the tagging site.
In addition, a fish that was tagged in 2008 near Hannibal moved upstream to Keokuk, then it was caught six years later in 2014 in the Arkansas River showing it traveled about 600 miles.
Moore said staff plan to begin an additional project with a student from the University of Missouri in order to put transmitters in fish that swim in streams that flow into the Missouri River.
He said the department asks anglers who catch a Lake Sturgeon to report the catch to conservation department staff before releasing it back into the water. The department recommends the angler take a picture, weigh the fish and record the number on its tag.
To report information on Lake Sturgeon, contact Moore by email at travis.moore@mdc.mo.gov.