2013 sturgeon spearing season summary reports
Dear Winnebago Sturgeon Enthusiasts,
Our Oshkosh Fisheries Management crew has been busy since we wrapped up our sturgeon harvest assessment and we have completed our initial post season reports from the 2013 Winnebago System lake sturgeon spearing season held February 9-24. Attached are:
- my post-season synopsis;
- the successful spearer list;
- the harvest numbers by registration station, lake area, along with average fish sizes by category; and
- the harvest numbers by successful spearer county/state;
We'll be coming out with more summaries later this year once we finish the age estimation work from the spines we collected and finish processing tag returns. If you had a tagged fish and/or if we collected a spine from your fish for age estimation, we will send you a letter later this year providing a tagging and capture history of the fish (if a tag return) and an estimate of the fish's age (if we collected a spine).
I hope that you enjoyed the 2013 sturgeon spear fishery as much as I did, and that you enjoy the summaries provided.
The next series of e-mails I send out will be updates on our spring assessments that will likely be getting underway in the next few weeks. This spring we will be fyke netting perch, electrofishing and tagging walleye during our annual spring spawning assessment on the upper Fox and Wolf Rivers, and dipnetting and tagging sturgeon during our annual spring spawning assessment. I will be send out reports about what we are seeing in our sampling efforts and when and where people can view sturgeon spawning as we work through spring. I'll let you know when the fish are active so you can get out to see them spawning at the Sturgeon Trail near New London, Bamboo Bend at Shiocton, or below the Shawano Dam.
Stay tuned because our crew will be doing extensive sampling of the Winnebago System fisheries over the next couple of months!
Till then,
Ryan