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DICK ELLIS Click here for full PDF Version from the March/April Issue. Seeking Wolf PhotosOWO’s informal census continuesOn Wisconsin Outdoors’ informal wolf census continues. Please send your trail cam photos of wolves in Wisconsin to: wolves@onwisconsinoutdoors.com. List the county where the photos were taken, the date, and verify the number of wolves visible in each photo. Your name will not be published. OWO publishers do not b...

Dear Winnebago System Sturgeon Enthusiasts: 

 

As anticipated the 2015 sturgeon spawning run on the Winnebago System passed by very quickly.  The first spawning activity was observed on the upper Fox River @ Eureka on the evening of April 14.  However, spawning activity was very limited at that point.  Spawning continued at sites on the upper Fox River @ Eureka and Princeton on April 15 with fish also started to exhibit intense pre-spawn behavior at sites further downstream on the Wolf River.  Our crew handled 4 fish at Princeton that date, all of which were implanted with 10 year sonic transmitters to monitor their movement and future spawning migrations.  Spawning activity began on the Wolf, Little Wolf and Pigeon Rivers on April 16.  Our crew handled a total of 70 fish on the 16^th including 7 fish at the Manawa Dam on the Little Wolf River and 11 at the Clintonville Dam on the Pigeon River.  Peak spawning activity occurred throughout the Winnebago System on Fridayand Saturday.  Fish were still spawning at a few sites on Sunday, but not nearly to the intensity observed on Friday-Saturday, and by Monday the run was pretty much over.  Below is a table of the number of fish handled by our DNR staff at various spawning sites during the short spawning run.  In total we handled 1,521 fish over 6 days, highlighted by the 700 fish handled below the Shawano Dam on April 18.  Although the spawning run this year was short, we actually handled roughly 50 more females than during the extended spawning run of 2014.  I plan to send out a more detailed report in the coming months after we have had a chance to enter all of the data into our database and conduct further analysis.  The weather was exceptionally nice during this year’s spawning migration, which offered great opportunity for people to get out and take in the sturgeon spawning activity.  A member of the conservation group Shadows on the Wolf told me that they figured >6,000 visitors came through Bamboo Bend per day on Friday and Saturday!  That is truly remarkable and doesn’t include the number of people who came to see sturgeon spawn at other sites throughout the Winnebago System.     

 

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