How did opening day of the 2019 sturgeon spearing season stack up?
In past seasons I’ve sent out a summary on opening day of how that season’s start compares to years past. Today’s opening day was very similar to the start to the 2018 season, both in terms of harvest and shanty count. There were 4,625 shanties on Lake Winnebago today with the north end of Lake Winnebago having the highest number of shanties (area 1 - 1,102 shanties; area 2 – 966 shanties; area 3 – 587 shanties; area 4 – 710 shanties; area 5 – 636 shanties; area 6 – 624 shanties). The attachments below show the opening day harvest, water clarity and shanty counts for the 2002-2019 spearing seasons on Lake Winnebago. The 6-hour spearing day was implemented in 2002, thus why only the 2002-2019 data were selected for comparison. Water clarity continues to be the biggest predictor of opening day sturgeon harvest on Lake Winnebago as shown with the figure accessible through the link.
opening day harvest totals- shanty counts.pdf
water clarity vs opening day harvest figure.pdf
The harvest cap system on the Upriver Lakes was implemented in 2007. The opening day harvest of 130 sturgeon from the Upriver Lakes today is below the 152 fish average from the 2007-2019 season. However, today’s harvest was on par with the opening day harvest for the 2017 (123 fish) and 2018 seasons (136 fish). The 2018 season on the Upriver Lakes lasted 4 days before the adult female harvest cap was triggered, but the season was very close to going into a 5th day.
Good luck during the remainder of the season!
Visit our survey at http://dnr.wi.gov/customersurvey to evaluate how I did.
Ryan Koenigs
Senior Fisheries Biologist / Winnebago System Sturgeon Biologist
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
625 E County Rd. Y, Suite 700
Oshkosh, WI 54901
Phone: (920)303-5450
Fax: (920)424-4404
Ryan.koenigs@wisconsin.gov
dnr.wi.gov