How did opening day today compare to year's past?
I recently sent out a sturgeon harvest report for opening day of the 2015 spearing season, but you may be wondering how does this year’s opening day harvest compare to year’s past. Well it turns out that the opening day harvest of 467 fish on Lake Winnebago ranks 5th highest since the season moved to the shortened 6 hour spearing day in 2002. The average opening day harvest over this 14 year period has been 374 fish, so today’s number actually eclipses that by more than 100 fish. In comparison, today’s harvest of 126 sturgeon on the Upriver Lakes was the 2nd lowest opening day harvest since the current lottery structure was implemented in 2007. The average opening day harvest over this 9 day period was 178 fish, making todays harvest roughly 50 fish below average. More detailed information is available in the table below.
As for shanty counts, our aerial distribution survey indicated that shanties were fairly evenly distributed throughout the 6 areas of the lake today. A total of 4,436 were counted on Lake Winnebago this morning with an additional 379 shanties counted on the Upriver Lakes. The shanties were distributed as follows:
Area 1 = 854
Area 2 =702
Area 3 = 760
Area 4 = 761
Area 5 = 668
Area 6 = 691
Total = 4436
BDM = 56
WIN = 31
POY = 292
Total = 379
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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